grandin said:
jac you wrote: Nominet is acknowledged by the UK Government as the manager of the .uk domain and is in regular contact with the government. Whilst there may be no official agreement between Nominet and the Government there are various crown/civil servants from the DTI, OIC, Cabinet Office and House of Lords sitting on the Policy Advisory Board, so the government is well represented at all levels.
Interesting comment.....what I presume the PAB want is hard to implement given the current structure within Nominet.
Votes, Votes, Votes....if I had to get my staff to vote for all my changes I think I would sell out and move on.....what can Nominet actually do without gaining Votes from members?
What the PAB wants is dialogue and (perhaps surprisingly to some) much of the same stuff you guys argue on Acorn Domains. However, the stumbling block seems to be that some of the arguments on this board as highly
subjective when the PAB has to be totally
objective; otherwise it simply cannot be representative of the 'collective'; the wider stakeholder communities. If you look at the composition of the PAB you will see representatives from the DTI, CBI, ICO, Cabinet Office, House of Lords, Institute of Trademark Attorneys, Federation of Small Businesses, Oxford Internet Institute, and then 8 elected members who comprise employees of ISPs, Richard Martin (domainer), Hazel Pegg (not for profit in Glastonbury), Sebastien Lahtinen who runs both
www.adslguide.org.uk and his own network (Telehouse and Redbus) offering colocation/dedicated servers, IP transit and IT consultancy for SMEs around the world.
Generally, Nominet follows the advice given by the PAB, so the communication bridge between the PAB and the board works reasonably well. There are of course some fiercely contested points at times, but that (IMHO) is what consensus is about; finding a middle ground that we can all live with.
On the question of "what can Nominet actually do without gaining Votes from members?" Actually, not a lot at present, which in the fast moving world of the internet is not even close to ideal. A balance has to be found between giving Nominet's board more freedom to make critical day to day decisions and ensuring we do not leave gaps open that a "bad board" could abuse in the future; but the balance simply has to be found and Nominet needs to be able to react more quickly to opportunities; without having to divulge commercially sensitive information to its members on every occasion, or ask the members everytime it wants to take a decision on prices or services. And before the usual suspects say this might be given the board too much authority, I would say this. It is not in the interests of any board to do anything that might elicit a "no confidence" vote from its members or shareholders, and someone has to trust someone somewhere otherwise business just marks time. As you point out, "if I had to get my staff to vote for all my changes I think I would sell out and move on".
Regards
James Conaghan
[PAB Member]
