[governance] civil society co ordination group - call for comments
Suresh Ramasubramanian
suresh at hserus.net
Mon Jan 20 03:27:16 EST 2014
A prequalification for either nomcom duties or being selected to represent the caucus in some forum could be a history of prior engagement with the caucus and prior track record in igov. [And to increase the inclusion, this could mean engagement with multiple caucus members in good standing on other civil society fora, if not necessarily this specific caucus]
This prevents the sort of ballot stuffing you have noted, where there are endorsements for specific individuals from random people or groups that have no prior engagement with the caucus or track record on igov issues.
--srs (iPad)
> On 20-Jan-2014, at 12:27, "Ian Peter" <ian.peter at ianpeter.com> wrote:
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> I’m posting here some thoughts recently discussed among members of the civil society co ordination group for comments and input. It relates to some options for this group. It would be good to have comments and input.
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> What we are proposing is a period of on line discussion, after which we will probably conduct some sort of on line straw poll to get a feeling for how people think about options emerging. So please comment and digest, and we will look forward to getting wide input.
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> But firstly- is there a need for such a group?
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> There certainly was in the context of appointing representatives for Brazil and 1net, and we would argue that it is highly advisable for functions such as MAG nominations. Perhaps there are no other great needs at this stage, but they might arise. And certainly a continuing communication between groups working in the area of internet governance might be useful.
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> The alternative to all of this re-organisation would be for the group to go into recess until another urgent need arises. But that choice would simply reinforce the criticism that exists of this group (or its successors) when there is a need again - or alternatively lead to fragmented selection processes that hinder civil society representation.
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> 1. EXPANSION OF THE CO-ORDINATION GROUP
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> This has been the subject of previous discussion with a number of different parties and it was decided to defer further considerations until after Brazil nominations were complete. There was also some discussion on list here immediately before Christmas about some possible criteria for involvement.
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> One possibility we would suggest here is we could decide to enlarge the group to (say) 9 -12 people. The current voting members could remain and would be joined by one of the incoming IGC Co-ordinators. For additional voting members, we suggest that we open it up to expressions of interest – but not only from organisations, but also from individuals. That allows involvement of representatives of multistakeholder groups with a strong relationship with civil society (eg IRP). That might be a good step, and to this we could add rotation of members.... or leave such questions until the co ordination group is fully populated.
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> That’s the first issue where clarity is needed. But how to select....
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> 2. SELECTION PROCEDURES (possibly for expanding the co ordination group, but also for any future CS representation).
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> We present three different options here.
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> OPTION ONE - VOTING
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> This works well within one organisation, but is more difficult with multi-organisational elections – who is in for voting, who is out? And some of us remember the original ICANN at large elections, where suddenly thousands of people with no previous involvement got involved in support of one candidate who was elected with a large majority. The context for us here is that, without a consolidated membership list of all our organisations, this is very open to capture and manipulation. And setting up and maintaining a multi-organisation single voting list is a fairly time consuming administrative task. (and then we need to ask which organisations mailing lists and/or membership lists would be included)
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> So there are a few issues to solve if we take that direction.
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> OPTION TWO – RANDOM NOMCOM
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> This option has been widely used in IETF and was adopted in the Charter of IGC. We are not aware of anywhere else it is used but there may be some other examples.
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> While this form is gospel to some people, others have reservations.
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> Ian Peter writes, as one critic with some experience of this
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> “My personal reservations arise from involvement with perhaps 9 or so random Nomcoms, with the following results:
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> 2 included known trolls.
> Only one of 9 had all members active – most worked on the basis of only one or two active members.
> One refused to work with the appointed Chair
> One had the Chair drop out mid process and ended up with one individual making decisions
> Gender and geographic balance are purely left up to chance.”
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> To this we would add issues involved with random selection when factions/different organisations are involved. It is easy in this case for important sections of CS to be left out entirely from deliberations because they weren’t randomly selected.
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> So some of us caution against use of this form in the context of a multi-organisational steering group, arguing that these are important matters of representation best not left to chance.
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> OPTION THREE – APPOINTED NOMCOM
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> This is the most widely used form and is used by technical community, business community, ICANN, and just about any other organisation we can think of. It’s the safest way, providing that transparent, accountable and inclusive processes are used to select the members of the Nomcom. That would be something the coordination group mentioned above could undertake when in place.
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> And I am sure there are other variations. But they need to be agreed to and sorted out.
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> CRITERIA
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> We also need criteria for selection. Previously we discussed these in terms of determining suitable organisations who would nominate representatives. But if we are looking at individuals as well, they will need to change. But for reference, the previous discussions left these under consideration
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> 1. Is it a coalition which is globally representative - all regions covered?
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> 2. Is it non-commercial and public interest oriented (as opposed to business)?
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> 3. Would it more properly fit under technical community, academic, business or government in its categorization?
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> 4. Is a large part of this coalition's members already covered by one of the existing members?
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> 5. The internal governance of the coalition is adequately transparent and accountable to its members.
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> 6. Does the coalition have a substantial current involvement in and knowledge of internet governance issues
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> Obviously if individuals are to be considered these have to change.
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> Over to everyone for comments.
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> Ian Peter
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