ICANN as a volunteer run organization and the travel support policy

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxx>]

While I am a Nomcom appointee to the GNSO concil, and currently serve  
as its chair, this letter is being written from a personal perspective  
and does not claim to represent the viewpoint of the GSNO or of its  
council.
Basic Premise

A basic premise of this note is that ICANN was founded as, and  
essentially remains, an organization that, under it is by-laws, is run  
by groups of volunteers formed into various supporting Organizations,  
Advisory Groups and a Board.  While there is a substantial and  
professional staff meant to provide organizational support to these  
volunteers and to carry out the operational duties as required by the  
recommendations made by the supporting organizations, vetted with the  
community and confirmed by the ICANN Board, the staff does not run the  
organization in any traditional sense and should not make its  
fundamental decisions but rather must rely on the volunteer process  
for these decisions.  The premise includes a corollary that ICANN  
cannot do its job without a skilled and  functional group of  
volunteers who have a diverse background and who are fully enabled to  
do their jobs.   A further corollary would be that the ICANN staff  
should respect the volunteers as much as it respects itself.  This  
basic premise, and its corollaries, has many applications throughout  
the organization, in this case I will be exploring the travel policy  
as it applies to the volunteer staff of the ICANN organization.
Another basic premise I am asserting is that volunteers, and their  
work, are equals within the organization; i.e. the members of the  
Board are no more important then the members of the ALAC and if  
someone where to move from one organization to another they would only  
be changing their point of focus and not their value to the  
organization.  I have formed this view based on the information I was  
given when volunteering  for consideration for the Nomcom and on   
observations of the organization over the last few years.  At that  
time I was first asked to volunteer I was told that all roles are  
equally important and because of the balances of region and skill set,  
it was best to make ones self available for consideration for any job  
for which they felt qualified - leaving the choice to the Nomcom.  It  
was my understanding that as volunteers we are all equal in that we  
give our time, and sometimes quite a lot of our time freely, asking  
only for decent accommodations and travel arrangements.   I also think  
this is an important precept, as it is well known that if one type of  
volunteer is respected above all others, then it will make attracting  
the best volunteers for the 'lesser' positions much more difficult.   
Why would anyone volunteer for the incredible amount of work and  
stress that is required in one of the supporting organizations if they  
know that this makes them a second class volunteer?
A final premise I assert is that volunteers chosen by Nomcom and  
volunteers chosen by component constituencies should be treated the  
same as they do the same work.  There are some difference between the  
groups that have been mentioned in the opposition to various levels of  
travel support and I will attempt to address those below.
The conclusion I draw from these basic premises  is that rules of  
parity and fairness among the types of volunteers and between  
volunteer staff and paid staff should apply.  Some might object at the  
group of volunteers being called volunteer staff because they have  
vested intersts or may work for employers with deep pockets and vested  
intersts, but I believe that we are volunteer staff, often  
volunteering as much as a .5 or more of a  Full Time Equivalent (FTE)  
employee of pro-bono work.  Often this work is often above and beyond  
anythng for which their regular employment pays them.  Additionally  
when did paid staff lose their ability to have personal agendas and  
vested interests?
Discussion

What is proper travel support?

The previous email comments in this thread make very good points  
concerning the way other organizations handle long trips.    Without  
getting into the discussion of what length flight constitutes the  
dividing line between business class and economy ( I believe it is 5  
hours for ICANN employees - I am not sure what it is for Board members  
- do they ever travel economy?)  I agree with these arguments in  
principle.  Proper travel arrangements involves allowing the traveler  
the ability to work while they are traveling as well as allowing them  
to travel in sufficient comfort as to be able to function effectively  
once they have arrived at their destination.
I do note that there are some organizations were everyone, includng  
the President, travels in economy with upgrades at their own expense,  
no matter how long the journey.  While I do not believe this is an  
optimum policy, I can understand an organization making such a  
decision for financial or ethical reasons.  If ICANN, in its new  
travel policy, were to decide that everyone, including the President  
and his/her senior staff, the Board and the entire paid staff were to  
travel economy, then of course fairness would dictate that rest of the  
volunteer staff should also adhere to that policy.  Perhaps, if saving  
registrant's money is the major cause for travel policy changes, then  
the abolition of business class travel for all is or should be a  
serious consideration.

All volunteers are not volunteers.  Some are lobbyists.

It is often said that the fairness principle does not apply becaue  
those who serve on the Board, council and committee are all serving  
out of self interest or their employers interest.  Sometimes this is  
even said of nomcom volunteers, as it is unfathomable why someone  
would serve ICANN in this way unless they had something to gain from  
it.  The assumption seems to be that to some extent all  volunteers  
have an interest or an agenda of some sort and therefore should be  
self supporting.  While I can agree that to some arguable extent  
everyone has an interest, I do not agree that this disqualifies them  
from meriting support for meeting attendance.
It is often argued that someone who works for a company that does  
business with ICANN is not a volunteer, but a lobbyist.  On some  
occasions this may be true, or at least it may start out as true.   
From my observations in a supporting organization, I have noticed a  
lot of work being done by constituency oriented volunteers on tasks  
that are not in any related to their employer or constituency  
interests.  Beyond this, there is an assumption that just because  
someone has a job in the industry, their employers are willing to pay  
all of the expenses of their ICANN participation.  This is not the  
case; for many the work they put into ICANN is done on their own time  
and is not something that is charged to their companies.  Some people  
who work for billable hours, do not get to bill the hours spent on  
ICANN tasks and meetings to their employers and sometimes are lucky  
that their employers even give then the leeway to participate.
Even Nomcom volunteers do not come to ICANN as tabula rasa, most have  
a set of principles they bring with them that affect their  
judgements.  For example I came to ICANN with several thoughts in my  
head about things like what makes for stable technical progress,  
freedom of expression, support for indigenous communities,  
internationalization of opportunity and the furtherance of  
multistakeholder governance of the Internet.  But despite the fact  
that I came to ICANN with certain beliefs, my service is not  
restricted to support of those beliefs.  Within any multistakeholder  
consensus based organization one must be wiiling to compromise and  
amend those beliefs and from my experience I believe this this is  
generally the case and is certainly the goal.
One caveat, there may be constituencies who feel it is not appropriate  
for their members to accept travel support, or there may be  
individuals whose companies do not allow them to accept travel  
support.  In these cases, of course, the constituencies or individuals  
should be free to refuse the support.  One caution I would offer to  
the constituencies who so choose is that they should be careful that  
such refusal does not make it impossible for a constituency member  
from a less developed region or sector to serve as a representative on  
a council.
Perhaps it should be needs based.

In general this seems a fair consideration.  The problem I see with  
these proposals is how is need to be determined and does ICANN need to  
collect personal information about the finances and expenses of all  
volunteers who need travel support?  ICANN already collects an  
inordinate amount of private information on candidates through  
background checks and other means for Nomcom appointments, to collect  
private financial information would probably be intolerable for most  
candidates or for most constituency representatives. This presents, I  
believe, an insurmountable problem to a needs based program  
administered by ICANN.
And What about the poor performers?

Some have argued that some of the volunteers only go to the meetings  
so that they can have a tourist experience and that they do no work.   
While it is true that this is occasionally the case, it is unfair to  
tar all volunteers because of a few standout examples of poor  
performance.  As in any staff, volunteer staff has some shirkers, some  
poor performers.  And as is the case in most well run organizations,  
the way to fix that is not collective punishment or deprivation, but  
it is the remediation or removal of those whose performance is sub  
par.  In several sections of the charter, there are provisions for  
groups to remove those who do not perform, and where such clauses are  
missing, perhaps they should be added.
Conclusion

In the absence of a policy of economy travel for the entire staff and  
the Board, principles of effectiveness and fairness require that all  
volunteers, or at least those who accept it, should be allowed the  
same business class level of travel benefits.   A final point, nothing  
it this note is meant to support a proposal for paying board members a  
stipend, though I do believe that if there is consideration of giving  
remuneration to Board members, even if only symbolic, then these same  
arguments could be applied to the need for fairness in the treatment  
of all volunteers.

Thank you

Avri Doria