[discuss] governments and rule of law (was: Possible approaches to solving...)

Thu Feb 27 03:26:24 UTC 2014

John,

I'll let others closer to the present Board reply about the situation as is
at present. I'm sure your advice would be welcome as input for many of the
processes ICANN has undertaken. In what I have seen of the board "all of
the above" would be my answer if you asked "what have you bumped into and
how have you solved it?"

What would make your contribution even more interesting and useful would be
examples from other Internet-resource policy coordination organizations.
I'm sure you have a treasure chest of those!

Alejandro Pisanty

On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 6:27 PM, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:

> On Feb 26, 2014, at 3:03 PM, Alejandro Pisanty <apisanty at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > John,
> >
> > in an ideal world you'd do that iteration after iteration until the
> result is perfectly clear and actionable and the consensus is unequivocally
> established. But then, in that ideal world, that would be the case from the
> very beginning.
>
>   I was not asking about the ideal world, but those specific cases you
> referenced earlier where the
>   "bottom-up advice (wasn't always) clear and precise enough for the ICANN
> Board to just approve."
>   In order to save time, perhaps it would best to just accept such cases
> at face value, and move on
>   to consider its relevance of this discussion on the role of governments,
> GAC input, and Board
>   consideration of same.
>
>   The discussion on this topic has revealed quite a bit of "Board wisdom"
> regarding handling of issues
>   (e.g.  usefulness of stimulating further discussion and new approached
> where the community has not
>   come up with something sufficiently clear, the Board's vision of a
> limited role in the course of normal
>   policy development efforts, desirability of the Board not serving as its
> own experts,  use of expert
>   working groups when needed, etc.)
>
>   Perhaps it would be helpful for the Board to enshrine some of this
> wisdom into a more detailed process
>   and criteria than the current GNSO policy development process?
>  Presently, the entire Board wisdom is
>   enshrined in a single line regarding whether "the Board determines that
> such policy is not in the best
>   interests of the ICANN community or ICANN."
>
>   There is a complete absence of any criteria (even representative) about
> what might constitute a policy
>   being "not in the best interests of the ICANN community or ICANN.", for
> example -
>
>      - Policy statement is insufficiently clear to allow for implementation
>      - Policy development did not follow the approved policy development
> process
>      - Policy would result in ICANN doing something contrary to prevailing
> law
>      - Policy was not clearly supported by the ICANN community
>      - Policy was strongly opposed by one significant segment of the ICANN
> community
>            and there is not documentation that those views have been fully
> considered.
>      - Policy could pose significant technical risk
>      - etc.
>
>   Obviously having such a set of formal criteria may also be helpful in
> preparation of the staff report,
>   but the main benefit would be in documenting a shared understanding over
> some of the significant
>   types of issues that the Board will weigh in its determination.
>
>   Clearly, the Board will always retain the freedom to identify other
> concerns due to its weighty responsibility
>   to the mission of the organization, but setting clear expectations about
> the normal evaluation process and
>   criteria (to match what has been discussed on this list) would probably
> be helpful in dispensing with some
>   of the Board perception issues, and certainly help in anchoring
> accountability aspects of the organization.
>
> FYI,
> /John
>
> Disclaimer:  My views alone.
>
>
>

-- 
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     Dr. Alejandro Pisanty
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