This option attempts to create a broad division of the ICANN structure into a technical/provider side and a social/commercial/legal side. The assumption is that informed and interested individuals are intelligent enough to understand the issues on the second side, and to elect people who properly represent their views. Those elected representatives and their staffs then need to work together (commercial interests, other institutional interests, public interests) to develop and implement policies that reflect the public interest, working with the technical side when those policies intersect.

Details

There are two issues to be dealt with:

• The structure to elect the ICANN board
• And the structure by which policies are proposed, discussed and packaged for decision by the board.

In the past, the two structures were intermingled, but they do not need to be.

In short, half the board should be elected by the public, and the other half by people within ICANN's technical/business-oriented structure.

Board = (3 + 3 +3) + 9 + 1 (ICANN ceo)

No contracts with ICANN, therefore need other way to have input

The last two SOs are the "political" SOs, that have to deal with commercial/social/legal issues. Now the board has a techy and a non-techy side, but the non-techy side - PrSO plus USO - has 12 board members. On the other hand, the public-interest reps are only half (9 members for the USO). The DNSO may see this as harmful, but in fact they end up with more: half the votes….. It's just that they have to share them with the public-interest reps. But that makes sense: I may not want someone without technical expertise voting on IP protocols, but the DNSO issues - trademarks, competition vs. coop administration of TLDs, and the like - are topics normal folk can understand. Just as elsewhere, companies can make their case to voters. But I would avoid specific constituencies in the USO, though we will need rules about geographic representation and the like.

That is, the AL elects directors both from the broad public and from what used to be the DNSO. DNSO members can run; so can members of the broader public. (But there will be no more ICANN nominations for AL directors. Perhaps the remnants of the DNSO (how to identify) should be able to nominate 3 people for seats, though they too will be voted on by AL members.)

AL Board members

AL directors should be paid ($50K/year?) and have their travel covered (unless they represent an SO member company??? - need to sort this out, probably not a good idea) They also need some kind of staff support…. Perhaps that is what the AL Council is: a tribe of lawyers and students who have signed up for a stint working at ICANN in the public interest. They would have to agree to travel a lot: one from each of five regions? Picked by the AL directors. Also at $50K (or more?) per year, but expected to work fulltime.

In this model, then, companies can form parties or voting blocs, but they have to do so out in the open, and in competition with (so-called) public interest groups. The geographic distribution requirements still apply... Would that encourage the "parties" to look for candidates in the southern regions? Is that good or bad?)

That's the easy part - conceptually if not politically.

More difficult is how to get individuals involved in the policy-making process.

Policy-making

First of all, we maintain the notion of the requirement for consensus, though it is not precisely how policy gets formulated. (In fact, there's a delicate tension between the board recognizing consensus, and the directors reflecting their own (or their voters') interests. I see the consensus requirement as something of a constitutional requirement: You can't pass laws that contradict the constitution, and you can't pass resolutions/policies that don't pass the consensus test. (That's a protection in the ICANN "constitution," without which its contracting parties would probably not agree to those contracts, which bind them to follow ICANN policies.)

Policies obviously can come from anywhere - from within the tech SOs, and from anywhere else. One source is self- organizing parties/interest groups/splinter groups. They can use these policies as platforms for election. If they get support (via election of a candidate), they can be worked on within the AL Council.

The General Assembly of the former DNSO enlarges to become a General Assembly of At-Large Members, which de facto means almost anyone (including individuals from the other SOs, and of course former DNSO members).

Issues:

DO the existing DNSO members feel disenfranchised? They shouldn't, because they now are represented by half the board - though their policies have to pass At-Large muster before getting to the board. And at the same time, there's the "safety" factor that they then have to pass muster with the whole board, including all the SOs.

The staff issue:

There has been a lot of concern that the staff is driving most of ICANN's activities. By giving the AL (including the business side) its own staff/Council, are we improving things, or adding unnecessary complexity? I guess this is something like the divide between career and political appointees in any administration. I used to think political types were an obvious bad thing, but now I see that they can mostly be relied on (for better or worse) to carry out the missions for which their representatives were elected. And that is probably a good thing, assuming the best policies win. (But I'm not sure how this would work in practice.)