ALAC - At Large LIST Discuss Copy on  the GNSO's CROSS COMMUNITY WORKING GROUP PRINCIPLES 

In  March 2012 the GNSO resolved that the 'MOTION TO APPROVE CROSS COMMUNITY WORKING GROUP PRINCIPLES' (outlined below in Motions 19 January 2012) was passed.

Whilst the ALAC then determined that it would not make a formal Statement or Response to this GNSO internal operational set of principles, but would be fully engaged in any ensuing JOINT  AC/SO discussions and development of an approach to Cross Community Work Groups (and their formal Chartering etc.,)  in the future; This page acts as a wiki 'repository' of the KEY POINTS of View in  community discussion  as expressed as opinions on the public ALAC INTERNAL and public At-Large email list and material referred to for reference at the various meetings and deliberations held.

Original email list archives  should be sort out  for complete thread, context and attributions.   https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac-internal   and  https://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/at-large around Jan 18 to 20th 2012.

GNSO Council meetings/Motions19 January 2012

MOTION TO APPROVE CROSS COMMUNITY WORKING GROUP PRINCIPLES

Made by: Jonathan Robinson

Seconded by: Jeff Neuman  

Whereas, the GNSO from time to time has participated in cross-community working groups to address issues of common interest to other ICANN supporting organizations (SO) and advisory committees (AC); 

Whereas, the GNSO Council desires to develop a GNSO agreed perspective with regard to the role, function and method of conducting joint activities for future projects that respects and preserves the recognized roles and responsibilities assigned to each SO/AC under the ICANN Bylaws;  

Whereas, on 06 October 2011 the GNSO Council approved a charter and the formation of a Drafting Team to define a way forward for the effective chartering, functioning, and utilization of such cross-community working groups; 

Whereas, on 04 January 2012 the Drafting Team provided to the Council for consideration Draft Principles for Cross-Community Working Groups:http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/draft-principles-for-cwgs-23dec11-en.pdf. 

NOW THEREFORE, BE IT: 

Resolved, that the GNSO Council hereby approves the Draft Principles for Cross-Community Working Groups for its own guidance and requests staff to disseminate them to the Chairs of the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees asking them to provide input to the GNSO Council in 60 days on both the principles themselves and the route forward for community-wide adoption or development of a related set of principles for the operation of Cross-Community Working Groups; 

Resolved further, the GNSO Council thanks the Drafting Team members for their work in developing the Draft Principles and disbands the Team.

=====================================================

<Begin Snip from email  thread>

Hi,

As NCUC liaison to At Large I thought I should bring the following to your attention.

Some here may recall that there was quite a bit of controversy and debate in the GNSO Council last year about the formation and operation of cross community working groups.  This arose in particular with regard to the JAS process, various aspects of which stimulated a range of concerns across the three industry SGs.  Without reliving all the back and forth, these included perceptions that the GNSO's role in policy development was being usurped or at least nibbled at, concerns about the channels and procedures through which JAS progress was reported out and the board responded, the extent to which the chartering organizations should operate in synch, and so on. In consequence, there has been a widespread desire among these SGs to lay down clear rules of the road to regulate how CWGs function.   In Council discussions NCUC members argued for maintaining some flexibility and subsidiarity to avoid tying hands too much, and noted inter alia that if we'd followed a strictly regulatory approach ALAC would not have been able to help move the JAS process along when the GNSO was, well, moving slower.  It would be fair to say that we were pretty much alone in these views.

In October, the Council launched a drafting team to propose guiding principles for CWGs going forward that would respond to the various concerns.  That team has now completed its work and a motion to approve its Principles is on the agenda of our 19 January meeting.https://icann-community.atlassian.net/wiki/display/gnsocouncilmeetings/Motions+19+January+2012

People may wish to have a look at the Principles http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/draft-principles-for-cwgs-23dec11-en.pdf, which specify that all SO/ACs involved should adopt and follow a single joint charter for CWGs, that CWGs outputs do not express community consensus per se, and so on.

If there are any views that people would like to have noted in the Council discussion and vote, please let me know asap.

Thanks,

Bill
************************

On 17 January 2012 15:23, William Drake <william.drake@uzh.ch> wrote:

> People may wish to have a look at the Principles
> http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/draft-principles-for-cwgs-23dec11-en.pdf,
> which specify that all SO/ACs involved should adopt and follow a single
> joint charter for CWGs, that CWGs outputs do not express community
> consensus per se, and so on.
>

Hi Bill. Thanks for the update, and for the efforts of you and the NCSG on
the issue.

The GNSO is welcome to do whatever it wants to unilaterally regarding its
internal processes, but it cannot impose such regulation on others.

As happened with the JAS group, I for one will not abide by any imposed
regimen that prohibits an important effort from moving forward because a
community (or group of communities) refuses to agree on a charter (or tries
to scale back an existing one). Specifically, I would certainly not agree
to any move that artificially limited ALAC's bylaw-mandated scope by
excluding the interests of end-users.

It is significant -- and very telling -- that the GNSO policy about working
with other constituencies was itself formed in isolation from these
constituencies. This was definitely an opportunity missed, but I won't lose
sleep over it. It's my understanding that the At-Large Community has always
been eager to participate in cross-community groups, but we will not have
the terms of that participation dictated to us.- Evan************************Hi Bill,As I answered on the At-Large list, I am appreciative of your message, and of the NCSG efforts to preserve common sense.
The GNSO is welcome to do whatever it wants to unilaterally regarding its internal processes, but it cannot impose such regulation on others. As you rightly point out, had the guidelines been followed rigidly the JAS effort may have never happened, and that would have been an unacceptable outcome.
It is significant -- and very telling -- that the GNSO policy about working with other constituencies was itself formed in isolation from these constituencies. This was definitely an opportunity missed, but I won't lose sleep over it. It's my understanding that the At-Large Community has always been eager to participate in cross-community groups, but we will not have the terms of that participation dictated to us -- especially if such terms try to artificially limit our bylaw-mandated role to advance the interests of Internet end-users.
- Evan
************************

Dear Bill,

These are brief comments.
1)  Possible Purposes:
i) To provide information and recommendations to the chartering
organizations (and perhaps ultimately the broader ICANN community) in accordance with the
charter or directions from the chartering organizations.

ii) To provide a discussion forum to achieve greater community
understanding.

iii) In any event, consensus policy development must occur using current
Supporting

Organization (SO) and Advisory Committee (AC) rules.

I note that (1)(a)(iii) recognizes SO and AC rules. However, it does not
address situations where these rules may conflict and what is to be done
when there is a conflict of rules.

Aside from the rules, what is to be done when there is a conflict on
positions. The At Large is mandated to highlight positions of end users and
it would be great if this is somehow factored. Suggested draft principle
could be as follows:-

In recognition of At Large's role in highlighting global end users interest
nothing shall take away the rights nor restrict in any way shape or form At
Large's capacity to constantly engage in raising the rights and interests
of end users. Whilst I note that (2)(c)(iii) covers it somewhat but it
appears a trifle inadequate.

Kind Regards,
Sala
************************

Hi Bill,

Thanks for asking.

I recommend a vote against for several reasons

- Proposed in the GNSO without consultation with others.   Certainly does not show a willingness to work with others in an open environment - only willing when it is in an environment that it controls with a veto.  That isn't cooperation.  The GNSO really needs to learn how to work nicely with others.  If anything, having come up with a draft, they should be vetting it with their possible partners.

- Misunderstands  GNSO's own WG methodology.  All WGs are already open to all community members already.  The only difference about a CCWG is that  it has more than 1 chartering organization.  Each chartering organization should be able to get what it wants out of the joint work.  The ALAC may want to give advice, the GAC may want to give by-laws qualified advice, the GNSO may want to propose policy and the ccNSO may just want to share information.  What is the problem with this?

- The GNSO's. or anyone else's, position on the outcomes from a CCWG should not be limited by any other SO or AC.    Yes, if several groups can come to a general SOAC consensus, that is wonderful and should be a goal whenever possible.  But it must not be a requirement.

- Each group should be able to do what it wants with the results of a CWG.  The Board is clever enough to be able to weigh the information it gets and know what it means.

- Nothing that calls itself cross-community should be structured in a way that allows any one of the sub-groups a veto.  In my view makes cooperation impossible.

This reads like a practice for subordinating any group that the GNSO decides to interact with.  And that, to me, seems inappropriate behavior by one stakeholder in a multi-stakeholder organization.

thanksavri
************************

To get a few facts on the table:

The mandate of this group was not to set CCWG
rules, but to establish a baseline for what the
GNSO thought was important before entering into
discussions with the ALAC, ccNSO, ASO, GAC, or
whosoever wanted to participate. That is clear in
the motion. Since the GNSO rarely "delegates"
responsibility to negotiate on its behalf to its
Chair or others, it was felt that it was
important to understand the overall issues from
the GNSO perspective before entering into
multi-lateral discussions (which for practical
reasons will surely include a only small subset
of the GNSO Council). Moreover, it was felt that
input from the GNSO as a whole, and not just the Council was important.

That being said, the GNSO did have an interest in
ensuring that what it proposed was reasonable and
factored in, to the extent possible, the needs of
other groups. At the express request of the
Council, I participated in this group and was more than a bit active.

It is not clear exactly what will come out of the
final discussions with other ACs and SOs, but I
do not recall anything in the final results of
this drafting team that are totally unreasonable.

Several of the points are very GNSO-centric (and
perhaps ccNSO) in that they repeatedly stipulate
that formal "policy" must be carried out under
the rules set out in the ICANN Bylaws for such
policy development. I personally think that this
was not needed, since it is in the Bylaws, but
others felt it was good to reiterate.

The point that will no doubt be a lightening rod
following the JAS group is the stipulation that
when formed, a CCWG should have a single charter.
Although in the far reaches of my imagination I
can come up with reasons that this should not be
a rule, but I not at all sure that such edge
cases need to be dealt with here. If the
interests of the various parties are so different
at the start, perhaps a CCWG is not what we need.

Note that this principle talks about the
FORMATION of a CCWG. I do not believe that we
have ever participated in a CCWG that had
multiple disagreeing charters at the beginning.
It is not clear why one would enter into the
creation of such a group if the aims of the
participating bodies were not similar. In fact,
those who were around may recall that for the JAS
group, we did agree on a single charter. Due to a
clerical (honestly!) error, one clause was
omitted from the version that the GNSO approved.
When the charter came up to the ALAC, the ALAC
decided to drop that clause as well, as it was
felt that it was not sufficiently important to
warrant delaying the entire process until it
could go back to the GNSO for re-chartering (and
we believed that the group WOULD look at that
issue regardless of whether it was in the
charter). Other CCWGs such as DSSA all had a
single charter agreed to by one mechanism or another ahead of time.

You will notice that the principles are silent on
the issue of re-chartering part-way through a
process, the situation where JAS blew up. If you
recall the sequence of events there:
- the WG came up with a suggested revised charter.
- this time it was the ALAC that got to it first, and it was approved.
- when it came to the GNSO, there was substantive
discomfort and they did radical surgery to it,
taking out some parts and adding others (one of which the ALAC really liked).
- at that point, the JAS group would have had two
charters, which in some cases could be construed
as requiring they work in two orthogonal
directions at the same time - something that was not tenable.
- the ALAC revised its version, making it clear
that the JAS charter had a core part that was
common to both the GNSO and ALAC, and several
other end-products that were unique to the ALAC
but did not go against any of the core items.
- that was perhaps a bit awkward to work with,
but the JAS WG was willing and things proceeded
to the eventual VERY successful outcome, with the
GNSO supporting all end-products equally, even
the ones that they had not included in their charter.

Another area that may attract discussion is about
the rules that a CCWG will follow. The principles
simple say that to the extent possible, the WG
rules of the constituent bodies should be
followed. If they were all the same, that would
clearly be no problem. But in fact, other than
the GNSO, I suspect no other organization has
such a detailed set of rules. The ALAC, in its
own WGs, has generally abided by the GNSO rules
where they made sense and ignored those that did
not. Perhaps some day the ALAC will formalize
what its rules are. Or not. It *is* clear that
the rules and certainly the practices currently
vary, and although I am sure that every
organization would feel comfortable with *their*
rules dominating, what will come out of this
process is some sort of a compromise, perhaps
varying based on which bodies participate. And
they will likely vary over time as we get used to
these new groups. The principles are wisely
completely silent on the issue, other than to say
that the charter should specify the rules for any given WG.

Note that this set of principles does not attempt
to address (nor should they) how one reaches
consensus within a given WG. Whatever rules are
adopted for that group will need to address it,
but it may be specific to the issue and who the chartering bodies are.

The GNSO meeting where this will be discussed is
on Thursday at 11:00 UTC. If anyone has any input
for me as the formal ALAC Liaison, please get it
to me as soon as possible (the meeting is at
06:00 my time, so I will be offline for the
several hours preceding the meeting). As I cannot
make suggestions for formal changes to the
motion, please make sure to copy Bill as well.

Alan
************************

Thanks for your follow-up Alan, Evan and Sala, and thanks for the note,
Bill.

On 17/01/2012 23:35, Alan Greenberg wrote :
> The GNSO meeting where this will be discussed is
> on Thursday at 11:00 UTC. If anyone has any input
> for me as the formal ALAC Liaison, please get it
> to me as soon as possible (the meeting is at
> 06:00 my time, so I will be offline for the
> several hours preceding the meeting). As I cannot
> make suggestions for formal changes to the
> motion, please make sure to copy Bill as well.

I note that the proposed GNSO Council motion mentions:
"requests staff to disseminate them to the Chairs of the Supporting
Organizations and Advisory Committees asking them to provide input to
the GNSO Council in 60 days on both the principles themselves and the
route forward for community-wide adoption or development of a related
set of principles for the operation of Cross-Community Working Groups"

So if this motion gets passed, we'll have plenty of time to formulate a
full response rather than being tempted to shoot from the hip at 24h's
notice, which would effectively be carrying comments from individuals to
the GNSO council meeting, not the views of the ALAC.

Kindest regards,

Olivier
************************

On 17 January 2012 17:35, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote:

Several of the points are very GNSO-centric (and perhaps ccNSO) in that
> they repeatedly stipulate that formal "policy" must be carried out
> under the rules set out in the  ICANN Bylaws for such policy development.

As we have seen in the gTLD rollout, the GNSO has repeatedly shown its own
willingness to overstep its bounds and deal in processes rather than policy
(ie, objection processes).

If the GNSO wants to be anal about how policy can be done, we also have the
obligation to point out that GNSO has less bylaw-based authority to comment
on non-policy implementation matters than ALAC does.

The point that will no doubt be a lightening rod following the JAS group is
> the stipulation that when formed, a CCWG should have a single > charter. Although in the far reaches of my imagination I can come up with > reasons that this should not be a rule, but I not at all sure that such > edge cases need to be dealt with here.