At 09:10 AM 2/9/99 -0500, Harold Feld wrote:
Quite a thoughtful analysis of the problem of public representation, which I
won't retain here for purposes of bandwidth. What it does for me is bring
to mind a process long used in Oregon for nursing homes, with respect to
residents that cannot or do no know how to proceed with grievances, and
that is the Ombudsman. Either everyone in a nursing home is informed of
the existence of the ombudsman and how to contact him/her, or else in
the event of some unhappy incident, that event by rule must be described in
an "incident report" by the nurse, and a copy of that report has to go to the
Ombudsman. A Net Ombudsman, in the event an NSI failed to carry out
a maintenance request (e.g., a change of ISP) would be informed and
would be down the back of NSI. If some ISP were terminating subscribers
for things not set out in its Accepted Use Policy, or alternatively if some
subscriber were acting outside of the scope of that policy and another
subscriber were complaining to no avail, then again the Ombudsman
would be brought in. Given time to do it, many of us could think up
scenarios in which some alphabet soup organization (e.g., ICANN,
ISOC, whatever) were instituting policies that were detrimental to the
Net as a whole (e.g., holding closed meetings, by golly!!), so then the
Ombudsman (who would have to be given clout, of course) would climb
the frame of ICANN or whoever.
An "Ombudsman" is, in a way, another name for an Inspector General
-- and a sexier name at that. I'm not suggesting that such a mechanism
would solve all problems, but merely that this possibility of ensuring that
the "little people" (you know, the ones who pay taxes?) would be given
a voice with regard to their immediate concerns without having to be
engaged hip deep in Net governance issues might be factored in. It's
would be a bit like the Southern . . . (?) (the exact name escapes me
at the moment) law firm that does racial discrimination cases, the
1000 Friends of Oregon that does environmental cases, etc. Rather
than being a public interest law firm or pressure group such as those,
however, the Office of the Ombudsman would be an integral part of the
Net system, supported by the ISPs (which of course get all their
money from their customers in any event) and the various alphabet soups
(which would hopefully be cut down in number before the alphabet
gets all used up, given that there would be a surcharge to sit down at
the luncheon table).
These last couple of suggestions come right off the top of my head,
and I can see a lot of objections to them, but I would hope that
figuring out the exact mechanics there would not distract from a
thoughtful consideration of the basic Ombudsman notion.
Bill Lovell
