Barely able to keep up with passing attention to all the important work
being done these days by the NC groups, here.  But Avri's comment about
transparency compliance being possibly an "error" caught my attention, and
seems sort of multi-layered, perhaps a bit ironic.

I'm trying to parse what she meant.  If she meant that "consensus rules
ICANN, and transparency compliance may be an aberration from rough
consensus" there are a couple ways to take that.

One is that rough consensus in this instance could be wrong, and that
everyone else could be in error instead.
(Principled stand for transparency policy)

Another is that if we truly believe in the principle of rough consensus,
that since the consensus is that transparency is not the collective choice,
the mandate for it should be abandoned (though any entity should still be
allowed to choose it for themselves voluntarily from a bottom-up
perspective).
(Principled stand for rough consensus process)

It seems that these two principles may stand in conflict.  If so, which is
the more important one?

Personally, I would vote in favor of transparency over rough consensus, and
I would not stop advocating for transparency across the board even if
consensus were to go against it formally.  Can we really go anywhere
"consensus" demands?  I think there are limits to that stance, and this is
an example of such limits.

Even if no other bodies within ICANN choose to comply with the transparency
principle, and even if it leaves us at a tactical disadvantage (they get to
"spy" on us while preventing us from "spying" on them), I think we would do
well to choose to adhere to our own principle of transparency, regardless.

Even if all other ICANN bodies view this as an "error" we can at least
agree to disagree on that matter.  And we shouldn't ever let the matter
rest if it has not reached consensus to favor institutional transparency.
Without transparency, any policy-formulation process is utterly lost to
being broadly representational, which seems the highest mission of a
multi-stakeholder (MS) process.

Of course, not all participants in a MS process are committed to the MS
process per se -- they may just be participating in whatever process
presents itself to try to gain as much narrow advantage as possible in any
way they can, and they would use whatever influence they have within the
process to shape the procedural details to their narrow advantage, whether
this fits the overall mission and principles of MS process or not.

My personal opinion is that any entity that opposes the practice of
transparency is not truly dedicated to MS process in principle, and should
be viewed as being amenable to potentially undermining MS process if it
gets in the way of their proprietary outcomes.  In short, lack of
transparency undermines broad collective trust, and without trust the MS
process has a difficult time succeeding in practice, at least on its own
conceptual terms.

Dan


--
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At 11:44 AM +0900 5/8/14, Rafik Dammak wrote:
>Hi,
>
>Indeed the GNSO review is coming and is an opportunity to do
>self-evaluation and improve ourselves when needed. this review will put
>pressure on other groups and highlights any gap since the community will
>be involved in the process of evaluation if I am not misunderstanding the
>quick explanation in yesterday webinar.
>
>our compliance may be a feature not an error, we are living to the
>principles we are usually advocating as civil society. but yes till now,
>the community was not clearly asked for input regarding the GNSO review.
>
>we can bring the GNSO review and the compliance  as topic during the
>meeting with the board in London  but I am wondering what the board
>members would say? probably SIC (structural improvement committee) members
>will be the only to respond to that . anyway I will add it to the list of
>candidate topics, London meeting coming soon and so the preparation from
>our side!!
>
>Best Regards,
>
>Rafik
>
>
>
>2014-05-07 19:53 GMT+09:00 Avri Doria <<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]>:
>
>Hi,
>
>
>> Might this be a topic we could raise in NCSG-Board meeting in
>> London?
>
>sure.
>
>Compliance with the rules is also something we can make an issue in the
>GNSO review.
>
>Of course, some from other SG (Stakeholder groups) and C
>(Constituencies) might respond that the SG and C are bottom up and what
>right does the Board SIC (Structural Improvements Comm) have to make
>such rules in the first place.
>
>The lesson we might need to learn is that our compliance might be the
>error.  In any case the GNSO review should look into this issue.
>
>avri
>
>
>On 07-May-14 06:43, William Drake wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> You may recall that at our January 2012 "House" meeting in LA we told
>> Fadi much the same, that transparency was limited and highly variable
>> elsewhere, e.g. one cannot even find a proper list of the IPC's
>> membership on their website, etc.  We pressed the point that there
>> should be uniform transparency requirements across GNSO and indeed
>> ICANN communities and he expressed interest in the idea and talked
>> about engaging Transparency International or similar to do an
>> evaluation.  We never followed up with him and nothing happened to my
>> knowledge.
>>
>> Might this be a topic we could raise in NCSG-Board meeting in
>> London?
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>> On May 7, 2014, at 11:59 AM, Avri Doria
>><<mailto:[log in to unmask]>[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I want to self congratulate our SG for being the only GNSO SG, I
>>> believe, to have an open archive list with meetings that have
>>> public archived recordings and transcript.  This make us, as I
>>> understand it, the only SG in compliance with ICANN rules about SG
>>> practices.  I think it is good we do so, and I wish the rest of the
>>> SG would come into compliance.
>>>
>>> avri
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 07-May-14 01:16, Rafik Dammak wrote:
>>>> hi everyone,
>>>>
>>>> please find here the mp3 recording of yesterday confcall
>
>...