+ 1 on both counts, particularly the second point - thanks Bill. On 17/08/2016 09:39, William Drake wrote: > Hi > >> On Aug 16, 2016, at 23:38, Robin Gross <[log in to unmask] >> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote: >> >> Agreed. It is important for members to become more acquainted with >> our representatives and resumes are extremely helpful for that. > > Sharing candidates’ resumes is not a bad idea. But I’d like to > suggest we go beyond this. Two issue we might want to consider on > tomorrow’s call: > > When I joined Council in 2009, we discussed the need for better > reporting to members as to what their reps were actually doing in > Council. We launched an attempt to deal with this by having > Councilors take turns doing brief reports about Council meetings. Alas > it didn’t get far, after a couple times the sense of urgency faded, > people told themselves “well, members can always look at the Council > archive to see what’s happening," and the effort drifted off. But of > course it’s actually not easy for a member to dive through the Council > archive and try to reconstruct what’s happening, and it’s not so hard > to compose a one or two paragraph summary of a monthly Council meeting > indicating how our reps voted on which issues, especially if the > workload is rotated among six Councilors, making it just a few times > per year each. So while it’s a bit uncomfortable suggesting work to > be done by others, I’d like to put this idea back on the table ahead > of our Meet the Candidates call tomorrow. It need not be an one > onerous thing, and after all we exist to participate in the GNSO, so > surely we should be able to know how our reps are representing us in > the GNSO. Especially when we’re being asked to vote them into > ‘office’ (for incumbents) on the basis of past performance. > > More generally, we have long debated the matter of coordination among > Council reps. Unlike most if not all other parts of the GNSO, NCSG by > charter doesn’t normally do ‘directed voting,’ where the members are > bound to vote in conformity with a rough consensus position. We have > a charter provision to do this in exceptional cases, but I don’t > recall it ever being invoked. We’ve always been content to operate on > the notion that the Councilor does what s/he thinks is in the best > interest of civil society @ GNSO, and if members don’t approve of > anyone’s action they can vote them out in the next cycle. But as that > has not really happened, it’s sort of a meaningless check and balance. > And this is not without consequence, as we’ve sometimes had internal > differences within our contingent that have arguably undermined our > effectiveness and credibility in the eyes of the community and staff, > and can even allow our various business stakeholder group counterparts > to exploit the differences in order to push through what they want in > opposition to our common baseline views. So at a minimum, we need to > do better somehow at team coordination and make sure all our > Councilors know what each other is doing and why and so there’s no > real time surprises, especially during meetings with high stakes votes. > > Thoughts? > > Best > > Bill -- -------------- Matthew Shears Global Internet Policy and Human Rights Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) + 44 771 2472987