-
Thank you for the question Daniel.
The traditional roles for board members you listed above are very important and will always be central to the value of good board governance. Ignoring traditional board responsibilities will only lead to trouble. However, CIRA is in a lucky position where it has a community of members who have self-selected themselves to be concerned about how the Internet impacts millions of Canadians. My vision is to look at creating institutional innovation to leverage the underutilized CIRA membership community through better participation and use of the membership to educate Canadians in their home communities.
My thoughts about leveraging the CIRA community are inspired by my participation in the ICANN community. Although ICANN is more than 20 years old now, I think it can be said that ICANN is an example of institutional innovation that wouldn’t be possible without the Internet. I wouldn’t want to replicate ICANN exactly, because CIRA needs to be an institution that’s built by Canadians and made for Canadian needs, however, ICANN’s use of Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committee helps ICANN produce more effective policy. ICANN uses its membership community to produce more policy work that could not be achieved by only using the limited time of its board members.
This is an opportunity for the CIRA, the board and the membership community. It’s not simple. It won’t be easy to change policy rules, process and culture. It also requires cooperation and buy-in from different stakeholder interests, but I honestly believe we have the potential to create value for Canadians if we look at ways for going beyond the conventional board roles that you mention in your question. If I’m elected to the board, I would use your question to start this conversation with the board and with all members.