Thank you
for your detailed and thoughtful responses and contributions to
clarity around
this issue. In terms of what is being asking for here, the
questions that
should go to the ICANN board and Staff probably should not be
asked at the
Marrakesh Board meeting. It would be better for them to be asked
by an NCSG Finance Committee in the normal
process of ICANN budget planning and ICANN financial transparency.
RE: Rafik’s
comments about general community support, admin/secretariat
support, travel,
accommodations, etc., we all know those categories and more
transparency there
would be welcomed in the name of transparency itself, even if
there was little likelihood
of NCSG responses in most of those categories. As for the more
discretionary
expenditures, including special budget requests, it would help
Rafik if you
would remind us of the links, in ICANN’s forest of documents,
where the ICANN
financial team decisions are to be found.
As for
the point that NCSG doesn't have funds per se, I think that is
known by all and
not at issue here. What is being suggesting is that NCSG have a
better picture
of how ICANN funds are being allocated on its behalf, so that it
can have an informed
view, engage in assessment and offer feedback and advice.
I fully
agree with Rafik and Tapani that an NCSG financial committee
should be more
involved in the ICANN annual budget and operating planning, for
strategic
planning purposes and to be able to report out to the NCSG
constituency.
Re:
Tapani’s comments: I will offer to help with the reboot of the
NCSG’s Finance
Committee (even though I have an almost pathological dislike of
accounting).
For a start I would like more detail and transparency with regard
to all the
financial support that goes to the NCSG and its constituencies. It
is hard to
identify what within that might be of interest if we don’t yet
have the
numbers. To the extent that parts of NCSG get other non-ICANN
funding, it would
be useful for the Finance Committee to reflect on how that
information might be
assembled for reflection.
As I have
said above, with a reboot of the NCSG Finance Committee I think
that is where
the questions should start, to be put to the Board and the ICANN
staff, and not in Marrakesh. That
would be more effective than to question the Board in an open
meeting, where at
best they would say that they would look into it. In response to
whether or not
greater detail and transparency should apply across all SOs/ACs:
Yes it should.
As for
explaining, or defending, ICANN’s various actions to the world at
large, that is a different and
greater challenge. I just noted that challenge, and other than
more
transparency from within, this discussion is not the place for
follow up on
that front.
Lastly, Tapani,
don’t view this as a chastisement. As organizations mature they
evolve. Coming
from the organizational membership of NPOC it is likely that
different issues
float to the top for me than would for those in different
constituencies.
Sam L.