All,
I understand you may be meeting with ALAC about
this now; so my comments are below in red.
Debbie
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For many meetings now,
the topic of Staff Briefing to the Board and Transparency has been on the
table. – I agree
with Mary’s comments below about this leading sentence.
While understanding that there indeed some briefings
that should remain confidential between the Board and the Staff especially
those within its fiduciary capacities and those encumbered by personal privacy
consideration, there are also many issues that require transparency.
Within the categories
that require transparency there are two separate types of issues.
The first type is are briefings that concern
an Advisory Committee or a Supporting Organization. In the case of this
type of briefing, it is not appropriate for the Staff to be making unverified
claims about and AC or SO without the knowledge of that AC and SO.
Without AC or SO verification of the contents of a briefing, the Board is
left making its evaluation based on rumor and may make decisions based on
erroneous information.
The second type of
briefing is are those
that concern the policy work for which the SOs are responsible and on which the
ACs must advise. For the Board to be makeing policy decisions based on information
that has not been reviewed by the community seems contrary to the principle of transparency
and equal access that are at the core constitutes gaming of
the bottom up policy process and could gives one member of the
community, the
paid staff and undue advantage over the other
participants in the community.
We request that the Board
change its policy so that the briefing of the types discussed above be made
available to the correct audience; the first type being made available to the
SO or AC in question and the second type be made available to the community.
After the policy has been
received we request that recent briefings that have contributed to various
decisions also be released.
Debra Y. Hughes l Senior
Counsel
American Red Cross
Office of the General Counsel
2025 E Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20006
Phone: (202) 303-5356
Fax: (202) 303-0143
[log in to unmask]
From:
Non-Commercial User Constituency [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Mary Wong
Sent: Thursday, March 11, 2010
4:03 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: please send comments on
this draft RE: Transparency
Great effort,
thanks Robin & Avri, and it's an excellent idea to have this as a joint
statement with ALAC. Just a few specific comments for now:
- I'm not sure
the first sentence is the best lead-in to the substance of the comment. For
instance, I'm not sure what "on the table" for "many
meetings" mean. May I suggest changing it to something along the lines of
having serious and longstanding concerns over the inaccuracies contained in
staff reports/comments to the Board that are not shared with the relevant
groups and overall ICANN community?
- when talking
about the second type of briefing, instead of saying "constitutes
gaming", can we say "can constitute gaming"? Also, I understand
why we are including a reference to "paid staff" but I wonder if the
point can be better made in another way (can't think how at the moment,
unfortunately - maybe change it to a reference about equal access to the Board between
paid staff and volunteer, unpaid community members when it comes to
information critical to the Board's decisions and that directly concerns those
members?)
Hope that helps.
I'm happy to help clean up and edit the final statement too, if you like.
Cheers
Mary
Mary W S Wong
Professor of Law
& Chair, Graduate IP Programs
Franklin Pierce
Law Center
Two White Street
Concord, NH 03301
USA
Email: [log in to unmask]
Phone:
1-603-513-5143
Selected
writings available on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) at: http://ssrn.com/author=437584
>>>
Below is first draft
joint NCSG-ALAC statement on the need for transparency of the Secret Board
Briefings. The stmt isn't
something that we would release or publish this week. However, Avri and
I may meet with ALAC this afternoon to discuss this draft. So
please send any comments on this draft so we can bring those into this mtg
today in a few hours. We will have a revised draft after the mtg.
Thank you. Robin ------- For many meetings now,
the topic of Staff Briefing to the Board and Transparency has been on
the table. While understanding
that there indeed some briefings that should remain confidential between the
Board and the Staff especially those within its fiduciary capacities and
those encumbered by personal privacy consideration, there are also many
issues that require transparency. Within the categories
that require transparency there are two separate types of issue. The first type are
briefings that concern an Advisory Committee or a Supporting Organization.
In the case of this type of briefing, it is not appropriate for the
Staff to be making unverified claims about and AC or SO without the knowledge
of that AC and SO. Without AC or SO verification of the contents of a
briefing, the Board is left making its evaluation based on rumor and may make
decisions based on erroneous information. The second type of
briefing are those that concern the policy work for which the SOs are
responsible and on which the ACs must advise. For the Board to be
making policy decision based on information that has not been reviewed by the
community constitutes gaming of the bottom up policy process and gives one
member of the community, the paid staff and undue advantage over the other
participants in the community. We request that the
Board change its policy so that the briefing of the types discussed above be
made available to the correct audience; the first type being made available
to the SO or AC in question and the second type be made available to the
community. After the policy has
been received we request that recent briefings that have contributed to
various decisions also be released. IP JUSTICE Robin Gross, Executive
Director 1192 Haight Street, San
Francisco, CA 94117 USA p: +1-415-553-6261
f: +1-415-462-6451 |