Council conduct and declarations of interest

Whom this code binds

This code binds everyone who takes part in the councils of the family's products:

• every council member: a person who holds a seat, and the representative who votes a seat for an organisation;
• every alternate;
• every member of a committee;
• the members of the Joint Council;
• Tier 0, and each person who acts for Tier 0 in governance.

Taking a seat, or acting for one, is accepting this code. The governance charter's shared part, which binds GOpenCDR, GOpenCNR and GOpenCSR, makes it binding in every council of every product and in the Joint Council.

Duties

• Act for the whole. Everyone bound by this code acts in the interest of the namespace and the network as a whole, not in the interest of an employer or a client. Where an organisation holds a seat, its representative may cast a ballot on the organisation's instruction, and the ballot is then published with that marker, so that everyone can see whose judgement it carries.
• Keep confidential what is confidential:
• a confidential motion, and the sealed votes of a motion whose votes are confidential, as far as the motion's state requires;
• who sponsored a motion, until the council's next session starts, and who withdrew a sponsor vote, for good;
• personal data seen in council work;
• security matters.

This duty does not end when the seat does.

• No gain from what is not public. Do not use information you have only because of your seat for your own gain or anyone else's, for example by obtaining a name or address space ahead of a decision you know of.
• No trading of votes. Do not offer, ask for or accept anything in return for a vote, a sponsor vote or support for a petition.
• Conduct yourself with respect, in sessions, in comments and in the community pool. Argue against positions, never against people.

Declarations of interest

What is declared:

• employment and paid roles;
• roles in organisations that hold resources in any of the products;
• operator roles, such as running a TLD, a mirror, a hub or transit;
• resources held, in any of the products, and their scale: names, TLDs, allocations, ASNs and hubs, with their number or size;
• anything else a reasonable person would see as a conflict with council work.

Family details are not declared, beyond what a particular conflict needs to be understood.

By whom. Everyone this code binds, including Tier 0's people.

When. On taking a seat, before the first vote; without delay whenever something declared changes; and confirmed every year. A declaration not confirmed within the year is shown as overdue.

Where. Declarations are public on the Interests pages of GOpenCSR's governance site at csr.gplatform.org, with the date each was last confirmed and when the next confirmation is due.

For how long. A declaration stays public for good, with the record: it is kept beside the votes it relates to, so that every vote can be read with the interests declared when it was cast. A declaration that has been replaced stays readable as it was.

Recusal

• Seat holders and representatives recuse on any matter about their own resources or about their own organisation. This applies to elected, appointed and ex officio seats alike, and to the members of committees.
• Tier 0 recuses too, once a council has an elected majority. Tier 0 does not recuse in a council until a majority of its seats is elected. From then on, on a matter about Gelhaus Solutions' own resources, Tier 0's block seats in that council abstain, as any member would, so that an interested block is never decisive.
• A seat that recuses casts no ballot on the matter, and does not give its proxy or its sponsor vote on it.
• Every recusal is recorded, with the seat, the person and the reason, and published with the vote, within what the motion's state allows.
• If in doubt, declare the interest and recuse.

Breaches, and what follows

A council may act on a breach of this code by one of its members, or by a member of one of its committees, by motion:

• censure, which is published;
• suspension from a committee;
• a request for the person's removal, under the product's charter and the council's rules of procedure.

The person concerned is heard before the council decides, and recuses from the vote. A breach involving personal data or a security matter may also be a matter for the law.

Complaints

Anyone may complain about a breach of this code to contact@gplatform.org. Say who the complaint is about, what happened, and what shows it. We put the complaint before the council concerned, and the person complained about takes no part in deciding it.

Personal data

Declarations of interest name the person who makes them and, like recorded votes, are published so that the councils can be held to account (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). They hold only what this code asks for. They stay public for good, with the record, as do the seats held, recorded votes, tabled motions, sponsors once published, and public comments. What else we process about council members, and your rights, are set out in the GOpenCSR privacy notice.

Changes

This code is one of GOpenCSR's shared policies, and it changes by global motion, as the governance charter's shared part sets out. Every version is kept in the document archive.