[Chapter-delegates] Fwd: Proposed agenda for ISOC CEO and ISOC UK England Leadership Team meeting - 20 Feb 2024

Fri Feb 9 06:31:30 PST 2024

Dear Chapter Leaders,

the UK England Chapter of the Internet Society has been kindly invited 
to meet the ISOC CEO Andrew Sullivan during his visit in London later 
this month. We have put together an agenda which you will see below. If 
we have any time remaining in our meeting we would be happy to add other 
topics of interest to Chapters - thus please email me if you would like 
to propose additional topics.
We'll report back to Chapters on matters that might have a wider 
Chapters interest after our meeting.
Kindest regards,

Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhD
ISOC UK England Chair

-------- Forwarded Message --------
Subject: 	Proposed agenda for ISOC CEO and ISOC UK England Leadership 
Team meeting - 20 Feb 2024
Date: 	Fri, 9 Feb 2024 15:20:15 +0100
From: 	Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
To: 	Andrew Sullivan <sullivan at isoc.org>
CC: 	ISOC England <contact at isoc-e.org>

Dear Andrew,

thank your for inviting us to meet you on Tuesday 20 February 2024. 
Matthew Shears, Steve Karmeinski and I look forward to welcome you in 
London.

In order to prepare for the discussion, our Leadership Team has put 
together a number of questions which you will find listed below. These 
should be treated as the topics we would like to discuss during our 
meeting. We'll share these with other Chapter Leaders, asking if they 
have any further questions/topics which we might wish to add to our 
agenda, time-permitting.

In order to put some structure in our discussions, there are four main 
section topics:

1. CEO renewal
2. Internet Society Foundation
3. ISOC's future
4. Operational Issues

We look forward to an open discussion on all four topics. If you have 
additional topics for discussion please share them with us ahead of our 
meeting.

Topic 1: CEO renewal

Given the need to expand the global reputation and footprint of the 
Internet Society, the search for the next CEO should respect the 
processes set in the past as well as well accepted good practise
found in other important Internet organisations.

This process should be tasked by the BoT to improve awareness and 
engagement of the global communities in the Internet Society and its 
operations and ensure to the community that basic principles of good 
governance including transparency are evident.

We therefore have the following questions relating to the topic of CEO 
renewal:

1.1 Do you already know if the Board going to renew your contract?

1.2 If not when will process for the CEO search be started?

1.3 Is there an already existing process in place for the search of the 
next CEO?
1.3.1 if yes, then is it based on the last search for ISOC CEO which 
used a global selection process open to qualification by non-US residents?
1.3.2 if no, then will the community be asked for:
   a. best practices relating to the actual search for a CEO?
   b. the list of qualities required in the next CEO?
(as is already common process in other I* organisations?)

1.4 In the current climate of Government regulation worldwide would you 
agree that people with known close ties to governments should be 
excluded from being candidates as they are unlikely to inspire 
confidence in ISOC's independence in representative roles other than 
purely secretariat?

1.5 Currently the Board Succession Planning Committee is made of:
Ramanou Biaou - Chapters
Luis Martinez - Chapters
Brian Haberman - IETF
Ted Hardie - Organisation
Barry Leiba - Organisation
Robert Pepper - Organisation
Andrew Sullivan - Ex-Officio

This, if it is indeed the next CEO Search Committee, appears unbalanced 
between Chapters, IETF and Organisation members? Wouldn't good practise 
mean balancing this out by having two members from each IETF, Chapters 
and Organisation?

1.6 Will the whole Board interview candidates or will it just be 
the Board Succession Planning Committee?

1.7 Will the whole Board be voting on the final candidate(s), given that 
this has been a vital task of the Board in past CEO selections? The 
whole board consists of: 4 Chapter Trustees, 4 Org Trustees and 4 IETF 
Trustees (plus a nominated trustee) and each of them has one equal vote.

Topic 2: Internet Society Foundation

ISOC's intentions on formation of the Foundation was to establish a 
separate Board and governance for the Foundation. It was proposed that 
the current arrangement of ISOC trustees also all being Foundation 
Trustees as only viable as a stop gap. The evolution of the governance 
of the Foundation appears to have stalled since the attempted sale of PIR.

Given that the current arrangement causes a serious conflict of interest 
between the organisations:

2.1 What are the current steps being made to move this along? When will 
a new Board be selected?

2.2 What processes to involve the broader community are being undertaken?

Topic 3: ISOC's future

It is notable that in relation to other Internet organisations referred 
to as I* including IETF, ICANN, IAB, Regional Internet Registries. ISOC 
alone today has no operational responsibilities for Internet resources, 
networks, or governance communities. This has frequently led to comments 
by operators in those communities to ask "What is the point of ISOC"?

3.1 What is the Point of ISOC today and into the next five years in the 
CEO's view?
3.1.1 Is there a 5 year strategic plan in place?

3.2 2024 Action Plan
https://www.internetsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/2024-Action-Plan-EN.pdf

Focussing on two topics:
3.2.1 countering Internet threats
3.2.1.1 What kind of threats are in the cross-wires of this action item? 
Threats from UN? Globally? Individual Governments (at national level)? 
Regionally (for example European Commission)? Private Sector (for 
example Network Neutrality or consolidation of Internet resources and 
monopolies)? There number of threats to the Internet are numerous.
3.2.1.2 At what "layer" are these threats mostly going to be?
3.2.1.3 How are these threats going to be decided? Which threat is "more 
important"? Which threat has priority?

3.2.2 defending the Internet in the UN.
This outward facing element of ISOC's advocacy has been missing in the 
past and it would be good to understand what this will comprise, 
particularly w/r/t IG.
Could you please elaborate on what processes will be followed? IGF? 
WSIS? UNGA (with the UN Digital Cooperation Forum)? ECOSOC? UNESCO?

3.2.3 Is ISOC planning to reinvigorate the I* and working with the 
Internet technical community as a whole to mitigate these challenges?

3.3 ISOC Financials
https://www.internetsociety.org/about-internet-society/organization-reports/#financial-reports
2022 Financial Statements show the Internet Society making a loss for 
that year.

3.3.1 Is there oversight and reporting that is specific to keeping track 
of the proportion of .org revenues being spent on internal 
administration and staff compared to funding community works?
The annual financial statements do not show this.
3.3.2 With other I* organisations providing detailed information about 
the management of their projects as well as per department 
cross-referencing, is ISOC prepared to rise up to the levels of 
transparency that are now expected in public benefit entities and to 
produce an annual financial report that provides more information than 
its minimal published financial statement?
3.3.3 Is ISOC ready to publish its financials on multi-year projects 
including its forecasts going forward? Scrutiny of Form 990 appears to 
show random continuity year on year and there is no way to find out what 
is happening?

3.4 MANRS
ISOC made a total divestment of its MANRS project to a US 
not-for-profit, The Global Cyber Alliance (GCA) which has foundational 
links to the City Police in UK and other similar agencies.

3.4.1 Why was this divestiture effected given that this was a successful 
project which comforted the ISOC brand as being pertinent?

3.4.2 Was a risk assessment done prior to moving MANRS elsewhere to an 
organisation so close to law enforcement as to ensuring that the 
Internet Society goals and principles in this important area remain at 
the top of the routing security agenda?

3.4.3 By what criteria was the GCA chosen as an suitable organisation to 
run the MANRS project? Were there conditions imposed on Goals?

3.4.4 Are there Performance Agreements (SLAs) in place for the ongoing 
conditional funding of the GCA?
3.4.4.1 If yes, are there clauses to cancel the GCA Secretarial and 
Operational duties, should it fail in its SLAs?

3.5 Concept of the Internet Society holding network related patents

In a recent conversation on the Internet History Mailing List, Karl 
Auerbach proposed that ISOC or the IETF established an arm that could 
accept and hold network related patents and issue licenses (for 
reasonable low fees and non-discriminatory terms). Vint Cerf replied 
that he liked the idea and that the concept of ISOC being compensated 
for doing so could ease its challenge demonstrating the level of public 
support it has (the so-called IRS Public Support Test) that requires it 
to show that at least 1/3 of its income comes from a broad range of 
public sources.
Would you consider this as a potential responsibility to evolve ISOC?

Topic 4: Operational Issues

4.1 New Chapter Membership Administration System

After more than one month in existence it is clear that the new Chapter 
Membership Administration System is failing to achieve the functions it 
was meant to achieve:
a. emailing members
b. hosting fora for community discussions like the Chapter Advisory 
Council discussions and other fora

To-date the failure of the emailing system is such that even ISOC Staff 
have been unable to use it for any campaign whatsoever.
The discussion fora are completely empty. The porting of old discussions 
has lost all formatting, attached documents etc. Functions like the 
emailing of the fora discussions are non existent.
The system appears to require lots of pre-established templates none of 
which are available.
The list of problems is too long to list here but the result is a loss 
of community history as well as a complete hindrance on membership 
management at Chapter level. ISOC is without a communications tool - a 
tool that should have been at the centre of its operations and that has 
failed to deliver.

4.1.1 What is ISOC planning to do to fix this serious problem?
4.1.2 How long will it take to fix?
4.1.3 If the system is "born dead" would ISOC consider finding an 
alternative system and dropping the current system on the basis that it 
is a failure and immediately proposing an alternative?

4.2 Relationship between Chapters and HQ in matters of national importance

4.2.1 Does ISOC have a rulebook regarding engagement relating to 
Internet policy and advocacy in countries where there is a local Chapter?
4.2.2 How does ISOC align itself with the positions taken by a local 
chapter in a specific territory when ISOC in intervening directly in 
that territory? For example, your visit in the UK is triggered by your 
participation at a conference. How will you align your narrative with 
the Chapter's narrative?

--- end of agenda ---

Thank you for considering these topics. We look forward to a fruitful 
meeting with you.
Safe travels,

Olivier Crépin-Leblond, PhD
ISOC UK England Chair