I thought my days of frustration with the ICANN Policy Staff as a controlling group as opposed to a supporting group where at an end when my term as chair of the GNSO council ended.
Then I got involved in some of the GNSO ‘improvement’ committees and some of the work teams.
Then I got involved as a member of the Executive Committee of the new Non Commercial Stakeholder Group.
And then I found out how wrong I was. So after a long vacation from blogging on ICANN (or anything else for that matter) I have decided it was time to get back to writing.
Instead of becoming a more supportive organization because of the reforms to make the GNSO a manager of the policy process operating in the public interest, they have ratcheted up their quest for complete control over the process. This despite the fact that the Strategic plan still talks about support for Supporting Organizations - not control of Supporting Organization. This was seen in the Policy Staff’s initial declaration that it was Staf who decides whether a group in the GNSO could have a face to face meeting - a claim that was fortunately successfully challenged by the GNSO council, and can be seen in the continuing effort by the Policy Staff to supplant the bottom up process in the Stakeholder groups with their own rules and by forming their own constituencies.
The issue at point in this blog contribution is that Policy Staff has a continuing policy of championing the formation of a new Consumer Constituency without any consultation with the Non Commercial Stakeholder Group (NCSG). In itself, getting the Consumer Protection Groups involved in ICANN is a very important goal - in fact several such groups are already involved. It is a goal many of us strongly support - whether we call it a constituency or an interest group*. But, even though the Board had required that any new constituency work with the new NCSG and its Executive Committee (NCSG-EC - a committee formed under the rules set by the ICANN Board of Directors) the Policy Staff persisted in asking the Board to vote on a new constituency that has not had contact with the NCSG, its existing consumer protection members or the NCSG Executive Committee. Instead of making sure that the new constituency worked closely with the Board appointed GNSO Council members and NCSG-EC member responsible for helping to create a consumer constituency, it continues to work behind the scenes and with either no or minimal contact between those it is recruiting to this new constituency and the Board empowered NCSG EC and GNSO Council member.
The Policy Staff should be acting as an enabler - helping to bring the new consumer agencies into the NCSG instead of working to thwart the new Stakeholder Group’s formation process or attempting to shape this new Stakeholder Group into an image that is pleasing and compliant to the Policy Staff. The NCSG was created by the Board and despite having had to accept conditions not of its own choosing, is working within those constraints to build up the representation of Non Commercial Stakeholders in the GNSO process. The NCSG is ready, in fact eager, to receive applications from any non commercial group interested in joining the NCSG and joining its work to make ICANN a more non-commercial friendly organization.
The NCSG is also ready to work with the Policy Staff - if only the ICANN Policy Staff was willing to work with us in a support of a bottom-up process instead of continuing in its attempt to impose its own agenda. One has to wonder whether it will ever be possible for the Policy Staff to change its ways and become a supportive organization without a change in its executive leadership. There are many good and talented people in the Policy Staff who I am sure are eager to work in a fully supportive role to the volunteer corps - if only the person they were forced to 'obey or else’ was not their boss - some (names withheld to protect the employees) have even told me so.
I continue to hope that in this new age of ICANN, the ICANN of the Affirmation of Commitment a document that according to the ICANN CEO “cements the ICANN multi-stakeholder bottom-up model,” that we will see a change.
But as time goes on, my ability to hope is certainly being challenged.
(this was originally drafted on 8 Dec 2009, but then forgotten until today (26 Dec 2009 when it was updated)
* The issue of whether the NCSG has formal constituencies like the Commercial Stakeholder Group or Internet Groups like the Registries Stakeholder Group and the registrars Stakeholder Group is an open issues that has proponents on both sides of the issue. what is agreed by most participants is that the activities involved in forming a Interest-Group/constituency are pretty much the same: first you organize, then you become active in the GNSO’s policy work, and then you get official status.