On 10 Aug 2009, at 08:52, William Drake wrote:

> I'd seen them when I made the above comment. They are statements  
> embodying general views like SG's should open and transparent and  
> the process of constituency formation shouldn't be unduly  
> bureaucratic, which a) are fully embodied in the NCUC's proposed  
> charter, b) cannot reasonably be interpreted as meaning "ALAC  
> favored the SIC's NCSG Charter," and c) were agreed well before  
> there were any charter proposals to even discuss.

I think the misunderstanding comes into this because of something the  
Policy Staff sees as prerogative and maybe even their job.  The ALAC  
has made some general statements and the Policy Staff has interpreted  
those general principles (as they do for the GAC) and made policy  
claims.  This is the same method they apply when they read the  
Restructuring decisions of the Board, BGC or of the SIC and decide  
what they mean.

So he sees "formally approved statement" interprets them and say that  
the interpretation is also formally approved statement (or something  
like that).  While I find it hard to accept the legitimacy of such  
methodology, I do believe it is ingrained as part of the current  
practice.  We also see it in Implementation Staff decision to ban 1  
and 2 character IDNs, and we see it in interpreting IRT as  
implementation details.

Part of the problem is that consensus worded statements often have a  
large bit of ambiguity whether they are Board, SIC, GNSO, ALAC or  
GAC.  the staff is able to exploit that ambiguity in taking action.   
This is one reason for requiring community review of Staff  
interpretive works.  Unfortunately that review sometimes doesn't  
happen and sometimes is ignored.

a.