Comments on ATRT Draft Recommendations

[Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

The following comments are being made on solely my own behalf.

I strongly support the overall direction and tone of the draft ATRT 
report. I do however have comments on several recommendations.
1. Board Skills

While I support the concept that the Board needs skills in a number 
of areas (and probably more areas than there are NomCom-selected 
Board members), there is a danger in focusing too much on this 
selection criteria.
What the Board does NOT need are silos of expertise each defending 
and fighting for what they think is important. The Board does need 
people who are comfortable with being presented with complex, 
multi-faceted issues where a balance must be reached between the 
conflicting requirements. It could be said that this is the reason 
that the Board needs experts in conflict management. However I 
believe that what the Board needs are people (whether experts or 
generalists) who can assess the various issues and needs and based on 
careful analysis, find central ground. All Board members need this 
kind of comfort and ability at conflict-resolution (as opposed to 
formal professional conflict resolution experience).
The Board needs people who are passionate, not just about their 
particular area of specialty, but about the Internet and ICANN. But 
passion alone will not suffice. There must be a level of comfort in 
working in an area where the ground is constantly moving, challenging 
the varied interests that are making competing demands.
7. AC/SO Consultation

I strongly support this recommendation. It does require, however, 
that there be proper notice of what the Board will be addressing, and 
when. In recent Board meetings, the agenda is often peppered with 
vague one-line titles and it takes a crystal ball to even figure out 
what the topic is. Moreover, to take a recent example, the Board 
meetings that were held along with the two retreats were about as 
opaqueness as possible. The first was not announced until shortly 
before it happened, with no details provided, and the second was (as 
far as I could determine) not even announced at all prior to the 
results being published. Even when agendas are published with proper 
notice, it is insufficient to allow comment. There needs to be a much 
longer focus.
To make matters worse, the Board has decided to dive deep into 
specific policy issues and make small adjustments to policy that has 
been formulated by community groups. The current example is the 
adjustment to the number of days for response to a URS notice. This 
point had been hammered out with great difficulty by the STI group 
and the result was very much a compromise between competing factions. 
But there WAS final agreement. Those who wanted a shorter time of 
course made comments, and the Board listened to them, I suspect 
without fully understanding the nuances and associated compromises 
that had been made by the cross-community group. If notice had been 
given, there would have been a chance for all sides to present their 
case, and not just the squeaky wheels.
10. Transparency of Board decision process

While I fully support the intent, I am wondering how effective the 
measures will be, and how accurately the output will reflect reality. 
To say the Board must say how they arrived at a decision really 
translates to Staff writing what they believe were the issues that 
contributed to a decision. How accurate it will be will depend on the 
ability of staff to read minds, and to rationalize after the fact the 
de facto decision.
It would be far better to have winning and losing groups of Directors 
write papers a la a Supreme Court decision. But the reality is our 
Directors do not generally have the time, skill or interest in doing 
that after the decision has been made. They want to more on to the next issue.
Somehow this recommendation must be made in such a way that the 
results are truly meaningful instead of just massive make-work 
efforts that may not reflect the actual decision process.