[ARIN-consult] ACSP Consultation 2022.2: Consultation on Elections and the Nomination Process

[ARIN]

The Board of Trustees maintains authority over the scope, mission, and along with the President and Chief Executive Officer establishes ARIN’s strategic direction and fiscal oversight. The Board also has oversight authority of the nomination, appointment, and election of individuals to Board committees and similar roles.

Over the past two years, as part of its fiduciary duties, the ARIN Board of Trustees (“Board”) has undertaken a review of ARIN’s governance structures, including Elections and Nominations processes. As part of this effort, an independent, outside consultant was engaged to review ARIN’s governance structures and provide recommendations.

One recommendation that has arisen from this governance review is to make changes to the existing election and nomination processes. The proposed changes will ensure board independence, transparency, and impartiality.

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Board Guidance Letter

• The Board Guidance Letter (for each of the Board of Trustees and the Advisory Council) contains "Highly Recommended" and "Recommended" attributes and assigns a weighting to each attribute.

• The evaluation of each candidate would be tied to the degree to which each attribute was satisfied.

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Nomination Committee Selection

• The Nomination Committee (NomCom) has seven members in total, with the members serving staggered two-year terms to ensure continuity and succession planning. The NomCom Board members select non-board members via an open call for nominations, appointing two or three members per year to reach the total membership of seven. Up to two Advisory Council (AC) members can serve on the NomCom.

• The NomCom is chaired by a Board Member.

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Nominations

Anyone can self-nominate by completing the questionnaire for the position sought. Nominees must reside within the ARIN region.

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Review of Potential Candidates

• The Nomination Committee (NomCom) would review nominees based on the Board Guidance Letter, responses to questionnaires, responses to third-party interviews (Board of Trustees only), material issues from background checks (Board of Trustees only) and the review of ARIN files, and other information available to the NomCom.

• The Board Guidance Letter defines "Highly Recommended" and "Recommended" attributes. The NomCom would classify each qualified nominee as "Well Qualified," "Qualified" or "Qualifications not Demonstrated" based on evaluation of these attributes, in a fashion like that used by the American Bar Association (ABA) Federal Judiciary process. All qualified nominees would be added to the slate as candidates for election. The reasons for classifications would be published when the slate is announced.

• The NomCom would evaluate each nominee on each weighted attribute to inform the classification process. Any nominee classified as “Unable to Qualify” would not be added to the slate.

• Nominee questionnaires would include questions about the attributes defined in the Board Guidance Letter.

• The NomCom would report on the total number of individuals assessed for the election cycle.

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Background Check Process

The process is outlined in ARIN’s Election Processes document (Section V(e)) and remains unchanged.

ARIN’s GC and Sr. Director of HR & Administration (HR Director) will arrange for a third- party vendor to conduct background checks for selected nominees. ARIN’s GC and HR Director will review the reports for each nominee and determine if there are any material issues with their background. If any material issues are found, they will review the nature of the background issue with the nominee. If after consultation with the nominee, ARIN’s GC and HR Director still deems the issue as material, they will notify the nominee that the relevant information will be provided to the NomCom unless the nominee withdraws their candidacy. Relevant material information may include information, if any, from a former ARIN volunteer’s or former ARIN employee’s individual file. A nominee will be given the opportunity to provide a statement addressing the issue which will also be provided to the NomCom. If the nominee does not withdraw their candidacy, the relevant information including the nominee’s statement, if any, will be provided to the NomCom for consideration.

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Board Proposal:

ARIN will make changes to the selection of the NomCom, the Nomination process, and the candidate review and rating system.

The proposed changes will ensure board independence, transparency, and impartiality. ARIN seeks community feedback on these proposed changes: https://www.arin.net/participate/community/acsp/consultations/2022/2022-2/

This consultation will remain open for 15 days.

An Appendix FAQ that further details the rationale for these changes and additional information is available at: https://www.arin.net/participate/community/acsp/consultations/2022/FAQAppendix_202202consult.pdf

Please provide comments to arin-consult at arin.net. You can subscribe to this mailing list at: http://lists.arin.net/mailman/listinfo/arin-consult.

Discussion on arin-consult at arin.net will close on 28 February 2022.

Regards,  

John Curran  
President and CEO  
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)