2007 CIRA Election Flawed
12. Sep, 2007 
14 Comments
After this week’s election mess, CIRA might wish to consider re-branding itself more accurately: The Canadian Ineffectual Registration Apologists. But apologies are not accepted when it comes to denying member votes.
Before you read any further, let me first say that I am a hardcore supporter of membership driven, non-profit organizations. I’m also a fan of many of the staff within CIRA and I empathize with their struggle to provide good customer service, given the fatally flawed membership authentication process used for this year’s elections.
From the outside looking in, it is my personal opinion that CIRA’s latest efforts to register its membership for the upcoming Board of Directors election was based on poor decision making, lackluster execution and even worse, a missing trouble resolution process to fast track members affected by CIRA’s internal mistakes.
For instance, before you can become a voting member of CIRA, you are required to FAX, a 3 page document, complete with government ID, to CIRA. Afterward, membership is confirmed via Email and members are told to expect a “token” by postal mail that will be used to vote. Tomorrow is the deadline for the voting period and two colleagues and I have yet to receive our token by postal mail, which means we will be unable to vote in the election.
I *just* spoke with a CIRA rep and learned that CIRA has incorrectly entered my neatly handwritten membership form into their system. As a result, my confirmation papers were sent 56, not 156 Front Street. A one time event? My colleagues papers were sent to 1516 Front, another non existent address. CIRA confirmed the incorrect addresses and although it is their error, offered me no resolution to this problem: I will be unable to vote by tomorrow’s deadline.
When asked to have the issue escalated, I was told a message could be passed along, but nobody was available to discuss this issue.
Based on my own experiences and after speaking with other CIRA members, I believe this entire election is flawed and the results of the election should not be considered.
- Certain outbound emails sent to members had an incorrect reply-to address (ie. members.services@cira.ca instead of member.services@cira.ca)
- The entire process reeks of legal yada yada. Are the lawyers at CIRA paid by the word and bonuses based on the befuddlement of its members?
- Membership confirmation forms were required to be filled in by hand and FAXed to CIRA, resulting in incorrect information post data entry by CIRA. Two colleagues of mine have reported spelling and address errors in their name or company details and their address was incorrectly recorded.
- Slow/missing authentication tokens sent by postal mail are MIA, with no resolution process.
As a non-profit, it’s hard work keeping members interested in the efforts of the corporation. I have personally invested two hours dealing with my membership confirmation, but in speaking with others, there are some whom have spent several hours on the phone, sending faxes and emails in order to adhere to CIRA’s policies.
Assuming the right people are elected tomorrow, I hope the Board of Directors, recognizing the accountability it has to its members, takes immediate action to correct this mess being passed off as an election.
PS: If you haven’t received your token, or you’re having trouble voting, it’s important to contact CIRA asap. By phone: 1-877-913-5335 or by web: CIRA Member Website.
I’m with you Ben. the entire election process is a sham. I moved in the 3 months it took to get all the paperwork completed, and they wont change my address and let me vote. Make that three friends with issues.
It’s disappointing to say the least Mark. I would love to sit down with the folks at CIRA and outline a process that would work for them. The fact that FAX machines and Postal mail were the main source of communication is an easy indicator this event was a failure from the beginning.
Ben,
Thank you for your email alerting me to your blog post. I replied
Unfortunately your email arrived in my inbox at 4:06 and I will not be able to collect the facts of the matter specific to your case until tomorrow AM; before I make any comment I would like to have the opportunity to familiarize myself with the situation you describe.
A large number of Members have already cast their votes, both online and in person at our Annual General Meeting last week in Toronto so the process is working for a vast majority of our membership. That said, in any large-scale activity like this involving a significant number of Members (currently, almost 15,000 strong) problems will occasionally arise. A small number of Members have contacted us with concerns or issues and whenever and wherever possible we have accommodated because the participation of our Membership is critical to us.
I will be in contact tomorrow once I have more information about your situation.
Best regards,
David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)
david.hicks@cira.ca
613.237-5335 x292
A retry – I tried to post earlier today (5ish EST) but it appears that it didn’t make it.
…
Thank you for your email alerting me to your blog post.
Unfortunately your email arrived in my inbox at 4:06 and I will not be able to collect the facts of the matter specific to your case until tomorrow AM; before I make any comment I would like to have the opportunity to familiarize myself with the situation you describe.
A large number of Members have already cast their votes, both online and in person at our Annual General Meeting last week in Toronto so the process is working for a vast majority of our membership. That said, in any large-scale activity like this involving a significant number of Members (currently, almost 15,000 strong) problems will occasionally arise. A small number of Members have contacted us with concerns or issues and whenever and wherever possible we have accommodated because the participation of our Membership is critical to us.
I will be in contact tomorrow once I have more information about your situation.
Best regards,
David
David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)
Here here! I also called CIRA to ask where my membership confirmation package was. Turns out it was just taking a really long time (no surprise). Then I had to sign for it, which meant I to take a trip to the post office to get it. I imagine others weren’t willing to jump through so many hoops.
When I found out I needed a token to vote, I dug around for the paperwork, only to realize that what I had found was a token to confirm my address and that I had no idea where the VOTING token was … I finally found it. Lucky me …
How much money did CIRA spend on this totally ill conceived process?
CIRA didn’t require a fax from me, I filled in my application on line, and I got a 1GB flash drive, it was pretty painless. I got my token on Friday, voted today.
And the 1GB stick isn’t too bad, its fast enough for Vista’s Readyboost.
Um… how long have you been dealing with these jokers, and did you really expectt he experience to be anything different?
CIRA could give a flying f–k about the body of individuals they claim they represent. There have been several registrars who violate terms of their agreements, countless registrants who do the same, and a body that is more interested in upping revenue over actually managing the TLD.
They’re worse than NS with .com, which is too bad, because they used to be one of the best managed TLDs out there.
- kev
P.S. – Doug, I’m glad you got the shiny toy. It makes me happy to see that you got something to play with. It’s good to see they’re passing out the “ooh… shiny!!!” toys instead of actually making registrars do what they’ve comitted to.
Ouch Kev… be nice to Doug… he’s only reporting on his experience with CIRA. I’m actually glad to hear that somebody has had a positive experience with the election.
As for CIRA and their intentions, I really believe that SOME people within the organization want to make changes, but they’re missing the leadership to make that happen. I hope to have further dialog with them on this matter tomorrow… but we’ll see.
Ben -
Yes, we will talk tomorrow.
Re-reading your original post, you state: “For instance, before you can become a voting member of CIRA, you are required to FAX, a 3 page document, complete with government ID, to CIRA.”
This is not entirely true – the paper forms were only used by CIRA in a small number of circumstances where additional information was required (for example, the wrong Registrant information was present.)
There may have been some confusion surrounding the use of paper forms as one of our Registrars sent out an email directing people to the paper forms towards the end of the Membership campaign.
The paper forms themselves consist of a 1-page form for individuals (technically the document is 2 pages, but the first one is a brief instruction sheet) http://www.cira.ca/en/forms/membership/membership_photoid_ind.pdf
. There is a 2-page form for non-individuals, e.g. corporations, but it is not applicable to a vast majority of our Members.
In either case, the forms were unnecessary for a huge portion of our Membership. Starting in April of this year we sent email invitations to all dot-ca Registrants inviting them to participate. The process was conducted through an online application (linked from the email), followed by a brief telephone call to confirm your address, and concluded with a letter with a confirmation code. Almost 14,000 Members became members this way. Another 400 became members in person (using the aforementioned forms) at trade shows we participated in, leaving approximately 600 Members (less than 4%) to complete the process via paper forms due to exceptions.
David
David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)
As a former board member, I can say that contrary to some people’s opinions, the board and the staff do have the best interests of all at heart.
I have sat through the discussions about “bad” registrars and “bad” registrants. Sometimes the issues are far more complex that what the public sees, and the decisions are based on a consensus, which factors in alot of things.
I didn’t agree with all of the decisions, but I can state that the decisions were all reached after thorough discussions and debate.
I was involved in the discussions a couple years ago about attempting to tighten the legitimacy of the voting membership, as the previous regiments were far too fast and loose, and gave an inordinate amount of influence to a small number of people.
I recall that the imposition of a policy towards requiring one member/one vote was not a small, nor quick decision.
How it ended up as being an offline procedure, I don’t know.
I’m currently living in the middle east, and as best I can tell, my voter token is sitting in a shoe box at my parent’s place in Canada (who are currently on vacation).
I will admit that I’ve been quite distant from CIRA (physically and mentally), and was not paying attention to developments. So, when the elections came up, I just assumed that the token or whatever would be emailed.
I am annoyed that I won’t be voting in this election, but I don’t know that I would call for the election to be abandoned, as I know that the next board will be looking into this and attempting to fix the bits that are broken.
David,
Thanks for the info, I’m glad to hear that many users did not have to follow the same process that stunted me.
I was given the paper form by a CIRA staff member at the IT360 show in Toronto and told I *had* to fill the paper form in so I could authenticate. I would have gladly used the alternate, web based process if I knew one existed. The question of the day is: “Why are there multiple processes to follow and what is CIRA doing to make sure their staff are trained on the proper process?”
My other concern was with respect to the overall apathetic attitude I experienced dealing with the CIRA staff by phone. “Can’t”, “Unable”, “Sorry” were three words constantly repeated during our conversation. If the process has worked so well, than one has to wonder why these individuals appear to be swamped by phone calls from frustrated members.
I’m not on the inside at CIRA; I can’t comment on the number of success or failure of what still appears to be a flawed elections process.
All I can do is take your communications at face value and trust that you are relaying more than just marketing “spin” to CIRA members.
Ben,
Further to our email earlier and you comments above…
The paper process was available at tradeshows because onsite we don’t have the space or equipment to set up kiosks – plus tradeshow network connections are, at best, flakey.
The form is fairly short and straightforward and takes a couple of minutes to complete. I was in attendance at the shows myself and we had almost 400 people complete the process on site between 3 events.
The reason you did not receive an email invitation is because you did not have a domain name where you were you were listed as administrative contact prior to the end of June when we finished sending invitations out.
I will be investigating your concerns about the ‘apathetic attitude’ you describe but can’t comment on this now. As I mentioned earlier, we have had a small number of calls and email about voting tokens and we have been working to get tokens to people as quickly as possible. A replacement token was sent to you yesterday after you contacted us and hopefully has arrived by now.
As for ‘spin’, I’m very much hands on and direct as I’m sure you’ve witnessed from our email correspondence and my comments here (and elsewhere.) I was present at our AGM in Toronto last week where I had the opportunity to talk with almost 300 Members in person, and I have attended all our tradeshows this year to meet with the public and our Membership. As someone ‘inside CIRA’ I can assure you, and all our Members, that we take our Member concerns seriously and that we are always looking for ways to improve our processes based on feedback. Mistakes do happen for a variety of reasons and when they do are we make every effort to resolve the issues to your satisfaction.
David
David Hicks
Director of Marketing and Communications
Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA)