[council] Re: TF Transfers

[Joanna Lane <jo-uk@rcn.com>]

on 11/26/01 8:12 AM, Philip Sheppard at philip.sheppard@aim.be wrote:

> Joanna, 
> Marilyn Cade, chair of the NC task force on transfers, has passed on to me as
> NC Chair,  a request from Danny Younger for your participation in the task
> force as a representative of the registrant community but not as a
> representative of the GA.
> 
> Typically, the working practice of task forces is that they comprise one rep
> from each Constituency and an optional rep from the GA. They do work to help
> formulate a recommendation to the NC. In this work the TF themselves may
> consult experts and interested parties.
> 
> Before taking this further could you let me know the basis for your
> qualification as a representative of the registrant community ? In this it
> would be helpful to know the means of outreach to other registrants, how this
> is different to the nature of representation in the GA and how this is
> differentiated against the opinions currently available to the task force from
> its membership.
> 
> Many thanks.
> 
> Philip Sheppard
> NC Chair
> 

Philip,

My inquiry is made specifically in response to concerns that I understand
have been expressed by current Transfer Task Force members about the matter
of under-representation of registrant interests. I am here to be as helpful
as possible and will answer the latter questions first.

Strictly speaking, it is not correct to say that I am seeking participation
on the task force as the representative of the registrant community, if by
that you mean the sole representative of the whole registrant community, as
clearly some subsets will already be represented through existing
constituency representatives. However, I would point out that in the absence
of a "registrants constituency", so to speak, none of the constituencies can
claim to be acting strictly in the capacity of a "registrant community
representative" (as a whole) and I think that is part of our problem,
notwithstanding that it is a challenging problem to solve when one looks at
ICANN's current structure in general, and the DNSO in particular.

To expand on that point for a moment, I would say that views available to
the TF through existing constituencies, will be from various perspectives
and in the natural course of events, each representative will have more than
one perspective to bring to bear on an issue, depending on their core
interest, as well as the registrants within their respective communities. On
the one hand this is an asset, but on the other hand, it will cloud the
determination of what input is coming from a pure registrant perspective.
So although I couldn't possibly say that a representative should not voice
their opinions from every perspective available as they see fit, it makes
sense to have one voice available that is not compromised in any way from
the outset. That will free the constituency reps from any possible conflict
of interest and allow the various stakeholder groups to balance their
concerns in a more even handed manner. In turn, this will help to balance
the input overall, clarify the registrant perspective for others and from
others, make it easier to document the process later on and ensure that
there are no mixed messages in terms of the source, validity, nature and
extent of the registrants perspective in the mix.

More important than that, I would say it's vital for the Task Force to be
perceived as having given proper consideration to those registrants who are
not and cannot be represented by any of the constituencies for reasons of
eligibility. Since transfers *do* impact individual registrants directly, it
is a significant concern to them to be directly involved in any process
involving policy changes, and it could be regarded as essential to
implementation later on, that an individual's representative has been made
freely available to help shape the agreement that will have a direct bearing
on how they interact with registrars, the requirements that will be made of
them, and the services they can reasonably expect to receive. Such a person
would need to be specifically focused on and dedicated to looking out for
those particular interests.

As to the matter of how the task force can possibly be representative of
individual registrant interests if a separate representative is not
available, we would look to the GA Representative. However, the GA
representative is there to work on behalf of a multitude of interests, not
only for registrants, and in fact, the numbers of GA members whose core
interest could be deemed to be in the registrant camp, as opposed to IP,
ccSO, Alternate Roots, At Large and so on, amounts to a fairly small
minority, and when one extracts from that number those whose core interests
could be attributed specifically to those of individual registrants, rather
than business registrants, non-commercial etc., one is left with merely a
handful of members whose views the GA rep is actually obligated to
represent, or has immediately available for outreach efforts. If one then
looks to the wider community, where the number of individual registrants is
vast, one has to recognize that a disproportionately small number are
members of the GA (compared to the proportion of members from other groups
within the GA, such as system administrators), yet individual registrants
are very definitely an impacted group that deserve proper consideration.
This can be resolved by giving them a direct voice in the process.

If we can agree that individuals deserve a higher level of representation
than a commensurate share of the GA voice could possibly give them, given
the other interests that must be balanced in the GA input, then the GA reps
job would appear to be transformed into a somewhat onerous task for one
representative. While Danny is already in the unenviable position of having
to constantly change hats to balance the full spectrum of interests that may
be forthcoming from the one assembly, it would be putting him in an
impossible position if he was also expected to skew the balance of his
representation to compensate for under-representation of one small part.
Please bear in mind that this is the *only* group that does not have its own
constituency representative on the task force as well as the GA rep bringing
its perspective to bear, and yet it is possibly the most adversely affected
subset within the registrant community.

To summarize, the task force would greatly benefit from having a
representative available who is dedicated to the impact on registrants, with
an established, if not exclusive, interest in individuals.

I hope this part of my response outlines the basis sufficiently well for an
agreement *in principal* for an additional appointment to the task force. I
apologize for not addressing other aspects at this time, I am pressed for
time unfortunately, but assure you that I will address your other questions
as soon as possible, and in the meantime, perhaps you would let me have an
further comments you may have on the above.

Many thanks,
Regards,

Joanna

The URLs for Best Practices: DNSO Citation:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/gaindex.html
(Under "Other Information Documents"; "August 2001:
Proposal for Best Practices for the DNSO GA")
Part I: 
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010813.GA-BestPractices.html
Part II: 
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20010813.GA-BP-flowchart.pdf
(Access to the .pdf file requires installing the Adobe Acrobat
Reader, which is available for free down load at
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.)