BWG_NOMCOMM report

[Juhani Juselius <juhani@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you for the opportunity to comment the BWG NomCom report. I 
served in the 2014 Nominating Committee and the following opinions are 
based on that experience. All comments are my personal opinions, they do 
not represent any constituency nor any other community.
Recommendation 1:

ICANN is a global entity with multistakeholder governance model where 
geographic diversity plays an important role. I fully agree that 
diversity should be taken seriously but selecting people on every level 
based on their origin, might lead to over stressing the importance of 
diversity. In current model
1) ALAC is already nominating their NomCom reps based on the geographic 
regions.
2) ccNSO Council, that appoints the single ccNSO representative to 
NomCom, consists of Councillors from all geographic regions. Thus the 
diversity is already properly taken into account.
3) GAC is truly diverse AC, their representative represents the 
diversity as much as one can.
4) NomCom has guidelines about the maximum number of board members that 
could be appointed from a certain geographic region which ultimately 
guarantees diversity.
In addition to these all ready existing forms of diversity, appointing 
significantly more NomCom members mainly based on the geographic origin, 
might lead to focusing too much on the origin of applicants - at the 
cost of their skills, knowledge and other important factors. ICANN needs 
the best individuals to the Board and other leadership positions - no 
matter where they are from. Diversity is important but it should be only 
one selection criteria among others.
Recommendation 3:

I'm in favor of the proposed change. Increased number of the seats in 
the NomCom would make it easier for the GAC to be able to nominate the 
representatives than just selecting the current single representative 
that GAC failed to appoint in 2014.
Recommendation 5:

Currently NomCom selection process is very much based on the iterative 
rounds of discussions among the NomCom members. All members have their 
own opinion and possible vote. Discussions are very straightforward and 
effective. But if there are delegations among the members - they must 
first find their own consensus before taking part in the discussion or 
voting. How much would it take time before they reach the consensus? 
What happens if they won't reach it? It's quite realistic to assume that 
with delegations, the NomCom selection process would take much more time 
than in the current form.
In my opinion, in order to guarantee efficiency of the NomCom selection 
process, the number of votes should be equal with the number of 
representatives - one person, one vote.
Recommendation 6, 7 and 9:

I fully agree.


Finally, currently NomCom consists of 21 persons with only 18 taking 
actively part in the selection discussions. My personal view is that 
this is the maximum number of participants for effective decision 
making. Increased number of members would lead to more inflexible and 
time consuming discussions and processes. The optimal NomCom size is not 
bigger than the current one.
Juhani Juselius

2014 NomCom member
firstname@xxxxxxxxxxx