[governance] 2008 NomCom Report

Thu May 15 13:39:23 EDT 2008

Further to my earlier note...

Let's assume for the moment that words mean what we say they mean (not
always the case but anyway...

Stakeholder: a person, group, organization, or system who affects or can be
affected by an organization's actions (wikipedia)

Okay, so in the "Multi"stakeholder process who are the "stakeholders" and
what are their "stakes" i.e. what is it that they do that will be "affected
by an organization's (the IGF's) actions"?

Well the obvious stakeholders are 
	1. government who want to keep (acquire) control over the Internet
for themselves (i.e. keep it out of the hands of others)
	2. the private sector who want to keep the Internet open and
structurally robust for commerce
	3. and... Well maybe the techies who want to keep the Internet
functioning at its highest performance from a technical perspective
	4. and... Well Civil Society but what is it that Civil Society wants
or to put it another way what is it that CS agrees on that would become its
position in relation to how they are "affected" or would "effect" the
operations etc. of the Internet

In a very interesting side conversation Milton (and I believe Wolfgang) both
agreed to the proposition that CS was a "category" (think about the age
categories in a census) rather than a "group" ie. Something with a common
set of interests which might be pursued through CS attempting to affect or
responding to the attemtpts of others to affect the Internet.

If that is the case then I would suggest that in fact CS is not by any
definition that I would understand a "stakeholder" parallel to the other
"stakeholders" but rather as folks like Milton and Suresh seem to be
arguing, a concatenation of all those who don't fit into the other
stakeholder categories--not a very satisfactory position I would think and
not a very strong position to take along to the MAG.

On the other hand I think there is the position that CS at some level is
attempting to affect and manage the effects of/on the Internet in support of
what we might want to call "the public interest" (we could call it "the
public good" as well...

There is a long and deep literature defining the "public interest/public
good" unfortunately (momentarily) ignored in many jurisdictions but it seems
to me that if CS is in fact a "stakeholder" in the IGF process it is
precisely through representing in that forum
notions/aspirations/ideals/norms of the "publc interest/public good". 

And although there may be some variation in how the "public good" is defined
specifically, it would seem to me (and a considerable number of people
agree, whatever the distribution of opinion on this elist) that there is
enough there, there in the notion of the "public good" to in fact define a
"stake", interpret the "effects" and attempt to "affect the operations and
outcomes" of the IGF in support of that position and those norms.

That is, CS in the IGF is about the pursuit of the public good (in the
context of the Internet) or it is about nothing at all.

Best to all,

Michael Gurstein

-----Original Message-----
From: McTim [mailto:dogwallah at gmail.com] 
Sent: May 15, 2008 9:54 AM
To: Michael Gurstein
Subject: Re: [governance] 2008 NomCom Report

On Thu, May 15, 2008 at 5:55 PM, Michael Gurstein <gurstein at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I'm assuming that the overt attempt was to deal with potential for 
> "conflict of interest" in a rather tricky area and where the 
> guidelines wouldn't necessarily be immediately obvious.
>
> But as I understand "conflicts of interest" they have to do with the 
> potential for a direct financial effect from a decision (including 
> influencing decisions) resulting from participation in a specific 
> decision making process.
>
> I would have thought, based on that (rather awkward) definition that 
> it would be clear that folks working for technical companies might be 
> in a conflict of interest on the MAG

I think that's a very big might (as in only a slight possibility).

I think that an employee of Cisco or Google has an almost zero potential
conflict of interest by sitting on the MAG.  What possible decisions could
the MAG make that would for example affect the share price of one of these
corporations?

In fact, I think that the opposite is probably more likely to be true, in
that CS folk are MORE likely to have a conflict of interest in MAG
decisions.

Consider this example, CS org "A" is funded to do a variety of things, one
of which has been increasingly IG "stuff", in particular WSIS and
post WSIS, the IGF.   Org "A" staff person "B" has been the point
person for IG work done by "A".  "B" gets on the MAG, and obviously in
interested in the development of the Internet for the greater good, but also
obviously has a vested interest in seeing that "their" issues get
discussed/have workshops, etc.  If not, their advocacy is not as effective
as promised to the donor, which may result in fewer grants for this type of
work being given to "A", which also means that "B" may be out of work, or
have to shift focus away from IG issues.

Now, I'm not pointing the finger at any person or CS org here, rather trying
to point out that we are trying to split some rather fine hairs here, and to
mix metaphors, the NomCom has started us down a very slippery slope, one
that I suspect that no one who recognizes themselves as "B" really wants to
be on.

 (something certainly to be dealt with by
> others than CS who would by excluding those folks from their 
> "nomination" be transferring responsibility for that decision to 
> others)

I'm not getting you, are you saying that CS would shift the responsibility
to the PS?

I think there are folk on this list who work for the PS, which is fine, as
our charter says:

"The members of the IGC are individuals, acting in personal capacity, who
subscribe to the charter of the caucus. All members are equal and have the
same rights and duties."

So I think that the CS IGC could via it's NomCom nominate someone who worked
full time for a PS company to represent it on the MAG, at least, I would
hope so!

and would not
> exclude techies working for not for profit technical organizations and 
> or those working for NGO's/CS organizations whether or not they are 
> engaged in IG related activities in their working life.
>

So the person who runs the mailserver for CPSR (for example) is ok, but the
person who runs the rootservers for Verisign (for example) is not?  I must
have missed something, please share your views further on who could be
excluded and who could not.

I am thinking that by our charter, no one should be excluded.

-- 
Cheers,

McTim
$ whois -h whois.afrinic.net mctim

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