[At-Large] GNSO Council Motion on Cross-Community Working Groups

[William Drake]

Hi,

As NCUC liaison to At Large I thought I should bring the following to your attention.

Some here may recall that there was quite a bit of controversy and debate in the GNSO Council last year about the formation and operation of cross community working groups.  This arose in particular with regard to the JAS process, various aspects of which stimulated a range of concerns across the three industry SGs.  Without reliving all the back and forth, these included perceptions that the GNSO's role in policy development was being usurped or at least nibbled at, concerns about the channels and procedures through which JAS progress was reported out and the board responded, the extent to which the chartering organizations should operate in synch, and so on. In consequence, there has been a widespread desire among these SGs to lay down clear rules of the road to regulate how CWGs function.   In Council discussions NCUC members argued for maintaining some flexibility and subsidiarity to avoid tying hands too much, and noted inter alia that if we'd followed a strictly regulatory approach ALAC would not have been able to help move the JAS process along when the GNSO was, well, moving slower.  It would be fair to say that we were pretty much alone in these views.

In October, the Council launched a drafting team to propose guiding principles for CWGs going forward that would respond to the various concerns.  That team has now completed its work and a motion to approve its Principles is on the agenda of our 19 January meeting. https://community.icann.org/display/gnsocouncilmeetings/Motions+19+January+2012

People may wish to have a look at the Principles http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/draft-principles-for-cwgs-23dec11-en.pdf, which specify that all SO/ACs involved should adopt and follow a single joint charter for CWGs, that CWGs outputs do not express community consensus per se, and so on.

If there are any views that people would like to have noted in the Council discussion and vote, please let me know asap.

Thanks,

Bill




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William J. Drake
International Fellow & Lecturer
Media Change & Innovation Division, IPMZ
University of Zurich, Switzerland
william.drake at uzh.ch
www.mediachange.ch/people/william-j-drake
www.williamdrake.org
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