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

Sun Jun 16 15:05:38 UTC 2019

> On Jun 16, 2019, at 4:09 AM, Mark Elkins <mje at posix.co.za> wrote:
> 
> 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;-)
>> 

I think that instead, the nomcom should publish “Candidate X was disqualified because the committee did not receive a timely response to an email sent from our official address to the candidate’s registered address on X date at X time.”

In this way, the nomcom is not disclosing any details about the Candidate, but merely making statements about the content of their email box and email that they have sent. Also, it doesn’t contain an accusation that the candidate failed to respond, but merely notes that the nomcom did not receive any response.

>> 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.

I certainly have no problem with the nomcom acting in this way, but I think as long as good judgment is used to avoid statements of a derogatory, accusatory, or incendiary nature towards or about the candidate(s), the rest should be fine.

For candidates for which the nomcom is unable to disclose a detailed reason, suitable euphemisms can be found:

"Candidate was disqualified due to confidential reasons.”

Then it’s up to the candidate whether or not to disclose the reasons and appeal or accept the disqualification.

There needs to be an appeal process for disqualifications by the nominating committee, IMHO.

>> 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.  

I think that’s a good idea.

>> 
>> 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
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