Thanks Tapani and all,

As much as I agree in us having board on spot, it is important to know that
no one is a bank of knowledge, so those who are thinking we must disgrace
members of the board by way of using our hardknocked questions, should also
know that we all are culpable on any deficiency, probably we did not
support them enough after putting them there to serve.

I have been on boards, I know how it feels, at most they may diplomatically
parry the question if it sounds so confusing with a promise to give a later
response with better understanding, that is if the questioner follows up.

So, in that spirit, I support 100% the Seun's option B, to get them
prepared and we still have right to express our position from another point
even if not satisfied, therefore, I do not have problem with whatever
questions people may have.

With the regards to Sam's concern, probably, we may start an inhouse quest
on transparency as you already promised after Marrakesh. We look forward to
that, but its not the best to watch our dirty linen in ICANN public
meeting. Inhouse cleansing is advocated. But I think Rafik just shared what
I would describe as supposed operational finance manual with respect to
NCSG.

Back to the request for questions:
"What strategies will the board put in place to forestall the kind of
supposed 'conflict of interest' that arose with Fadi's planned exit from
ICANN to avoid re-occurence or politicians taking advantage of such, given
the scene with respect to World Internet Conference and Ted Cruz politrick?"

"Another point is how is the board handling the issue of sit-tight
leadership among the NSOs/ACs and diversity across board?"

My +1 for James on awards and more travel support for people from
developing countries especially Africa? I personally think that the cost of
traveling from developing countries, especially Africa is enormous,
therefore may need special attention or intervention.

Safe trip to those heading to Morocco.
Remmy


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On Sat, Feb 27, 2016 at 12:43 PM, Tapani Tarvainen <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Sam,
>
> Thank you for the explanation. I must admit, however,
> that I'm a bit confused by it.
>
> On Fri, Feb 26, 2016 at 08:06:25PM -0500, Sam Lanfranco ([log in to unmask])
> wrote:
>
> >    I have a lot of trouble with the ICANN documents.
> [...]
> >    The numbers are quite aggregated, and hence give no detail.
>
> That is a good point and worth raising. However:
>
> >    In particular, I would like to know how much SO/AC funding  was spent
> >    on NCSG and its constituency groups, and what it was spent on.
>
> You want to ask the board to tell us how much money they gave us
> and how we spent it? That we can't track it so we need their help?
>
> I should think we know that, and if we don't, it'd be up to us
> to try to clean our own act, or at least attempt to before calling
> the Board to help.
>
> Now I do agree that we haven't been tracking and reporting our
> funding as well as we might have. Indeed, that is the main reason
> I've been trying to reboot NCSG's Finance Committee - I'm hoping to
> get it moving in or immediately after Marrakech meeting, if our
> constituencies name their new FC representatives in time for that.
> Perhaps you could ask NPOC to appoint yourself there?
>
> To be clear, I have no objection to the Board or anybody else digging
> into our funding, on the contrary. As far as I know there's nothing
> there that anybody would want to hide, but if there is, I certainly
> would want to know about it.
>
> But it'll be a bit strange if you bring this to the Board and
> I'll have to say nobody's even asked me or NCSG EC to do anything
> about it before.
>
> Perhaps I've misunderstood your intent. If the idea is that we
> should have detailed funding data from ICANN to check our own
> bookkeeping against, good. That's something I was actually
> going to ask our FC to look into as soon as it gets going.
>
> Or if it's something else altogether, please explain.
>
> >    In a normal organization we, as a unit of the organization, would have
> >    those numbers and we would be expected to worry about efficiency and
> >    effectiveness. Here we (only I?) have nothing.
>
> OK. Regardless of what happens in our meeting with the Board, I take
> this chastisement seriously. One of the main tasks of our Finance
> Committee will be to come up with better and more detailed reports
> of our funding. And I will put this on the agenda for next NCSG EC
> meeting.
>
> >    Beyond that question, when things like
> >    [4]
> http://domainincite.com/19630-icann-reveals-1m-of-not-lobbying-lobby
> >    ing-expenses boil up, I find it almost impossible to cross reference
> >    numbers, to confirm facts, and to defend NCSG against the argument
> that
> >    it helps legitimate an ICANN that is less transparent than one would
> >    expect from an accountable not-for-profit multistakeholder
> >    organization.
>
> That is a very good point. Our funding should be transparent not
> only to ourselves but to the world.
>
> >    Those are the thoughts that leave me uneasy about the apparent level
> of
> >    transparency here. If the data is under an accessible rock that I
> >    somehow just missed, I would appreciate help locating that rock(file).
>
> I will join you in the quest of finding the rock under which the data
> is hidden and to blow it up if need be, whatever explosives it takes.
>
> And if you think asking the Board to help at this point would be
> useful, I'm fine with that, too. I would, however, appreciate a bit
> more clarity in what kind of help we'd hope to get from them at
> this point. Otherwise I rather fear they'll ask what have we done
> about this so far and where we got stuck, and I'd have to say
> we haven't even gotten our FC convened yet.
>
> For example, it would be much easier to say we want the data for all
> SOs and ACs, so that we could compare NCSG vs CSG vs... &c, rather
> than talking only about NCSG.
>
> --
> Tapani Tarvainen
>