Personal Comment on: ICANN Policy Staff On Possible Additional Components For Stakeholder Group Charters

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxx>]

To the Board,

This personal note is in reaction to the comment ( http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-stakeholder-charters/msg00007.html) 
 from Rob Hoggarth of the ICANN Policy Staff entitled: On Possible  
Additional Components For Stakeholder Group Charters.
First I would like to make sure that I understand the relative weight  
of the ICANN Policy Staff comments in regard to comments from the  
general public during the comment period.  I understand that by  
submitting the comments in the way they did, the ICANN Policy Staff is  
making a differentiation between the private reports and advice they  
give the Board and the Structural Improvements committee, and public  
comment.  In this case, this is not advice from ICANN, so much as the  
public viewpoint of the ICANN Policy Staff on a structural issue under  
consideration.  I.e. this comment is just one among the several public  
comments and will be treated as such in any reporting to the Board or  
to the Structural Improvements Committee.
My second comment is one of scope.  The first sentence under  
"Membership" concerns me.
> It is important that the Board and the community
> have the ability to determine what parties
> comprise a particular GNSO structure
> and who participates in an active way.

I generaly agree that membership should be well defined and  
transparent and it should be possible to determine who is a member,  
the rules for membership, and how these rules have been applied to  
membership applications.
My concern centers on the idea of monitoring the activity level of  
members.  While it is certainly important to know whether someone has  
fulfilled the membership requirements, the idea of monitoring members  
for relative activity rates seems extremely subjective and necessarily  
arbitrary.  A question 'participates in a active way' brings up is,  
who would be responsible for such monitoring and such determinations:   
Would monitoring volunteer effort becomes an ICANN Policy Staff  
activity; something they would report to the Board in their  
confidential communiques?  Or would the GNSO need to set up a  
constituency member-activity monitoring constituency activity?
My final concern is really a general question:  as the GNSO enters its  
future bicameral structure, with constituencies and stakeholder  
groups, are we bureaucratizing the GNSO structure even further then we  
need to?  Yes, some structure and some guidelines are necessary, but  
at some point too much structure and too much formalization may swamp  
volunteers' efforts to actually have time and energy for the Policy  
work.  As the GNSO comes out of the long slog of restructuring and  
'improvement' I sincerely hope they will be allowed to start using  
their energy largely for the necessary policy work that is within  
their scope of responsibility.

Thank you

Avri Doria
Nomcom appointee to the GNSO Council (2005-2009)