Denise:
It is good to see ICANN staff becoming more flexible about the formation of the new Stakeholder Groups.
However, you still are deviating rather significantly from the Board Governance Committee’s reform principles.
The spirit of the BGC reforms was to encourage consensus policy making, balanced representation, and a move away from the gridlock that has beset the GNSO for years.
Unfortunately the staff’s approach to the reform process is having the opposite effect: it is encouraging political infighting and fragmentation rather than consensus.
Right now the staff is actively encouraging the formation of new constituencies. Your intent is probably to encourage new participation, but in fact that is not happening. No new organizations or participants have surfaced in this process: ALL of the new constituency proponents are simply existing members of GNSO constituencies or long time members of At Large RALOs. Creating new constituencies IS NOT the same thing as bringing in new participants.
The real effect of your actions is simply to set in motion a willy-nilly fragmentation of stakeholder groups and a rather nasty kind of political competition. Each of these constituencies is convinced that if they break away from other groups and form their “own” constituency they have more exclusive power and will be guaranteed seats on the GNSO council. And since the number of seats on the Council is fixed, the attempt to form new constituencies is a zero sum game, in which one group’s recognition as a constituency inherently diminishes the number of seats that can be held by other constituencies. This creates an unhealthy, uncooperative environment. It fosters a war of all against all. The Board will be inundated with lobbying as these groups seek recognition for themselves and heap criticism on other proposed constituencies as being “unrepresentative” or “unfair.”
Bertrand and other advocates of consensus-based multistakeholderism would be shocked if they knew what was really happening.
BGC members have repeatedly told me and other members of the GNSO that the Stakeholders should develop and propose _their own_ structures. Shockingly, the Board has approved (BR 12 December 2008) without any debate or public comment on its implications, a proposal to have the entire GNSO and At Large define the structure of the new Noncommercial Stakeholders Group. This means that commercial stakeholder groups and supplier groups will get to dictate how our SG is organized. But no one has invited NCUC to participate in defining a new structure for the Commercial SG, or the Registrar and Registry SGs. This kind of discrimination among SGs is unacceptable. It exemplifies the political war that you are creating. Such pressure and discrimination will only discourage existing noncommercial entities from participating in ICANN's GNSO.
Contrary to your claim, your approach does increase layers of bureaucracy. All of these constituencies will have their own organizational structure, their own membership eligibility criteria, their own email lists, etc., etc. With separate lists, no member of one constituency will know what is going on in the other, unless they join ,many new lists – the last thing we need. Then the leaders of all these constituencies will have to engage in time-consuming, highly political negotiations with the leaders of other constituencies to allocate Council seats and agree on policies. This two-layered structure is a disaster, it creates the kind of overwhelming organizational overhead that kills participation by newcomers. For newcomers to ICANN, the organizational complexity is already daunting. You cannot expect to increase participation by doing this.
The only solution to these problems is to break out of the constituency model altogether.
NCUC has thought carefully about the problem of Stakeholder Group structure and has prepared a proposal that solves these problems. Although every Board member we have talked to has supported our approach, certain members of the staff have greeted it with hostility. We are puzzled by this. Nevertheless, we are convinced it is the right approach and are willing to take our case to the Board, to the GAC, and to the public. In any fair comparison, we have no doubt about which proposal will look better to those people who really want to make bottom up work.
--Milton Mueller, member, Noncommercial Users Constituency
Dear Community Members:
Staff would like to share another draft Stakeholder Group Petition/Charter Template (attached) to support and inform discussions on this matter. This compliments the draft template provided in October 2008.
Recognizing that we are all operating in uncharted territory, our collective thinking continues to evolve concerning Stakeholder Groups and how they might be optimally constructed, especially in the formative stages of the GNSO Improvements implementation. After considering some initial ideas and models, we found ourselves gravitating toward a less encumbered structure. The result is the attached template that we are circulating to the GNSO and broader community in hopes that it will be useful as discussions on forming four Stakeholder Groups move forward.
Underscoring our latest thinking is the following quotation from the BGC Report on GNSO Improvements, adopted by the Board, which states that (page 33), "The stakeholder groups may function only as a 'caucus,' bringing together like-minded stakeholders to elect representatives to the Council who can represent them. This structure would be fluid enough to accommodate new constituencies or the formation of new interest groups. It will be important for the implementation team to consider how to implement this flexibility within the overall stakeholder structure set forth in these recommendations. Our goal is definitely not to create a new layer of bureaucracy (emphasis added), as we heard concerns about at the San Juan Meeting."
This revised draft template emphasizes the constituency's continued preeminence within the GNSO and, at the same time, establishes a Stakeholder Group organization comprising minimal administrative and operational essentials until such time as our experiences may suggest a more elaborate design. In the bullets below, we have annotated where our first draft template was changed along with rationale where appropriate.
This streamlined approach also may be easier to implement in the June time frame (you'll recall that the Board needs to review and approve SG plans before a newly structured GNSO Council is seated in June 2009).
Staff stands ready to provide assistance and work with you in the construction of the Stakeholder Group organizations and charters. Please feel free to call upon us to discuss Stakeholder Group creation or to help with other restructuring matters --policy-staff@xxxxxxxxx.
Regards,
Notes on changes to Staff's first draft template
1) Section 2.0 -- Organization and Membership
a. Replaced sub-sections 2.2 and 2.3. Consistent with the current Bylaws, new constituency petitions are sent to the Board (also copied to the GNSO Council and publicly posted for comment) for formal approval including final placement within a particular Stakeholder Group. Until the Bylaws are amended, we propose that these functions be stipulated within the SG charter and re-evaluated at a future date.
b. Added sub-section 2.4 to differentiate and emphasize constituency rights and responsibilities from those of the SG.
2) Section 3.0 -- Leadership
a. Consistent with the BGC guidance, we amended sub-section 3.1 to add the option to structure an informal leadership caucus (e.g. of Constituency Chairs) vs. formally elected officers.
b. Original section 4.0 – Stakeholder Group Functions was edited and absorbed into sub-section 3.3. The principal functions of the SG remain substantially as they were originally conceived.
c. Sub-sections 3.4 and 3.5 were edited for additional clarity and 3.6 was removed on the basis that, to further reduce SG administrative tasks, membership lists should continue to be maintained by constituencies until such time as the GNSO has a master database containing GNSO participants (as recommended in the BGC Report).