Hi Bill, James and all, Absolutely agree with both points, especially with regard to voting. I think we don't have enough transparency and accountability in the work of our councillors. While it is an issue of "bona fide" and the councillors are elected by us, I think it is necessary to change out attitude to and ask for more openness and communication. While I am very much for a freedom of opinions, I think for the crucial issues directed voting shall be considered as an option - of course, carefully and with checks and balances and with participation of the policy committee. Warm regards Tatiana On 17 August 2016 at 10:46, James Gannon <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Hey Bill > > As I think some people here know I have asked for greater accountability > of our councillors in the past, specially on coordination and ensuring that > they are reflecting the views of the NCSG and not just their personal > positions, as when we get into situations of personal attempts to become > political players (And usually fail) we do our whole community a disservice. > > I would like to build on your below and ask, how are the candidates > planning on upholding the integrity of the NCSG, will they make a pledge > not to attempt to go rogue and to perform a coordinated vote when asked to? > Will they pledge to work with the NCSG and not against it and not to engage > in actions that may put us all at risk of losing our credibility. We need > our councillors to be out in public telling us what they are doing and why > they are doing it and I think that’s something that we are really bad at at > the moment. Looking back over this list we have extremely few messages from > our councillors as a whole, and I think that that is not good enough. For > our elected representatives one message every few weeks or months doesn’t > really cut it in my opinion. We need more accountability, more > communication and more openness in what our representatives are doing on > our behalf I think. > > > -James > > > From: NCSG-Discuss <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of William > Drake <[log in to unmask]> > Reply-To: William Drake <[log in to unmask]> > Date: Wednesday 17 August 2016 at 09:39 > To: "[log in to unmask]" <[log in to unmask]> > Subject: Proposed Items for the Meet the Candidates call tomorrow: > Transparency and coordination in Council > > Hi > > On Aug 16, 2016, at 23:38, Robin Gross <[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 >