[NA-Discuss] Nominating Committee application period ended yesterday (April 4, 2011).

[Evan Leibovitch]

The Board is ultimately responsible for ICANN and everything to do with it.
The Board in any corporate body, for-profit or not, is supposedly the
stakeholder / shareholder oversight over operations and policy.

The CEO is "head staff", accountable to the Board on all operational issues.
It is uncommon, but not unheard of, for the Board to engage in
micromanagement at lower staff levels -- but this usually specifically
reflects a low level of confidence in the CEO.

Given the high level of dissatisfaction with (especially policy) staff that
now seems to exist amongst a great many ICANN stakeholders, the Board would
-- one would think -- want to investigate the disconnect. The recent GAC
self-assertion was just the last of many examples of community pushback. The
GAC has -- as does ALAC, in theory -- the ability to circumvent staff and go
directly to the Board with its statements. To do so effectively ALAC
"statements" -- as opposed to policies and comments -- should be fairly few
and straightforwardly written.

I would also note that, unlike the GNSO, ALAC has a mandate to comment on
*anything* about ICANN, including operations. There is nothing (in the
structure or bylaws of ICANN) that prevents us from issuing a Statement to
the Board indicating something in operations is broken and asking for
repair. We don't need to wait for an open Public Comment to initiate such a
request.I appreciate Jean's comment that At-Large Statements such as this
are likely to be ignored, and in the past they certainly have. But in the
days of the ATRT, heavy DoC scrutiny and GAC anger, we will at least get
some attention that might not have some our way as little as a year ago.

Such a statement might also be more powerful if it attracted the
participation and support of groups not normally empowered to comment in
this manner (ie, GNSO constituency groups).

- Evan