I
would like to pick up on a thread (which I fully agree
with) present in David Cake’s posting. He writes:
The GAC-GNSO
Coordination Group has been trying hard to demonstrate to
the GAC the many ways
they can be a part of the GNSO policy development process….
There is absolutely
no guarantee that anyone outside the GAC will have any
influence at all - sure,
a major policy decision will be discussed for some time, and
you might be able
to informally lobby your GAC rep. But there is no guarantee
at all - GAC advice
can be proposed virtually direct from the floor, and be in
the GAC communique shortly
afterward, with no opportunity for anyone outside the GAC to
even know what it
is.
GAC
representatives are representatives of their
governments, and their governments are supposed to be
representative of the will
of the people as expressed by the people, which is not the
case in non-democratic
governments. There are however lots of democratic governments
and one of the ICANN
multistakeholder efforts should be to press governments to
carry on a more
inclusive domestic stakeholder dialogue within their own
countries, a dialogue
that would better inform individual GAC member positions, and
increase
transparency and accountability between constituencies at the
national level.
Least
this be thought of as an impertinent suggestion, this
can be promoted at the ICANN level on the grounds that
national inclusive dialogue
is a win-win: at the national level informing national
stakeholders for better
national Internet policy; and globally producing better policy deliberations
among a better
informed GAC, GNSO and others within ICANN.
As
civil society works to increase the awareness, knowledge,
engagement and accountability of the Internet’s civil society
stakeholders, it
is not unreasonable to suggest to GAC that it should do the
same. In the
absence of such a process there are reasons to worry about
Board voting
formulas that allow arbitrary and ill-advised GAC proposals
being fast tracked with
no deliberation, and no effective way to fight ill-considered
policy decisions.
Sam
L