Bill,

Thanks for the three questions regarding the key functionalities for NCUC (which also apply for NPOC). I will address them in order, with a bit of commentary to help set a context for thought:

1. How would data base additions feed directly into our (NCUC) website listing of members?
Ideally, and easy to do, there could be a single operation (extracting a subset of a membership spreadsheet (or database) that produce the NCUC list. The labor-intensive way would be for NCUC (and NPOC) to simply do an extraction and update every time there are new NCSG members. It could be automated but that would take more effort on both the ICANN staff and whomever controls the NCUC and NPOC websites. The key would be a single membership list source, provided to NCSG (&NCUC and NPOC) as a constituency service by ICANN. The more automated the better.

2. How to handle subscriptions to mailing lists?
I have run dozens of mailing lists (using listserv like Milton from Syracuse) and as a principle we always have someone from the stakeholder group with co-manager/moderator authority. That should be the case here. For the brief time I was NPOC membership chair I had great difficulty determining the subscriber list for npoc-voice. Automating population of mailing lists from a membership spreadsheet is a bit of work. I would propose that keeping the mailing lists up to date simply be a membership committee, or communications committee, task, since the numbers are small. The key issue here is access as a manager. My view is that the lists should be hosted by ICANN, but managed by the support and constituency groups. The other view, using the good offices of Syracuse (Milton) for this list, and IPJustice.org (Robin) works well, so choice here should be a NCSG decision.

3. How to compose/verify voter lists for elections?
The key issue is that an eligible voter list be accurate. That starts from an accurate overall membership list, and accurate mailing lists so that a step involving qualifying voters (just a simply email response) works as it should. This is why I suggested that NCSG members have access to a membership profile page somewhere (within the ICANN dashboard?), a profile page is first populated by data from a successful application, feeds the membership database, and can be updated by the member. This is useful when a member is not just from an organization, but formally represents that organization and may be replaced over time. Profiles could be updated, with notice of update sent to those who maintain the mailing lists. The update would get captured to NCUC and NPOC with periodic/frequent NCUC and NPOC membership updates from the master NCSG membership list.

Each of these is a quite simple improvement in handling these three areas, is common practice elsewhere, and certainly for ICANN, NCSG, NCUC and NPOC should be our best practice goals. After all, we deal with the Internet. We are not a consortium of potato farmers (which by the way do these tasks much better). It is a tribute to the hard work of ICANN volunteers and staff that things have been cobbled together as they have, and the work gets done. But, on occasion we have to pause, thank all for the hard work, and look to do things better. I am sure that many of us who have labored in these trenches over the years have seen the product of our hard infrastructure work be replaced, in an instant, by a simpler and more efficient solution. I usually congratulate the step forward and take pleasure in the fact that the digital discards simply vanish and  do not land in land fills.

Sam m

On 27/09/2014 3:02 AM, William Drake wrote:

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"It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured
in an unjust state" -Confucius
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Dr Sam Lanfranco (Prof Emeritus & Senior Scholar)
Econ, York U., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA - M3J 1P3
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blog:  http://samlanfranco.blogspot.com
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