Re: [ga] To: ga@dnso.org

["Roberto Gaetano" <ploki_xyz@hotmail.com>]

Joe,

Let me start with a "me too".
I join the many who appreciate your participation in this forum, it is 
essential that the POV of the people that have a definite role in ICANN 
(whether staff, consultants, directors, or whatever) engage in open 
discussions on a public list. Isn't this part of the building of an "open 
and transparent" process? I like to have direct intervention of people 
taking responsibility for what they write.
I also hope that we in the GA will be able to restrain from throwing 
"virtual tomatoes", and keep the discussion correct. Knowing that if we 
don't, people like you will be less motivated to post, and in the end it 
will only be the GA to suffer.

This said, getting into the matter at hand, I do believe that there is not 
only black and white, but also shades of grey (not to speak about other 
colours).

You wrote (I only quote the passages I thought more important):
>.... Danny, like
>some others, apparently believe that to be transparent, all ICANN
>discussion and actions have to be taken in full public view.

I don't share Danny's view, but have nevertheless a concern about "openness 
and transparency" of ICANN, as is now.

I am with you when you note that:
>.... The
>notion that it is not "transparent" because it does not mandate that every
>discussion, whether intended to produce an action or not, be held in full
>public view is just plain silly.

Nevertheless, we cannot dismiss the concerns replying to one position that 
is probably extreme: "Every bit of information exchanged by every person 
bearing any hat in ICANN must be public record" (incidentally, I don't think 
that Danny would himself believe that this is what he meant in his posting).
The fact that we cannot have everything on public record does not absolve 
ICANN from doing a better job on openness and transparency, exactly how the 
fact that we cannot have a perfect, cheap, manageable and fair online 
election process does not constitute a good excuse for not trying to put up 
a process for the AtLarge election of Directors, or how, as stated in my 
post of yesterday, the fact that we cannot have perfect representation of 
Registrants does not constitute a good enough excuse for denying the 
legitimity tout-court of a Constituency for registrants.
In other words, if "black" is unfeasible, it does not follow that "white" is 
the only solution (you may change the order of the colours, if you like).

This is why I would suggest that we find a way to make better use of a 
scarce resource: participation of people of your caliber to the GA.
I would recommend that instead of discussing of the feasibility of equally 
unfeasible solutions (like to have every word of every ICANN Director, CEO, 
Staff, Counsellor, ... online in real time, or like to hold meetings without 
any information to the many laymen stakeholders), we concentrate on how we 
could make the ICANN process more open and more transparent, how we could 
have the voice of every stakeholder better taken into account by the Board, 
how we can improve an ICANN that is only in a very limited way open to 
non-US interests (the example I always make is 2 out of 2 CEOs and 2 out of 
2 Chairpersons being US citizen cannot be a coincidence).

Best regards
Roberto


>
>The Board held a retreat this weekend.  It made no decisions (and therefore
>there will be no minutes), but it did have several hours over two days of
>uninterrupted discussion about very complicated topics.  I hope and believe
>that the Board members left the retreat with a better understanding of the
>issues, and their complexities, and of the perspectives of their fellow
>Board members, than they had before the retreat.  Certainly, the Evolution
>and Reform Committee members have a deeper understanding of the
>perspectives of their colleagues to the materials they and others have
>produced over the last several months, and this will be helpful in the
>Committee's production of recommendations to the Board and the community,
>which hopefully will be published later this week.   In most contexts, this
>would be considered a good thing -- the people charged with oversight of an
>body and a process working together to gain a better collective
>understanding of the issues, so that they can do their job better.  In
>Danny's world, on the other hand, it is just one more meeting of the Black
>Helicopters.  Sad.
>
>
>Joe Sims
>
>
>
>
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