Role of WG Chair and conflic of internest

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>]

To the GNSO Council and to the ICANN Board,

In reference to the role of the Chair of a WG, I believe that the role of Chair 
and membership in the GNSO Council, or any other chartering body, are 
incompatible except as an interim solution at the start of a WG or as an 
emergency when a WG Chair has been lost.

The role of the GNSO Council is as managers of the process;  they are the ones 
who must judge whether the work of the WG was done properly and whether the 
consensus judgments made by its Chair have been made properly.  The GNSO 
Council is for all intents and purposes, the WG Chair's boss.

It is a conflict of interest, and inappropriate, for the WG Chair to be 
responsible for deciding whether her own work was done properly.  And while it 
is possible for the WG Chair to recuse herself from any votes concerning the 
actions of the WG, it is unrealistic to assume that in a council that is run, 
hopefully, based on collegiality and the making of consensus agreement on many 
issues, that the WG chair's viewpoints would not have an undue effect on the 
judgment of other GNSO Council members.  This would also apply to any other 
chartering organizations.

In the GNSO, WGs are often responsible for the most important decisions that 
the GNSO makes, consensus policies that affect contractual conditions.  Beyond 
the risk of conflict of interest, allowing a GNSO Council member to also chair 
a WG, risks subjecting the decisions based on the WG's recommendations to legal 
challenge.  

Finally, the GNSO council, or any other chartering organization, has a liaison 
on all WGs, whose job it is to act as an intermediary between the WG and the 
GNSO Council, or other chartering organization.  To also have a Council member 
acting as the Chair of the WG risks lessening the bottom-up nature of WG 
deliberations.  A WG Chair sometime has a great influence over the work done in 
a WG, to add to that influence the top down concerns of the Council risks 
hurting the bottom-up nature of the process.

For these reasons, I recommend a paragraph be added to the Chair Role 
description indicating that except in emergencies, and only as an interim 
measure, Chartering Organization members, i.e. GNSO Council members, may not 
serve as a WG Chair.

I should note that I was a member of the work team that produced this document, 
and that I made this argument unsuccessfully in the group itself toward the end 
of the process.  I did notify the group at the time that I would be making a 
public comment on this issue.  I request that this comment be submitted as a 
minority opinion with the recommendation itself.

Thank you

Avri Doria
Acting as an individual particpant