I was interested in the public comments on ICANN's budget - I believe this is the first one since the transition.

I noticed that all stakeholder groups and constituencies except NCSG filed comments on the budget. I was disappointed to see that instead of a NCSG comment we have a lone individual, Ed Morris, commenting with his personal opinions. Since Ed is supposed to be the chair of our NCSG finance committee, one would have thought that he would post his comments to the NCSG list for some feedback. 

Ed's comments (http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/comments-fy18-budget-08mar17/attachments/20170428/440be454/budgetcomment-0001.pdf) make it clear that they are his personal opinions and not necessarily those of the NCSG, but I find this very odd. Normally, if you file comments individually, it is because you tried to achieve NCSG consensus but could not. In that case, it's OK for folks to file comments to reflect the different views. 

In this case, Ed made no effort to inform the group of his views on the budget, much less attempt to gain some support for them. I think this is not acceptable. The Chair of our Finance Committee needs to think of himself as a delegate of the SG, not as someone who goes off into a silo and does whatever he wants, without even informing the members who appointed him. 

This becomes more serious when one realizes that in his comments, Ed basically threatens ICANN with rejecting the entire budget because of a disagreement over a small item. He says:

"Unless bound by my Support Group to support this budget, I would be inclined to favor rejecting the entire budget when it comes back to the GNSO Council if this amount is not restored to the budget prior its final adoption."

I am not sure what Ed means by his "support group" but presumably that means his Stakeholder Group and/or Constituency. But how are we supposed to "bind" him to favor or oppose the budget if we don't even know that he has made this threat? 

In sum, I am sure we all appreciate the willingness of volunteers to go through the budget and make sense of it, but our delegates to these committees have to understand that they are agents of NCSG and it is their responsibility to liaise with the SG and inform the membership of their actions, and to build consensus on positions when possible. It's not that hard to write an email to the list and attach a draft of your proposed comments. 


Dr. Milton L Mueller
Professor, School of Public Policy
Georgia Institute of Technology
Internet Governance Project 
http://internetgovernance.org/