Over a week-ago I tweeted that I had experienced NSTIC whiplash yet again and wasn’t sure how to deal with it. I have been known to speak my mind and get some folks really upset for doing so – Given that I know the social media savy NSTIC NPO reads all tweets related to their program they know I said this. They also didn’t reach out to ask what I might be experiencing whiplash about.
First of all since I am big on getting some shared understanding up front – what do I mean by “whiplash” it is that feeling like your going along … you think you know the lay of the land the car is moving along and all of a sudden out of nowhere – a new thing “appears” on the path and you have to slam on the breaks and go huh! what was that? and in the process your head whips forward and back giving you “whip-lash” from the sudden stop/double-take.
I was toddling through and found this post. What does it Mean to Embrace the NSTIC Guiding Principles?
I’m like ok – what does it mean? and who decided? how?
I read through it and it turns out that in September the NPO just decided it would decide/define the meaning and then write it all out and then suggest in this odd way it so often does that “the committees” just go with their ideas.
“We believe that the respective committees should review these derived requirements for appropriate coverage of the identity ecosystem. We look forward to continued progress toward the Identity Ecosystem Framework and its associated trustmark scheme.”
Why does the NPO continue to “do the work” that the multi-stakeholder institution they set up was created to do that is to actually figure out the “meaning” of the document.
Why not come to the Management Council and say – “hey we really need to as a community figure out what it “means” to actually embrace the guiding principles. We need to have a community dialogue that gets to a meaningful concrete list relatively quickly – how should we do that as a community.” Then the Management Council would do its job and “manage” the process and actually figure out 1) if the NPO was right that indeed now would be a good time to figure out the meaning of embrace and 2) then figure out how to do it and the people on the council (and others in the community) who have some experience in leading real mulit-stakeholder efforts and skills inclusive methodologies would have debated and put forward a path. The Secretariate – (if it actually functioned as a support organ for the Management Council) would then help the council carry out the process/method and get to the needed “outcome” some community developed articulation of what embracing the principles means. Instead we just have what the NPO staff thinks. Which while I am sure it is “great” and they are such “hard working, good folks”…it wasn’t community generated and therefore not “owned” by the community which is not good if the outcomes of this effort are to be “trusted” by public at large all the core work items of a mutli-stakeholder institution can’t just be done by the NPO.
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