The below strikes me as political doublespeak and weaselwords. One observation I'd like to share is that people who regularly quote the large dollar values of their lofty goals and the Very Important Money they want to wield are out of step with the nature of this audience.


2009/7/9 Michael Wallmannsberger <michael@wallmannsberger.com>
This is a difficult question to answer in this forum, not least because a discussion could stray far from the purpose of the list. However, issues that may affect the operation of the SRS and DNS are highly relevant and the topic has been raised, so I think you deserve an answer.

I want to avoid dredging up the past or giving an impression that I think there is any one person or event that has given rise to "problems" at InternetNZ. There are likely to be at least as many accounts of what has gone on as there are people involved and, in fairness, I think everyone who has participated in the running of InternetNZ has done so in good faith, with honest intentions and for the greater good. The organisation has grown quickly and its needs have changed substantially. We used to be a volunteer organisation and now we are a $6 million per annum provider of national critical infrastructure, a lobby group and market regulator. The pace of change means we sometimes find that structures, processes and even people that were once right are no longer what we need today.

The detail is deathly boring but you could get a flavour of some of the issues confronting the organisation by reading the Council papers at http://internetnz.net.nz/proceedings/council. This will also give you an idea of the quality of information and analysis that the Council has to base its decision making on (often inadequate, in my view).

One way to summarise the "problems" is to say that the organisation has been relatively poorly governed, is overly complex and is disengaged from its key constituencies and stakeholders.

InternetNZ is a high-potential organisation that is performing well in a number of areas (e.g. running the registry, managing .nz policy, some aspects of domestic and international advocacy) but is performing below its potential in many respects. We could do better with our website, the quality of our membership offering, the size of our membership base, managing our money, our policy and advocacy work in New Zealand and the quality of our strategy and decision making.

As an anecdote, our most recent members' consultation meeting in Auckland was attended by, I think, just three members who were not staff or paid directors. One of those members was new to InternetNZ and observed to me afterwards that the meeting was evidence of a "wasted opportunity". An organisation with our kind of resources and relevance should be able to engage with its stakeholders better than that.

The performance of the Council and leadership are key to unlocking the organisation's potential. A lack of clarity and agreement about the respective roles of the Council members and staff is one major issue that has held the Society back. An organisation of the scope and scale of InternetNZ needs to be professionally run. In order for the Council, representing the members, to be able to shape and steer the organisation, there must be a clear distinction and a constructive relationship between governance and management.

I am advocating, as a way forward, a different mix of skills, perspective and behaviours amongst councillors. Only the InternetNZ members can decide in favour of that. That is what the election is about.

Regards,

Michael