Comments on questions 5, 14, 18, 25, 28, 44, 45

[Thomas Roessler <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

These comments are submitted in a purely personal capacity.  For the
record, I did serve on this year's nominating committee.

>5. Is it sensible that, rather than nominate a slate of candidates,
>a Nominating Committee should actually designate key figures for
>some other process to select, for instance by the Board, Council and
>Committee Chairs?

>14. Is 23 a workable number? Should the committee be smaller in
>size, or be in part populated by members of the respective entities
>for whom it is choosing NomCom appointees (e.g. for the Board, have
>Board members involved)?

Both of these questions seem to skip one step in the review process.

Instead of asking the basic question in an open-ended way -- "What
should the relationship between the nominating committee and the
sitting members of the bodies it appoints to be?  To what extent,
and how, should the sitting members of these bodies influence the
appointments made?" -- these questions make specific proposals with
a very peculiar slant.

I would recommend to strike them, and to replace them by the more
open-ended question given above.

>18. What role should supporting staff have in supporting the
>NomCom?

I do not understand what this question does under the "transparency"
heading.

However, there should indeed be questions about the interactions
between ICANN staff (broadly) and the nominating committee, and
specifically about the staff support that the nominating committee
receives.

These questions are, of course, two-fold: 1. What *should* this
interaction/support be like, from a practical and policy
perspective?  2. What *has* this interaction been like, in the
experience of past nominating committees?

>25. Does the overall composition of the slate for any given year
>influence decision making in the Board and constituency bodies? In
>the NomCom itself?

I do not understand what is meant by this question.

>28. Should verbal references be conducted with all candidates?

Is this question supposed to refer to the reference checking that
the nominating committee indeed performs with all candidates, or is
it supposed to refer to the telephone conversations that this year's
nominating committee had with some candidates?

>44. Is there a mechanism to ensure the SoIâs and conflict
>statements are fully considered before the candidates undergo the
>NomCom review process is the composition of the NomCom prone to
>capture?

This looks like an amalgamate of two questions.  When trying to
separate the two, the result is a sibling of question 6, and some
incoherent rambling about full consideration.

>45. Is the composition of the NomCom such that new NomCom members
>can be attracted and can, in turn, attract new candidates
>candidates?

Besides the obvious editorial error, it strikes me that this
question really asks a ton of others that are worth being asked on
their own:

- Should the nominating committee's membership be broader?

- How does the composition of the nominating committee relate to its
  candidate pool?

- Is the nominating committee's candidate pool as broad as needed?
  How does the composition of the candidate pool relate to the
  selections made?

- Is there a useful distinction between the nominating committee's
  selection and outreach roles?

Regards,
-- 
Thomas Roessler   <roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>