Tag Archives: CIRA

2016 CIRA Board Election Results

Posted on by

The 2016 CIRA Board Election results have been posted on the CIRA website. Congratulations to all the winners and thank you to all of those who supported me.

Election results

CIRA Members voted to elect three directors from the final nomination committee slate and one director from the final Member’s slate, each for a three-year term. The results are:

  • Nomination committee
    candidates

    Rob Villeneuve – 517 (elected)

    Rowena Liang – 450 (elected)

    Alex Beraskow – 387 (elected)

    Lee Dale – 371

    Louise Poirier-Landry – 285

    Michael Zahra – 239

 

  • Member
    candidates

    Louise Macdonald – 262 (elected)

    Lisa Wills – 174

    Frank Michlick – 135

    Stacey Elizabeth Piercey – 131

    Richard Legendre – 80

    Peter Maloney – 63

See you next year 🙂

CIRA 2016 Board Elections – Show of Support Phase

Posted on by

As you might know I’m running in the 2016 CIA board elections. The current phase is the “Show of Support” phase, which means member candidates now have to collect 20 shows of support from the CIRA members to move on to the next phase.

If you are a member already, you should have received an email today that contains your credentials to show support. Here’s how.

Click on the link in the email and you will end up on this page:

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Login with the information from the email.

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Login with the information from the email.

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Agree with the terms and conditions

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Agree with the terms and conditions

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Select your Nominee of choice

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Select your Nominee of choice

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Confirm Selection

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Confirm Selection

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Cast your vote and exit.

CIRA 2016 board election show of support: Cast your vote and exit.

CIRA 2015 Board Elections – show support for your favourite member slate candidate

Posted on by

The “show of support” phase has just started for the 2015 CIRA Board Elections and is open until September 8th, 2015 2pm ET.

Here’s how you show support:

If you are already a CIRA member you should have received the email with the instructions and login information you need to show support.

If you are not a CIRA member yet, hurry – you will need to become a member by August 26, 2015 to vote in this years election.

  1. Click on the link in the email.

    Have a preferred nominee? This is your chance to help them get on the list of final candidates for the 2015 Board of Directors  election.

    As a .CA Member, you play an integral role in CIRA’s governance, and, as a result, in advancing the Internet in Canada. Showing      support for your preferred Member nominee is an important way to get involved in an organization that now, more than ever, represents Canadians and Canadian values online.
    https://participate.cira.ca/IVApp/Voting/default.aspx

    Show your support for your preferred nominee until September 8, 2015 at 2 p.m. ET.

  2. Enter the Show Support ID
  3. Enter the PIN
  4. Enter the CaptchaCIRA 2015 Elections - Member Login
  5. Confirm the member declaration
    CIRA 2015 Elections - Confirm Member Declaration
  6. Pick the candidate you’d like to supportCIRA 2015 Election - Choose candidateClick on “continue”
  7. Confirm the selection – Cast Show of SupportCIRA 2015 Election - Cast Show of Support(example candidate shown above – myself)
  8. Thank you, you’re done.Finish  -  Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) 2015-08-25 13-23-57

 

 

2012 CIRA Board Elections: Nominating Committee did not select me

Posted on by

Once again this year the CIRA Nominating Committee did not select me as one of their candidates for the 2012 CIRA Board of Directors Election. The selected candidates will be published later this week (Thursday).

I did not have high hopes for being selected as this was my third try to get the Nominating Committee’s attention, but I figured it was worth a shot. So what remains is going for the one member-nominated seat.

2012 CIRA Board of Directors Election – Nomination Committee Results

Thank you for your interest in becoming a part of CIRA’s Board of Directors.

 

Your application was one of many applications submitted by an outstanding group of candidates with a broad mix of experience and qualifications. After careful consideration, we regret to inform you that your application was not selected.

 

We appreciate the time you invested in submitting your application and encourage you to continue to participate in the 2012 CIRA Board of Directors Election.

 

If you are a .CA Member you may nominate yourself during the Member Nomination period from July 31 to August 13, 2012. If you are not a .CA Member, someone who is can nominate you.

 

For information about CIRA’s Election process, timelines and rules, visit the CIRA Election website. Please do not hesitate to write to election2012@cira.ca if you have any questions concerning the election.

 

The Internet belongs to all of us, and impacts every aspect of our lives. Your contribution shapes our Internet, our future and ensures .CA continues to be an accessible, secure and trusted Canadian resource. We look forward to your continued participation in the 2012 CIRA Board of Directors Election.

CIRA Nomination Committee

 

Mark your calendar!
July 31 –.CA Members, submit your nominations
August 23 – Show your support for Member Nominees
September 11 – Ask Candidates your questions
September 19 – .CA Members – make your voice heard, VOTE!

 

CIRA Board Elections 2012: Nomination for the three NC seats is open

Posted on by

The CIRA Board Election process for 2012 have started and nominations for candidates for the Nomination Committee (NomCom) are open from May 10 to June 8th, 2012. The NomCom picks the candidate slate that is eligible for three out of the available four board seats.

The Nomination Committee is comprised of the following individuals:

From July 1st to August 13th, members can submit their own nominations for the remaining seat. The candidates that then receive enough show of support vote from August 23rd to September 6th will be candidates in the final election. Member voting for all board seats will be from September 19th to September 26th.

Comments on the proposed CIRA governence changes

Posted on by

Sorry for not posting this earlier – here are the comments that I submitted to the Board of CIRA last week as comments on the proposed governance changes – unfortunately after the deadline though. Looking forward to hearing your opinion in the comments.

Dear CIRA Board:

I apologize for submitting those comments late, but hopefully you can still consider them. I had some pressing matters this week that needed to be attended to first, but still wanted to put my thoughts “out there”. I would like to thank Paul Andersen for taking some time to talk to me about this matter from his perspective. Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

As a CIRA member, domain registrant, consultant to registries, registrars & registrants, as a small business owner with domains and board election candidate in last year’s election I would like to add my comments to the current discussion regarding the proposed CIRA governance changes.

In summary I oppose the changes as proposed.

From my perspective, the selection of the Nomination Committee (NomCom) and the selections of the committee have been an invisible process, so naturally I don’t feel very comfortable with a proposal that gives the NomCom even more power before making it more transparent. Hence I must oppose the proposed changes.

However there are also points in this proposal that I feel I can support – so here are some comments regarding the proposed changes.

1) I support the reduction of the size of the board from 12 to 9 Directors – compared to the size of CIRA itself the board seems like a large component. However I would not make the board any smaller than this, considering the importance of the public resource that is being managed here.

2) I support the introduction of term limits.

3) I support the change from the ex officio Directors to Board Advisors as required by law.

4) I support keeping the 7 day voting period as proposed.

5) I oppose putting the selection of the entire candidate slate into the hands of the NomCom.

Even though the summary for the changes makes it sound like the process of nomination of the candidates would be a _more_open_ process than today, I cannot seem to find any evidence that this will be the case. There appears to solely be a single small change in section 6.01, which refers to the NomCom, namely the addition of a Director from the Board. The opening of the process needs to be more detailed and defined before I would even consider supporting a significant change like this.

6) Voters list now closes 21 days before the AGM – unfortunate, but apparently this is required by the changed law.

7) I support and applaud the proposal to make the annual financial statements available online.

I am not a lawyer, so I’m not sure if the changes are really required through the change of the Not-For-Profit act and have not had time to review the changes in the act. I do understand though that the proposed changes with regards to the election process are in line with how many other Not-for-Profits are governed, however I think the special role of CIRA does require a more open approach.

When reviewing the changes, it appears the need was born out of a perceived threat that 3-4 seats of the board could be taken over by a special interest group over the course of several elections. As Paul Andersen mentioned when I talked to him,  the key question here may be the supposed function and expected function of the board and CIRA itself. What is the composition of the board that is needed for CIRA to reach its and its stakeholder’s goals? I expect this discussion to continue this year.

Some key points that I also like to highlight, as I will also be publishing this on my FrankForCIRA.ca blog, that I am sure the board is aware of:

* As I understand it, if a candidate is supported by 5% of the membership, the board/NomCom will have to add them to the election slate.
* The membership base can force new elections and elect different Directors.
* The membership can also remove an Director in a special meeting.

I would love to see a broader and _public_ discussion of the topic and would love to see CIRA embrace this openness even more than it has so far – there has been some movement in the right direction, but it’s too limited for my taste. Unfortunately we know that participation in CIRA hosted discussion forums has been relatively low and maybe for this reason CIRA decided not to host a forum for this very significant change. I for one think that this is not a decision where feedback should be reviewed behind closed doors, even if there’s still a vote on the topic at the AGM.

My suggestion is to split the changes in two parts in order to have enough time to bring everyone onto the same page and first only implement changes that are required by the changes of the law and     allocate some more time for a broad discussion of any additional changes.

Thank you for reading/listening,
Frank Michlick

CIRA publishes additional presentation highligthing proposed governance changes

Posted on by

While I’m still working on my response to the proposed CIRA government changes, I noticed that CIRA had published a presentation on Slideshare highlighting the changes. I’ve embedded it below.

One issue I noticed is that most of the public comments so far, including Michael Geist, Kevin McArthur and myself jumped on the change that the Nominating Committee is now pre-selecting all of the candidates, which I still believe isn’t that great, but it is worth looking at the background and which changes can or should be done. More about this later today.

Thanks to Paul Andersen, the chair of the CIRA Board of Directors to take some time to talk to me yesterday and outline more of the board’s thought process. He also published a post on CIRA’s blog about the topic yesterday.

CIRA governance update current and proposed process graphics

.CA Registry Plans to Limit Candidate Choice Available to Members

Posted on by

Who would have thought that an email from March 26th that invites CIRA members to “Have [their]your say: CIRA Governance Update” was so loaded. Luckily enough a co-candidate from last year’s board election, Kevin McArthur, spent some time reading about the changes – while I had to filed the email under “read later” for the time being, since I was traveling at the time. CIRA states that the changes are possible due to the new Canada Not-for-Profit Corporations Act. Kevin’s post on the topic is worth a read – he points out that the “Act does not permit the not-for-profit corporation to disallow member nominated directors“. Due to the late hour, I’ll just jump in with a summary of the proposed changes for now, which have me quite shocked.

As you may remember one point of discussion in last year’s election in the forum provided by CIRA was how to make the election process more democratic and encourage more members and stakeholders to participate in the elections. It appears that the board thinks that this can be achieved by cutting the member nominated and endorsed slate of candidates and also have those selected by the Nomination Committee. The Nomination Committee already had the power before to select the candidates for the majority of the available board sears – 3 versus 1 in the 2011 elections.

CIRA was kind enough to illustrate the change on their site.

The election process before the change:
Old CIRA Board Election ProcessThe proposed election process after the change:

New Proposed CIRA Election ProcessWhile I understand and welcome the desire to shorten the election process, I will be opposing the suggested change by emailing governance@cira.ca before the May 2nd deadline. Apparently the comments will not be published (at least not directly) but considered by the board.