Thanks Rafik for providing the last audit document.

I scanned the "full audit report" from the last iteration.  NCSG isn't
even on the scorecard.  Given the energy and passion in this group, this
is an extremely disappointing and discouraging result.

> among stakeholders representing: government/policymakers, academics,
> business & commercial interests, journalists, national & international
> non-government and non-commercial entities and members of the
> technical community

Amazing that aside from this sentence, non-commercial interests don't
appear anywhere in the analysis.

Not even to say that a statistically significant sample wasn't obtained.

Under "strategic priorities", the consultant recommends "Engaging
Stakeholders: regional outside western, cultivate relationships with
governments".

The "Stakeholder engagement" addendum doesn't mention non-commercial
organizations as a category of interest, just some passing references to
"Tech community, academics/thought leaders & NGOs".  Hardly covering the
NCSG constituencies... (And of course, individuals holding domain names
are, as usual, completely ignored.)

Seems to me that we have a serious problem - if NCSG (or at least,
"non-commercial interests") wasn't even worth putting on the scorecard,
either

a) we just talk to ourselves; or
b) the ICANN initiators/funders of the survey don't care; or
c) the survey company disregarded its instructions and ICANN didn't notice.

Perhaps exacerbated by NCSG members not participating in the survey?

In any case, this seems to indicate a strategic failure of NCSG's
efforts to be visible and effective...

I've taken this year's on-line survey, and it does ask for affiliation -
non-commercial is an option.

We ought to focus on getting our membership to respond to the survey. 
And ask some very pointed questions of ourselves and the survey
analysts  if the resulting report ignores us again.

Talking to ourselves may be entertaining, but it isn't productive.

Timothe Litt
ACM Distinguished Engineer
--------------------------
This communication may not represent the ACM or my employer's views,
if any, on the matters discussed.