[gnso-osc-ops] GCOT Work for OSC review

["Ray Fassett" <ray@xxxxxxxxx>]

Chuck, I have a series of work products from the GCOT now ready OSC review.
To this e-mail, I have attached 2 documents:

 

1)       Section 4 Voting of the Council Rules of Procedure.  We are asking
for the OSC to review and recommend Section 4.5 Abstentions to the Council
for its review and consideration as part the Nairobi meeting.  The entire
Section 4 is included in the attached only for purposes of Section 4.5 being
in context (there are no other proposed changes from the current adopted RoP
other than Section 4.5).  Since Cairo, the Work Team along with ICANN staff
support attributed has considerable time and effort with regards to
Abstentions, understanding the issues involved from a Councilor perspective,
from an SG/Constituency perspective including differences in Charters, as
well as seeking staff legal counsel advice based upon the history of this
topic over the years to finally land at the language we have per the
attached.  While we realize it unlikely that the Abstention language can be
brought to an actual vote of the Council as part of Nairobi, we have taken
the liberty of providing to the OSC a draft motion contained below for OSC
consideration:

 

SAMPLE COUNCIL RESOLUTION:

 

WHEREAS the GNSO Council Operations Work Team (GCOT) has developed a set of
abstention provisions that it recommends be incorporated into the GNSO
Operations Procedures as Sub-Section 4.5 (part of 4.0-Voting); and

 

WHEREAS the GCOT has also identified other voting procedures within Section
4.0 that it recommends be amended to be consistent with its proposed
abstentions provisions; and 

 

WHEREAS the Operations Steering Committee (OSC) has reviewed all of these
revisions and recommends them for adoption by the GNSO Council. 

 

RESOLVED, that the GNSO Council accepts Version ___ (TBD) of the GNSO
Operating Procedures, including the recommended revisions to Section 4 and
its new Sub-Section 4.5. 

 

RESOLVED FURTHER, that the GNSO Council directs Staff to post this document
for twenty-one (21) days in the ICANN Public Comment Forum and reserves the
right to modify these procedures upon conclusion of that public comment
period.

 

2)       Analysis of 2009 Abstention Voting.  This exercise was for the
purpose of interpreting how the Section 4.5 Abstention language would have
affected actual Councilor abstention votes if in place at the time of the
vote.  While admittedly some interpretation by the Work Team, we think this
was a useful analysis that we want to share with the OSC as part of its
review of the Section 4.5 language.  I should mention that Work Team members
debated whether to redact individual names from this analysis for the reason
of potentially being a distraction to the real purpose of the analysis
(which was to evaluate the recorded reason for the abstention against the
Section 4.5 language).  We decided not to redact names for the reason that
the voting information is public information anyway.  I am mentioning this
for 2 reasons: 1) a heads up for OSC members to focus upon the intention of
the analysis vs. "who" performed the abstention and 2) For OSC members to
consider too whether or not to redact names if decided to share the analysis
more broadly such as with GNSO Council members or other such public
disclosure.

 

Also, we are seeking OSC advice with regards to Section 4.4, Absentee
Voting.  The Work Team is strongly considering taking a close look at this
language that may lead to a recommendation.  One of our questions was:  What
do members of the OSC think?  Is the current language for Absentee voting
acceptable?  For example, the recent sort of emergency Board Seat 13 vote
was excluded from the ability for absentee voting.  Is this appropriate?
We're questioning it and as part of this, seeking OSC member advice in
general with regards to the current language as contained.

 

Lastly, we have made quite a bit of progress on the Statement of Interest
document which we intend to incorporate into the Rules of Procedure.  We
feel this is ready for OSC review, including having received ICANN staff
legal counsel input.  I will be sending this to you in the near future under
separate cover.  The Work Team respectfully requests prompt attention from
the OSC to the Abstention Language as contained in Section 4.5 of the
attached document, including if possible getting this language in front of
GNSO Council members as part of their agenda for discussion in Nairobi.
Upon review, OSC members will see the approach we took with regards to
Abstentions primarily on two fronts 1) How can the reason for Council member
abstention be remedied at the SG/Constituency level and 2) how can the
outcome of reducing the denominator at the time of Council vote due to an
abstention be the rare exception.  While our Work Team does not necessarily
conduct its business by way of formal voting measures, I believe it is
appropriate for me to communicate as the Chair that we had what I considered
as supermajority consensus to these 2 points which was the basis of our work
the leading to the final product as now being recommended to the OSC.

 

Please let me know if any questions.

 

Ray Fassett

Chair

GCOT

Attachment: GNSO Ops Procs Section 4-Voting (For OSC Review).doc
Description: MS-Word document

Attachment: GNSO Recorded Abstentions Reasons-2009 (KBv2-RHv1).doc
Description: MS-Word document