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In harsh tones, ccNSO rejects NomCom appointee

Kevin Murphy, October 2, 2017, 09:30:17 (UTC), Domain Registries

ICANN’s Country Code Names Supporting Organization has rejected the appointment to its Council of a Canadian registry director.
Saying NomCom ignored long-standing guidance to avoid appointing registry employees, the ccNSO Council has said the recent naming of Marita Moll to the role is “unacceptable”.
Moll will have to choose between sitting on the Council and being a director of .ca registry CIRA, the Council said in a letter to NomCom and the ICANN board.
Three of the Council’s 18 voting members are selected by NomCom. The rest are elected from ccTLD registries, three from each of ICANN’s five geographic regions.
To maintain balance, and promote independent views, the Council told NomCom most recently back in 2012 that it should refrain from appointing people connected to ccTLD registries.
The new Council letter (pdf) reads:

Council’s view (none dissenting) is that your Committee’s proposed selection directly contravenes this requirement, notwithstanding the clear and explicit assurance we received in 2012 from the then Chair of Nominating Committee that the Committee would be “avoiding any member already belonging to the ccTLD management participating in the ccNSO”.

The situation is exacerbated by the fact that CIRA already has representation on the Council in the form of CEO Byron Holland.
The letter concludes that the conflict is “irreconcilable” and the appointment “unacceptable”.
As the ccNSO does not appear to have refusal powers on NomCom appointees, it will presumably be up to Moll to decline the appointment.

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Comments (3)

  1. Volker Greimann says:
    October 2, 2017 at 12:58 pm

    So did NomCom forget to do their homework and overlook this requirement, or did they note and ignore it?

    Reply
  2. Tom Barrett says:
    October 2, 2017 at 2:00 pm

    As a member of the NomCom the last two years, I can offer a perspective here.
    The fact that ccNSO provided specific advice to the NomCom back in 2012 never came up in the past two years I served.
    First of all, the NomCom is structured so that it has close to zero institutional knowledge. By design, each new NomCom is shared very little information from previous NomCom’s.
    The NomCom publishes the criteria for candidates every year. see
    https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/nomcom2017-positions
    So, this means if one of the groups that the NomCom nominates candidates for, has some specific advice for evaluation critieria, they would need to provide it anew every year.
    The ICANN Board does this on an annual basis. I don’t recall any of the other groups (GNSO, ccNSO, ALAC) doing so in the last two years. I also recall that the NomCom, at least once, specifically requested these groups to provide advice, but none did.
    I don’t know how this year’s issue will play out. But one of the lessons here is that each of the groups involved (GNSO, ccNSO and ALAC) should take responsibility for providing the NomCom advice every year at the ICANN Annual Meeting.
    Finally, here is plug for everyone in the ICANN community to provide feedback on the NomCom!
    The NomCom is currently undergoing an ICANN Review process by an Independent Examiner, whose working group I am the Chair of.
    See: https://community.icann.org/display/OR/NomCom+Review+Working+Party
    If you have ideas on how to improve the NomCom, please complete our survey here:
    https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-2017-09-12-en

    Reply

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