[Icg-forum] Comment on handling of my previous comment on the CWG-Stewardship proposal

[Richard Hill]

I refer to the E-Mail sent by the co-chair of the ICG to the co-chairs of
CWG-Stewardship:

  http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-stewardship/2015-August/004003.html 

In this E-Mail, the co-chair of the ICG makes some comments on my comments
regarding the CWG-Stewardship proposal.

I have both substantive and procedural comments regarding the comments of
the ICG co-chair.

1. Substantive comments
=======================

The ICG co-chair states "Regarding Richard's claim about the final proposal
not having gone out for public comment, in our view what he suggests could
yield a process that never ends, given that further comments can always be
provided whenever a document is put out for public comment. Thus requiring a
'final' document to be put out for public comment is an unreasonable
requirement for a process intended to terminate."

The normal process for developing consensus documents is to put out for
public comment any significant revisions to a previous version.  In some
organizations, this process is continued until consensus is reached. In
other organizations, there is some process by which a formal decision can be
made (e.g. voting, or the IETF's "rough consensus") to stop discussions and
to publish the document even if there are still some objections.

I've never seen a consensus process in which a significantly revised version
of a document is not put out for public comment before formal approval.

The co-chair of ICG states: "Regarding his claim about the global
multistakeholder community, our understanding of the CWG's charter is that
the group is open to any interested participant." 

That is correct, but, as I've stated repeatedly, "participants" in the CWG
do not have the same decision making rights as "members", so the CWG process
is, in my view, not fully open.

The co-chair of the ICG states: "Regarding his claim about his specific
comments on the proposal, we note that the CWG proposal states on p. 51 that
'The final proposal has received the consensus support of the
CWG-Stewardship with no objections or minority statements recorded for
Chartering Organization consideration.' We note that rationales were given
and CWG consensus positions explained for each comment received during the
public comment period that was not included in the proposal (including
Richard's)."

That is correct, the proposal represents the consensus of the
CWG-Stewardship. That does not necessarily represent the consensus of the
global multistakeholder community.

Indeed, how can anybody know what the global multistakeholder community
thinks of the proposal, since it was not put out for public comment before
being transmitted to the ICG?

I do understand that the proposal is now out for public comment, as part of
the combined proposal presented by the ICG, and I will be submitting
comments on that combined proposal in due course.

But I wish to place on the record that the final CWG-Stewardship proposal
was not submitted for public comment prior to transmission to ICG.

2. Procedural comments
======================

The ICG's internal rules for dealing with comments submitted to it are at:

 
https://www.ianacg.org/icg-files/documents/Community-Comments-Handling-1May1
5-final.pdf 

I don't see any provision in those rules for the ICG to evaluate comments
addressed to the operational communities.

So I would like to know on what basis the ICG saw fit to send its opinion of
my comments to CWG-Stewardship before CWG-Stewardship formed its own opinion
of my comments.

Best,
Richard