Bruce and others: GNSO Taks Forces are not neutral, purely informational bodies. They are intended to be representational and they are by necessity highly political. Therefore we need simple, clear rules regarding participation. The "one voice/constituency" rule guarantees fairness in representation and avoids warping the politics of the deliberations by giving one constituency multiple voices. I know there are powerful people on the sidelines who wish to inject their views into any and all task forces at specific times. That is precisely why we need impartial and unambiguous rules against ex parte communications. That temptation must be resisted. It is not a good sign that at the first bit of pressure the GNSO Council has caved in to make the procedure less fair, because it contrains precisely those parties that it was designed to constrain. Allowing the Chair of the TF to decide who has relevant "facts" to contribute and using discretion to permit some alternates to speak while preventing other alternates from speaking is simply not an acceptable policy. If the TF needs specific facts from specific parties it can issue requests for them in the form of email. Also, I note that the ICANN staff was supposed to fulfill that role. In short, I see nothing here except an unacceptable attempt by known parties to multiply their voices on the task force so as to dominate the politics. This must be rejected, and if it is not NCUC representations will make a procedural issue out of it on the Task Forces. --MM >>> "GNSO SECRETARIAT" <[log in to unmask]> 12/19/03 03:38AM >>> [To: dow1tf[at]gnso.icann.org The GNSO Council discussed this issue during its meeting on 18 Dec 2003. It was recognised that alternates play a valuable role in task force work in using their own network of contacts and resources to collect data together for the task force. Normally alternates would provide their work through the primary constituency representative on the task force. It was noted however that during a particular call or physical meeting an alternate may have some useful "factual" information to provide that is relevant to the discussion. Note that ICANN staff members and the GAC liaison have typically operated in that mode during GNSO council calls. It was noted that a balance needs to be struck between alternates offering information that might be strongly related to a particular constituency viewpoint (e.g isolated events, anecdotal information, or a reference to a Web blog or an academic paper expressing a particular opinion) as opposed to factual information (e.g a reference to an existing ICANN policy, or a reference to a previous statistical survey, or ICANN workshop). The Council recommended that the chair of each task force be given the discretion to take advantage of the availability of alternate members for the purposes of providing factual information, whilst ensuring that each constituency expresses their particular opinion/viewpoint on the policy issue under consideration through a single representative during any single call or physical meeting. If a particular constituency believes that the intent of the motion of 20 Nov (which ensures fair participation by all constituencies regardless of their size and resources) is not being met, this should be raised with the chair of the task force, through their representative on the task force. If a consituency is unable to resolve the issue with the task force chair, then the constituency can request guidance from the GNSO Council, through their representatives on the GNSO Council. Regards, Bruce Tonkin Chair, GNSO Council posted by: GNSO Secretariat