Management versus Legislative
To the members f the committee: First I thank the working group for its efforts and find myself in agreement with much of the report. While I agree that the GNSO Council should not be a legislative body, I am concerned about scope in your definition of "management." The report seems rather explicit in defining management solely as responsibility for process. I think that the notion of management needs to be expanded to include responsibility for Policy management. I think the idea of the Council only being responsible for process management is too limited. And while I accept the arguments that this will make recruitment much more difficult, not only among constituencies and stakeholder group, but within the Nomcom process, I think that this is the lesser of the problems with this approach. I support the idea of Working Groups, despite the challenge involved in creating working groups that are of sufficiently diverse and of manageable size. I think that the Council needs to remain responsible for the policy activities and output of the working groups. Not only do I think that councillors should be chosen as stewards for these Working Groups, but I believe that the Council should have a role in determining whether the policy recommendations are compatible with ICANN mission and core value and other policy recommendations. Beyond this there is a need to make sure that the various policy recommendation are not seen individually but are seen in the light of other policy processes and efforts. This does not mean that the council should be able to reject the work of a working group because it disagrees with the conclusions. It does mean that the council should be able to return policy recommendations to the working group with policy issues and concerns that it believes are not adequately dealt with. I agree with the comment that Thomas Narten made, it is critical for the the council to have a voice in deciding whether the policy recommendations of a working group are good for the Internet community. To me, this means that the council must retain a policy management role. Avri |