IETF WAS Re: [governance] Enhanced Cooperation (was Re: reality check on economics)

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

The issue of accountability is a complicated one and I do not expect to get too far on one message.  

First accountability has more definitions that I know how to handle.  In fact, in general more than anyone seems to handle real well.

When you say accountability, are you looking for liability?  Are you looking for whom to blame? Whom to fire? Whom to imprison?
Whom to defeat in the next election? Whom not to trust anymore?

Are you looking for people to take responsibility for their actions?  For organizations to take responsibility for their actions?

What does accountability mean to you and how do you want to enforce it?

While accountability is always important in governance, it is a word people use without really defining it. Or having much to a way to enforce it. A few years ago the favorite stumper questions was "does it scale", these days its "who is accountable"  It is a question that is stumping the world as far as I can tell.

Who is accountable for all of the world's starvations, the death from was or the spread of diseases that should have been curtailed by now.  And how do we hold them accountable?  Anyone answer these critical questions for me in an email?

In government, we think that accountability means voting out of office and maybe ending up in jail for corruption if we are lucky.  Yet that happen rarely for the thing politicians do wrong and usually only happens when they do something stupid or their opponents have lots and lots of money for propaganda.  And when it comes to the bureaucrats that run our governments and the international governance organizations it is only in rare cases of malfeasance, or perhaps lying on their resumes that they become accountable to anyone other than the boss they have to please.

No, you should not be happy about the slow rate of decline of the Indian maternal mortality.  I don't remember even saying you should be happy with the failure of a system.  I would be curious as to how you hold them accountable.  Please tell me what works for this?  Tell how you would want it work.  how do you want to hold people accountable? Fire them? Imprison them?  I suppose you can protest and be activist and things may improve., a lot of people cetainly do stand and shout and try to make people take responsibility.  And sometime it works. 

In terms of Standard Development Organizations, if their standards no longer contributed to a growing, stable Internet, people would not use those standards.  Unfortunately when the government tells you what standards you must use, you have not choice of walking away and finding another set of standards. How can you argue for government mandated standards, when you know they don't work and that there is no way, other than being sad, that you can react to them.

Sometime with IETF standards, I think that we are seeing accountability in action these days with IPv6.  They did not follow their own practices and produced something that users don"t seem to have a real use for and are having to pull teeth to get it to really happen this time.  This is accountability, or perhaps it is just karma.

If accountability means taking responsibility for what has been done, I think that the IETF practice of taking three steps before deeming something a standard is part of their accountability story.  First they code and prove that something works before making it a proposed standard, then they test in the real world on the real Internet and fix it and call it a draft standard, and only when it becomes fully functional and mainstream in the world does it become a full standard.  There are only 66 or so full standards.  They stand by their work, publish fixes, take responsibility for problems that occur in the network with their standards, improve, republish and monitor.  They take responsibly in a very public way, certainly  large part of accountability.  If their stuff was not worth using, now one would use it and we would have a world full of 7 layer OSI protocol based equipment.

Tell me, other than oversight by government bureaucrats who really are responsible to no one except perhaps their bureaucracy, what else do you want from them in terms of accountability? Please be specific.

As for the IGC nomcom person you consider incompetent a slacker or downright irresponsible, don't ever appoint them as coordinator of the IGC or for any other office anywhere.  A lot of individual accountability, when it is not criminal or civilly liable, is found in our reputations.  People who do not work hard and do not do their best for the organizations that appoint or elected them, get bad reputations.  In corrupt system, like many governments this won't matter for in these systems all that matters is that one butter the right person's bread.  In stakeholder organizations like the IGC, or multistakeholder organizations like the IETF, reputation is a lot of what matters.

avri

On 24 May 2012, at 21:26, Guru गुरु wrote:

> 
> On Friday 25 May 2012 04:00 AM, Avri Doria wrote:
>> 
>> On 24 May 2012, at 17:42, Ian Peter wrote:
>> 
>>> When looking at IETF its probably also worth looking at some of its more eccentric processes and structures and determining whether these have ongoing value and/or scaleability. These would include
>>> 
>>> 	• Lack of any formal membership structure (anyone can participate). This also leads to accountability issues – wheras governments are accountable to their citizens, and companies to their shareholders, it’s not clear who IETF is accountable to seeing it has no formal membership structure. Tnis lack of accountability also leads to no formal review or performance evaluation processes – which in turn can lead to other problems.
>> People do not need to be members of something to participate.
>> The leadership is accountable to the participants
>> 
>> I have been a participant since the late 80's, sometime just via email and sometimes with the ability to attend the meetings.  I have always felt that the requirement of stewardship for the Internet was the most serious thing the IETF did.  And they are most definitely accountable to the world for the fact that the Internet continues to grow and thrive, despite all the barriers that need to be routed around.
> This is a very inadequate, and may i say, a poor measure of accountability. 
> 
> The maternal mortality rate in India has been declining over last six decades, does this mean I can feel happy about the performance of the Indian public health system?? (India has one of the highest mmr in the world even today and several deaths are avoidable/inexcusable). 
> 
> Accountability is a critical necessity for any system which impacts the public ... and as the Interent has deeper, wider impact on our lives in numerous ways, we need governance structures that are transparent, accountable and support wide participation (not just who can afford to be there) ... and if we agree democracy is the best way to go about this, ask ourselves how we can make the current IG more democratic.
> 
>> As for the IGC, which is indeed modeled on the IETF process, we require that people be members.  I am not going to accuse any of our members, especially those who pay enough attention to volunteer when asked, of not participating in a meaningful way.
>> 
> Avri, 
> 
> The issue is not of 'accusing members'.... the issue is - if members who voluntarily pick up a responsibility do not then actually put in the required effort (and having been in Nomcoms, I agree with Ian that there are serious participation issues), then who pays the price??? does IGC not get the best selection of nominees after required deliberations because of this. And what is the accountability process - of the person to nomcom, of nomcom to igc, and of igc to IG....? Processes with such poor accountability make me very uncomfortable...
> 
> The larger question to ponder therefore is - Who pays the price for the current IG regimes and lack of its accountability to the "global society"? Conversely, who does it benefit disproportionately?
> 
> Andrea also more than once raised this issue of accountability for decisions taken... I look forward to your response to him and to Mike Gurstein's specific questions as well...  
> 
> thanks and regards,
> Guru
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