[Community-Discuss] Reform Nomcomm - was Announcement for Final Candidate Slate for Open Seat on AFRINIC Governance Committee

[Mark Elkins]

Don't remember issues with NomCom when I was involved, not these types 
of problems at least. Perhaps its time to not worry about which regions 
volunteers come from any more.

On 2019/06/16 12:54, John Walu wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 15, 2019 at 1:31 PM Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com 
> <mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:
> >>>
> In general, I agree with you. I will, however, note that it is 
> possible that there are situations where “why” should be redacted to 
> protect the confidentiality and dignity of the applicant who was 
> rejected. For example, if the nominating committee had rejected a  
> candidate because he is under indictment and under disciplinary review 
> in his day job for misconduct, I don’t think that nomcom should be the 
> ones to publicly disclose those details.
> >>>
> @Owen
>
> Its true, we must protect the applicant's privacy. However, we must 
> also enhance the Nomcom's transparency. Imagine a situation where 
> Nomcomm disqualifies candidates because they allegedly did not respond 
> to some email. It is quite difficult really to really prove beyond 
> reasonable it at all such an email was ever sent.  It is even harder 
> to prove that it was successfully delivered to the intended recipient.
>
> In such a case, Nomcom should publicly say Candidate X was 
> disqualified because they did not respond to an email. (that in itself 
> will discourage and expose a Nomcom that  is heavily biased towards 
> knocking out, rather than recruiting board members;-)
>
> Perhaps a middle ground that would protect the candidate's privacy 
> while enhancing Nomcom Transparency and accountability would be to 
> seek consent or objection from Candidates - at the point of 
> application - if they would object to the reasons behind their 
> rejection being publicly reported.
>
> That way we avoid giving a blank cheque to Nomcom who may make 
> decisions knowing very well that they need NOT explain themselves to 
> anyone (lack of accountability).
>
> So lets design and give Nomcomm a  Standard Reporting Template to 
> enhance their transparency.  They will remain independent and 
> autonomous in the functionality, but they should owe the community an 
> understanding on how they worked hard to raise good candidates for 
> AfriNIC.
>
> The report from Nomcomm with respect to the PDWG election is a good 
> start and can be refined and adapted for future Nomcomms.
>
> walu.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, Jun 15, 2019 at 1:31 PM Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com 
> <mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     > On Jun 4, 2019, at 11:34 PM, John Walu <walu.john at gmail.com
>     <mailto:walu.john at gmail.com>> wrote:
>     >
>     > I believe the deeper question is WHY is there an increasingly
>     smaller candidate slate of those volunteering to serve on Afrinic
>     board, year in year out.
>     >
>     > Two possible answers:
>     > A) Good candidates are avoiding the perceived 'challenging'
>     board /management /community relationships that continue to
>     persist. So nomcom hands are tied and cannot manufacture candidates.
>     >
>     > OR
>     > B) There are actually many good candidates applying BUT the
>     Nomcom 'Black-box' processes is kicking them out and reducing them
>     to 1 or 2 nominees.
>     >
>     > To drill down to the correct answer, I think the Nomcom process
>     needs to be reformed.
>     >
>     > I still do not understand the benefit of having a black box
>     process in the nomination committee where the community has no
>     clue about how many candidates applied, how many got knocked out
>     and why. IF national Presidential election systems are so open
>     about this, why is that it has to remain hidden for Afrinic?
>     >
>     > And I say this as someone who has once served on Nomcomm as well
>     as someone who has once been rejected by some previous Nomcomm (I
>     want to believe it is within my right to share personal
>     information/experience as this is not covered under NDA, but I
>     stand to be corrected ;-)
>     >
>     > At a minimum, we should request that as Nomcom publishes the
>     candidate slate, they should also show a tally (without the names)
>     of how many candidates applied, how many got kicked out, why they
>     were kicked out and how many successfully went thro.
>
>     In general, I agree with you. I will, however, note that it is
>     possible that there are situations where “why” should be redacted
>     to protect the confidentiality and dignity of the applicant who
>     was rejected. For example, if the nominating committee had
>     rejected a  candidate because he is under indictment and under
>     disciplinary review in his day job for misconduct, I don’t think
>     that nomcom should be the ones to publicly disclose those details.
>
>     > I believe this information can shed some light on the deeper
>     question above of whether indeed we have fewer applicants or our
>     black-box nommcom process is simply kicking them out in order to
>     eventually present a single candidate.
>
>     My suspicion is that to some degree, both are occurring.
>
>     Owen
>
>
>
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-- 
Mark James ELKINS  -  Posix Systems - (South) Africa
mje at posix.co.za       Tel: +27.128070590  Cell: +27.826010496
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