Proposal+for+a+Nominating+Committe+(NomCom)+for+the+CI+community

The following proposal has been written up by Norbert Bollow the reasons why I feel qualified to do this on behalf of the CI community include:
 * That I have the experience (in the context of [|IGC], the Civil Society Internet Governance Caucus) of having, as a coordinator, run the process that leads to NomComs being constituted and doing their work;
 * that I have (before I became an IGC coordinator) also personally participated in the NomCom process itself; and
 * that I also have a reasonably good understanding of the reasons why the NomCom process is a reasonably good approach for credibly selecting representatives of community type groups that don't have a strong formal membership structure.

The reason why a selection process is needed has been given by Michael Gurstein as follows:  It looks almost certain that we will need to create a Nominating Committee in order to ensure that the CI community as framed by our Declaration has a voice in the broader developments related to the upcoming meeting in Brazil and likely beyond.

http://rt.com/news/brazil-internet-summit-fight-nsa-006/

This has been the direct result of our request to collaborate with the existing civil society groups in the Internet Governance space having been declined. I think it appropriate for CI to thus develop its own Nominations for the various positions relative to the planning and development of the Brazil summit and to do that we need to have a process. Let me begin my explanation of the NomCom process by explicitly acknowledging that political processes, such as the processes of the international discourse on Internet governance, are to a significant extent about power and influence. We want the concerns and perspectives and insights of the CI community to be represented in these processes, and to have an influence. Now as soon as any voice becomes influential in such political processes, there will be those who question whether the representative was selected by means of a credible process. At the same time, communities need to protect themselves against the risk that some kind of group lacking appropriate legitimacy might grab the power of being able to effectively pretend to represent the community, while in reality they represent only a relatively narrow subset of the perspectives and views of that community.

What the NomCom process does is that spokespersons are selected which have the trust of a community and which are able to reasonably represent the breadth of views and perspectives of the community.

At the same time, the NomCom process is designed to ensure that the power to make such selections will not be in the hands of a small group of insiders whose power grows over time, but rather power to appoint representatives for the community remains entirely in the hands of the community as a whole.

This is achieved by having Nomination Commissions (NomComs) which are each constituted only for a short period of time, for a single selection task or set of related selection tasks. Each NomCom is randomly selected from a list of volunteers where every member of the community is invited to volunteer for being part of the pool of volunteers for that NomCom.

Proposed timeline for a first attempt at using this NomCom process for the Community Informatics network:

Dec 27 - NomCom process proposal posted to the list; start of discussion of any concerns about it.

Dec 27 - Preliminary Call for NomCom volunteers posted.

Dec 27 - Preliminary Call for volunteers willing to serve as representatives of the CI Network posted.

Dec 29 - Revised NomCom process proposal posted to the list; start of 48 hours lazy consensus period.

Dec 31 - 48hrs lazy consensus period for the NomCom process proposal ends, hopefully successfully. (If the lazy consensus call fails to pass there is still time to try again.) This is followed by posting the definitive Calls for NomCom volunteers and for volunteers willing to serve as representatives of the CI Network.

Jan 3 - End date of the Calls for NomCom volunteers and for volunteers willing to serve as representatives of the CI Network.

Jan 4 - Random selection of the voting NomCom members, using the results of the UK National Lottery's Saturday Lotto draw as random seed.

Jan 5 - The NomCom starts its work; given that part of the process of volunteering to serve on this NomCom will be that the volunteers assert their willingness and ability to take the necessary time for this in early January, hopefully the NomCom will be able to reach a result reasonably quickly.

Further details on the NomCom process:
 * The group of voting NomCom members (i.e. the group of people who were randomly selected) is authorized to appoint one of their number to chair the NomCom, or to appoint someone from outside their number as a Non-Voting Chair.
 * The voting NomCom members, as well as the Non-Voting Chair (if one is appointed) are not eligible for nomination by the NomCom.
 * The Calls for NomCom volunteers and for volunteers willing to serve as representatives of the CI Network will outline what will be expected of those who are chosen in therms of knowledge, skills and time commitment.
 * There will be either three voting NomCom members or five voting NomCom members depending on the number of volunteers for this role:
 * If there are exactly three volunteers for this role, these three will be the voting NomCom members.
 * If there are more than three but less than eight volunteers for this role, three voting NomCom members will be randomly chosen.
 * If there are eight or more volunteers for this role, five voting NomCom members will be randomly chosen.
 * The random selection of NomCom members will be carried out in a publicly verifiable manner by means of a selection algorithm and software which is publicly available, using as random seed the results of the UK National Lottery's Saturday Lotto draw, specifically the six "ball numbers" and, entered separately, the "bonus ball" number from that draw. (All the specifics of the random selection process are announced in advanced, to ensure that it can be independently verified that the selection was carried out in such a way that the person conducting it cannot possibly have manipulated the outcome.)
 * The random selection process will also be used to select a “first reserve” and a “second reserve” to allow recovering from situations where one or even two of the people who were chosen somehow find themselves unable to participate as foreseen.
 * The first task of the NomCom members will be to select a Chair who will conduct the process. It is recommended that this should be someone who has previously participated in a NomCom.
 * After the NomCom has completed its work and announced the result, the Chair will also compose a more detailed report. This report shall provide a reasonable amount of transparency about the work of the NomCom, including documentation of the criteria that the NomCom used in making the selection.

For further reading on NomCom processes...

RFC 3777, IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and Recall Committees http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3777

RFC 3797, Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee (NomCom) Random Selection http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3797

IGC NomCom Process http://igcaucus.org/nomcom-process

If the CI Community decides (by lazy consensus) to use such a NomCom process, Norbert Bollow is willing to execute the clerical work such as running the software that makes the random selection.