Dev Anand Teelucksingh: ….at 11 after we will be beginning this call. Good day, good evening everyone. This is the At-Large Regional Secretariat teleconference. Can we now get a roll call and apologies as to who is on the call?
Gisella Gruber-White: On today’s call we have Tijani Ben Jemaa, Oksana Prykhodko, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Wolf Ludwig, Darlene Thompson, Dave Anand Teelucksingh. We have apologies from Beau Brendler; and from staff we have Seth Greene and myself, Gisella Gruber. And if I can just remind you just to state your names for transcript purposes. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thank you Gisella. And this is Dev. Okay, on the agenda we have the review, revision and adoption of the Secretariat Improvement Plan slotted for fifteen minutes.
Gisella Gruber-White: Sorry, this is Gisella. Just to note there, I don’t know if you were on the call when I mentioned that that is something from the previous meeting. I didn’t know if it needed to be discussed. I left it up there but if it’s not something we wish to have discussed I’m happy to remove it.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Ah, well I’ll ask the group. Do we want to look at the Secretariat Improvement Plan? This has been the Google spreadsheet that we have used showing the various proposals split up into various parts about what we need to do and so forth. I think we last updated it before Cartagena; I don’t think we really did any changes in San Francisco. Tijani, go ahead.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, thank you. I don’t think that we have to address this issue now. I have had a look on it and I think it must be first updated. It’s not up-to-date. And second, I don’t think that it is the right moment to discuss it. We have Singapore, to discuss our items to be discussed at Singapore so we have to focus on that.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. Okay, I see Wolf Ludwig has agreed with you, Tijani. Okay, well then with that can I recommend that we defer this to Singapore? Is everyone in agreement with that or does anyone have any comments on this Secretariat Proposals for Improvement? Going once, going twice…Okay.
Excellent. So the next item on the agenda – discuss possible agenda items for the Regional Secretariat’s meeting in Singapore. Wolf, you posted yesterday regarding the possibility of a coordinated procedure for how to deal with inactive ALSes. Would you like to just give a brief outline of what you mentioned?
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, if you would like, this is Wolf speaking. While some of you may know or have realized, we have a voting at EURALO on our bylaw modifications, on our bylaw amendments. And this was the second consultation of our voting procedure we had over the last six months; the one before was on the voting Board director, our regional consultation. And opportunities like this always show how far our members are involved or participating in this kind of important RALO procedures, etc.
And we again, we’re facing the situation that some of our members, even if they are few do not participate at all and two of them, three of them over longer period of time. And this brought me again to the point that what we discussed before at various ICANN meetings, that I’m not prepared to except this situation any longer and I think there is a need to do something about completely inactive members. And so far I drafted this proposal which for the moment is based on some EURALO consideration but this may also be useful for other RALOs.
And as a RALO itself or the RALOs have no legitimation of certification or decertification – this is ALAC who is in charge of that – I think that there should be a coordinated approach among all RALOs; and if possible, if we can find some common ground and some common rules, some common procedures this could be extremely useful because I wouldn’t feel comfortable to start something isolated on a EURALO level, not knowing what other RALOs think about this or what are their ideas on it.
So far I consider this as a discussion paper and as we repeatedly discussed this I think that now’s the time to get further and to come up with some kind of conclusions or some kind of decisions.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thank you Wolf. I see Tijani, you have your hand up. Go ahead.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, thank you Wolf for this introduction, and you know that your concern is our concern. All the RALOs have the same concern about the inactive ALSes. You remember the email exchange between me and Jean-Jacques about the one application, and this point was raised. I also appreciate what Dev and LACRALO have drafted about the way to manage this situation, and I find it flexible and efficient because the main problem is the quorum, the main problem is the election. The main problem is we have 22 ALSes but people who are there, people who are always there, you can count them on your fingers of one hand, or perhaps two hands maximum.
The others don’t show up. Some are absent since I entered AFRALO, and some become more and more absent. So we need them for our quorum. We need them for our election, and we cannot say that we have had a good election if only six or seven people vote. It will not be a good election. It will not be really an election, so we have this big problem.
Of course we don’t want to have ALSes that are inactive, that are silent, always silent; but it is less problematic if we find a way to remove them from the quorum, to remove them from any election if they are not active. And we have to set up certain [metrics] to decide on how active they are and what is the limit? What is the position from which we come to say they are inactive?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thank you. I see Darlene?
Darlene Thompson: Hi. Just as a response to what Tijani said, one thing that the North American RALO has done in the quorum issue is it’s stating in our operating procedures that quorum is only for active ALSes. And then in another paragraph we have that when an ALS representative does not vote in three consecutive NARALO elections and does not contribute a comment on ICANN policies through collaboration on the At-Large discussion lists in twelve consecutive months, it automatically loses its voting rights and active status within the NARALO.
So therefore it’s not considered as being active and therefore does not negatively impact our quorum. Then it further goes on to say that the ALS should be notified of the status change and it can regain its voting rights and active status if within the next twelve months it participates or votes. If in that twelve month period it doesn’t do it then we can request that ALAC decertify. We have never gone as far as requesting that ALAC decertify, but at least it doesn’t negatively impact our voting procedures, our quorum.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. Okay, Darlene, thanks. Wolf, I see you have your hand still up? Is this a new comment you want to make?
Wolf Ludwig: It’s a new comment.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, go ahead and then Olivier.
Wolf Ludwig: I would like to add, it’s Wolf speaking. I’m very grateful about any further input I got from LACRALO in the meantime and also the explanations from NARALO, from Darlene, because this is a very useful complimentary situation. And to be honest, when we had our last bylaw votings, it’s always kind of an effort to mobilize the memberships. If you just put a posting on our mailing list announcing that there is a voting tool, etc., and there is a set deadline of seven days, according to my experience many members wouldn’t spontaneously oblige themselves to respond to the appeal.
Therefore we always need to further mobilize by calling them, by Skypeing them, by sending them SMSs, etc., reminding them that there is an important issue at stake and please participate. And this normally with some additional efforts have worked out properly, but there was this moment where I had the scenario: what about if we won’t find the necessary quorum for a modification of bylaws amendment which needs two-thirds of the membership, which is rather high? And then taking into consideration that for sure three or seven no matter whatever I do never ever will participate.
And this is a very important issue I think, therefore at EURALO I would like to introduce rules which are already applied in other RALOs, like NARALO or LACRALO, that they are somehow reduced from the quorum if you cannot count on them. This is a very important additional step I would like to include also as a regular procedure I would like to suggest for EURALO as well. I consider this extremely useful. Thank you very much.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: This is Dev. Thank you, Wolf. Olivier?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. Olivier for the record. I just wanted to comment on something which Darlene said, actually – the idea of keeping an ALS listed but not keeping it in the totals is something that might seem interesting for some cases. But I think that in other cases it might not work. One specific case that I can think of is if an At-Large Structure organization does not exist anymore, and usually what happens is they don’t tell you that they don’t exist – they just stop existing. You try and get hold of them and there’s no one at the other end of the line; and the organization you find out through maybe other means, has completely disappeared.
The people have moved, maybe gone somewhere else, and the organization does not exist. And so it’s very difficult to get any confirmation from anyone there that they’ve disbanded, in which case what is their worth? I mean there must be a way that upon a certain set of conditions of that organization not existing it can be delisted. It’s without prejudice – it’s just the fact that how can an organization be taken into account if it doesn’t exist anymore?
One of the concerns is because in some countries, and I’m not going to say which country, but let’s say for an ISOC chapter. Some ISOC chapters are mutually exclusive – there can only be one per geographic location; and some ISOC chapters might have disappeared altogether or might have been delisted by ISOC, and then a new ISOC chapter would be created. And that new ISOC chapter would then have a problem applying as an ALS if the old ISOC chapter still existed.
I mean there would be a future confusion. So I hope you get the idea. Sometimes I think in some cases we need to look at a fast way to be able to delist At-Large structures, and I’m speaking here with my old Secretary hat which of course I’m passing over to Oksana. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thank you Olivier. This is Dev, just a comment on that: I mean I understand fully and agree with you Olivier, because what happens typically is the ALS representative or the organization, they move on and there’s apparently no transfer or notification that this has happened. So literally what I call- Like recently the Secretariat election in LACRALO, and where we required a certain quorum in order for the motion to elect a Secretariat to pass. But I was calling around and you know, doing all of these things – you call them, you text them, you Skype them, all these things, and you call the organization and they have absolutely no idea what is ICANN or anything like that.
So obviously there’s going to have to then be an effort there to educate them and so forth, which is a little difficult to do over the phone. Just to point out what LACRALO is looking at, it’s also looking at the quorum issue because you know, we don’t have enough, we barely have enough ALSes to meet quorum in teleconference calls. So we initially started looking at quorum but what some of the more active ALSes feel is that looking at an ALS’s involvement and participation. And this is what the document that I posted to the list early this morning was trying to come up with – a system of trying to identify those that are not as involved before it gets to the stage of “we can’t hear from them at all”; and try to encourage them and point them in the right direction as to how to get involved and so forth.
The difficulty as Tijani mentioned is the metrics: what exactly is the threshold of enough involvement? For example, ALSes that just vote, while they help in meeting quorum in key decisions we want ALSes to do more than that. We want them to actually be involved in defining our policy discussions and making the comments on those types of things. So that’s the real difficulty – what is the threshold of the criteria? And not dependent on certain calls, emails to the list, because you know… And there’s also been a huge discussion about what is involvement, what is participation?
A person who says “okay” or “+1” on a mailing list, is that really effective participation? But how again do you measure that? So right now I think we’re just going to try to focus on the involvement, which I think is an easier metric. So okay, I’m not sure who put their hand up first. I’ll just go with Tijani and then Olivier.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes. Thank you. I do agree with you, Dev, because if people vote only they will give us a wrong result of the vote because they are giving a vote and they are not involved. They don’t know what is happening.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: That’s right.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: So voting is not enough, and I think that we have to set metrics for participation, if it be the case of only email exchanges or any form of participation. And we have to discuss those metrics together, and I propose that in Singapore everyone come with the proposal so that we can together compile them and find if you want a compromise that we can propose to ALAC, not to ALAC, to the RALOs. Excuse me.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Tijani, thanks, and I think I agree with you – we should try to come up with some coordinated metrics I think. It’ll be useful for all the RALOs. Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. Olivier for the record. I totally agree with Tijani – the metrics, all of that should be worked out in Singapore. I was also going to suggest the designing of a flowchart there which – I’m sorry to keep pointing t at you, Dev, but the designing of a flowchart which effectively takes the different cases into account. Because clearly we have a case of ALSes who do not fully participate, ALSes that are still around but are just not reachable at all; ALSes that have completely disappeared off the face of the planet and are confirmed as having been disbanded, in which case these could probably go through a fast track or something.
And I think the only way to be able to show all this is using a flowchart so that it will just absolutely be clear for everyone. On top of that I think there’s also an issue with ALSes participating through only one participant, and when that participant disappears the ALS doesn’t even know what’s going on. I’m a bit concerned about this because I thought that participants would need to reflect the mood in their At-Large Structure. If they are just an individual they would have to join through another path, but I thought they were supposed to make sure that they involved their At-Large Structure.
And that might be a parallel thing that we need to do, which is establish stronger channels of communication with not only the one individual of that At-Large Structure but also with other individuals in the At-Large Structure to have a backup so that the organization is what’s there. The individuals might change but the organization keeps on going. And that’s one thing, when you start formalizing things and it’s the same thing I guess in ALAC and At-Large: we have to have processes that formalize things in a way that when we’re going to be gone our successors will be able to do exactly the same thing and work in an as-harmonious time as we are working. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thank you, Olivier. I fully agree with you. I see Wolf has… I think I saw ticks from Tijani and Darlene for the record. Wolf, go ahead.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, thanks Dev. Actually I’ve a really important question – how to measure participation? And according to my experience at EURALO this is one of the most difficult questions because we have a number of ALSes that do not participate on the mailing list. Often I know that they are reading the information but they are rarely responding to it; but what I know about them, that they are highly active at the spot in their country. A couple of ALSes in Germany, they are really among the leading NGOs in the country as far as internet governance or users’ rights are concerned.
And if I know that they are active on the ground this for me is enough proof that they exist, that they are concerned, that they are committed even if they are not very proactive in EURALO. Therefore I’m rather satisfied by knowing that they do something in our common interest or pursuing our common goals. My minimum criteria would therefore be a regular participation in votings.
And the question raised by Darlene – who should follow this up? Is this something in the responsibility of At-Large staff? I would rather say this should be in the authority of the RALO itself because I guess we are much closer or we should be closer to our members, and we should be in charge of mobilizing them. We should be in charge of keeping contact with them, knowing what they are doing; and we cannot delegate this function out to At-Large I think.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thank you, Wolf. I see Darlene has her hand up. Go ahead, Darlene.
Darlene Thompson: I agree that the function can’t be delegated to At-Large staff. I’m just wondering you know, who keeps track of the actual metrics of who hasn’t participated in a list for a year or two years, or whatever the standard is? Because I frankly don’t keep track of each and every one of our ALSes, and “Oh, have they said anything for the last year or not? I haven’t heard from them for a while but has it been a year? I don’t know.” So it’s just about the metrics.
Now then obviously it would be up to the RALO leadership to follow-up with that ALS but I’m just wondering for the actual statistics who would be keeping track of that? Does staff have that ability? I’m sorry, that was Darlene Thompson.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: This is Dev. Well, as a response to that it has to fall to the Secretariat, I think, to actually do the tracking. Because as Wolf said and you also stated, Darlene, we are closer to the regions than the staff. What I was thinking of is if you look at some of the simpler ways of automating it; for example, you have a spreadsheet of the meeting attendants for the conference calls. And you’d have a spreadsheet that has an automatic totaling so you can see which ALSes are at least very clearly not attending.
And then I know on the At-Large mailing list there’s like a counter which shows how many emails have been posted by a particular person, and there is like a weekly summary generated. So perhaps there is something similar that can be implemented for our discussion lists. And at least those two metrics which are currently automated as much as possible might be a good way of seeing which ones are definitely not involved. I see Olivier and then Tijani. Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thanks very much, Dev, Olivier for the record. I think you just touched on this – the automation part. Soon we will be reintroducing the performance metrics of ALAC members because it’s good to be able to track and to have a dashboard on what’s happening and who’s doing what, and how is everyone attending or not attending or performing because we owe it to our members to be as performant as we can. So that will be introduced.
There was one that was in place before but it was extremely hard to work it out, and a lot of work for staff to keep it up to date. If we could have a tool or if we could make some kind of automated process to make it as easy as possible for RALOs to fill those attendance statistics, would this be something that people would be happy with?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: This is Dev. I would think yes, if there was some mechanism of like tagging the persons quickly so that- And that goes into some sort of spreadsheet, it could be a database; and then at the bottom you see “This person attended out of this number of conference calls, attended this number of conference calls,” and you have that report. Yes, ideally I think that’s- I don’t know what’s the exact process to do it but the actual mechanism to do it, probably we don’t have to come up with it right now but yes.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: One of the new things – Olivier again. One of the good things about having new staff joining is we’ve got more knowledge of new things coming and Matt, having joined us, who will be primarily dealing with coordination and things like this, is hopefully going to be able to work something out. We might even have to ask Roman as well if we need something automated by the computing department, but I’m really planning to ask for this so as to not only help us keep track of what’s going on; help you, the At-Large members keep track of what’s going on; but also help staff and not wasting time cycles and filling pages and pages of paperwork that finally is hard to manage and just ends up making us just deal with process.
We keep on getting constantly told we spend too much time on process, so automate the process. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thank you Olivier. Tijani, go ahead.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, I also agree. I fully agree with Olivier. The attendance is not very hard to manage, but what is impossible to manage without automation is the participation through email, through the discussion lists. So we need a tool for statistics on the mailing lists. The attendance is less difficult because the period is not very, the requirements are not very high, so every call we can note people who are there and it is not impossible to manage. But for the discussion lists it’s impossible.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thanks Tijani, but I mean the other problem that comes up is what is the full criteria? For example, if a person is modifying and posting comments to the Wiki, the Confluence Wiki, how do we track that? I don’t know if Confluence itself has some sort of mechanism for opening a summary of “Okay, these users were the worst and submitted these numbers of comments or these numbers of edits,” or what have you. And hopefully that could be automated as well.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: To tell you the truth, Dev, if someone modifies or participates on the Confluence pages I don’t think that he will not send an email or he will not attend the calls.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: I see, okay.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: So it is good to know also; the participation on the Confluence Wiki is important also.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, let’s see… Let me look back on the agenda here. We have been continuing discussing the regional minimum participation requirements for ALSes. I think it’s- So definitely I think for the Secretariats’ meeting we’ll try to come up with some more refined ideas as to what is the criteria for participation or involvement as I would like to say it, because as I mentioned before measuring effective participation is a very difficult task. So measuring involvement in the RALO activities and in the ICANN policies would be a good criteria for the Secretariats’ meeting in Singapore.
I’m thinking- Actually there is one other comment I want to make, Olivier, to what Olivier said regarding when a person disappears from the organization the ALS is left completely unaware. Speaking first on the part of the Caribbean, from the ALSes in the Caribbean – small islands, you know, very few people involved. So when a person leaves you lose a lot of the knowledge and everything with that person when they leave the ALS and I guess especially if it’s been left on bad terms with the other membership.
So what has been happening, and even the ALS survey picked up on this, is that because an ALS only meets like say once a month or once every two months, given the rapid cycle for 30-day comments for ICANN policy issues and so forth, it’s very hard to circulate information within the ALS effectively. So I think the Work Team D is trying to get at the information about the ICANN policies is before it’s out for comment; and Work Team B is trying to syndicate the information so it can be sent.
It’s not just an email that goes to ALS representatives; they get it in all the other social channels and so forth and they can then easily syndicate that to all their members. And the hope will be that there’ll be a member within that ALS that can then express an interest, and then you’ll have as I say backup with it. So Olivier, I see you have a response to that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. Olivier here. I think you’re right, and you’ve used the right name here – “backup.” In other words, we’d have a main contact point, a backup contact point. And if there was a procedure to have both of them pinged let’s say once every six months then we would be able to keep track of people’s whereabouts. Certainly if the main contact point goes then we would be able to have a connection to the backup; if the backup contact point goes then we would be able to ask the main contact point to suggest another backup. That probably would help. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. Okay, let’s see. Let’s look at the other possible agenda items here: how to improve regional involvement in policy development process… Well, I mean I did suggest that the work that’s coming out of Work Teams B and D already touch on this aspect, but I’ll open it to anybody who has any comments on it. Tijani, go ahead.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, it is on the previous subject so can we agree that for Singapore, every RALO come with something written, something prepared for the metrics and how to manage this issue?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, I think Tijani, I agree with you. Is there any objection from that? And I see checks from Olivier agreeing with this. No objections, and Wolf is also saying that’s a good idea; and Darlene also thinks that’s great, excellent. So I think Tijani, your suggestion is well mounted. And we will do this in time for the Secretariats’ meeting in Singapore. Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. Olivier for the record. I think you might want to push this as an action item and ask staff to email the Secretariats for that.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thanks Olivier, and really you’re quite right. So I think we should mark that as an action item for staff to take note of this. Okay, now we have well, we only started 10 minutes late; we are now 12 minutes before the hour. Another discussion, a possible issue for discussion was how to improve regional involvement for policy development process.
Well, I think, I’m trying to remember which RALO it is… It may be NARALO’s list. I think there was a comment made there regarding our very shortened comment periods regarding ALAC, for RALOs to submit comments to draft ALAC policies because it’s literally within two days or something like that. Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Sorry, Dev, my hand was up from before.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Oh, okay. Well, I was about to say and I think, yes – I think it was Danny. Okay, I think he raised a good point that with the comments coming in at such a short time to have the just two or three days, it’s very hard to have that turnaround unless the ALS is well on top of the issue before hand and is able to then make inputs into it. But for an ALS that is not following the issue, just suddenly reading this for the very first time and then participating and getting involved in that policy discussion just by trying to ask questions – it’s very difficult I think. Darlene, go ahead.
Darlene Thompson: Darlene Thompson for the record. I think this is something that needs to be changed within ICANN, that we must not have these policies that come out with only a day or two or even less time to participate; and we should be given a minimum of 30 days. And so I think this is more of an internal ICANN issue that needs to be addressed.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay Darlene, though I think it’s more because ALAC has taken time to respond during the comments during that 30-day period. But Olivier, go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Dev. The way that it works at the moment is the public comments are opened up. That goes into our PAD, policy advice spreadsheet, and that then should get picked up during one of our monthly calls, whether an ALAC call or an ExCom call. The Executive Committee has two calls a month usually; it has actually had more during certain times when we had to discuss single subjects, but that should then get picked up by the Executive Committee with a discussion as to whether the ALAC wishes to have some feedback or some input on this.
That sometimes, well no one sometimes knows on the ExCom so everyone has to go back and find out from our regions and from ALSes, and then by the time we have someone saying “Yes, I think this should go ahead,” we’ve already lost 15 days or so. And then that person says “Well, I’ll write something” – that takes them a few days to write, and undeniably we end up with just about five to ten days left by the time the first draft is ready and put on the Wiki and ready for comments.
And I agree – it is too short a time for everyone to be able to participate. One of the ways we’re looking at to try and reduce all these is first to automate the policy advice document. The other thing is I would like to try and find again a process by which – because we know that the regions are looking at this, and sometimes one region is interested in a specific subject but another region might not be looking at that so closely.
I have noticed that some regions have an early call for comments, but because there is no cross-regional discussion or there’s no discussion with the ALAC the discussion remains regional for again, a short amount of time – maybe a week or a week and a half. So again we’re spending time before it reaches the ALAC. I think maybe there will be work in discussing in Singapore of a means to have that call from the regions go through the regional leadership into the ALAC faster than what it’s doing at the moment. Perhaps there’s a process that we can put together for that, and therefore that will have a statement being written a lot earlier than in the last ten days of the comment period. Thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thank you, Olivier. Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you. First of all I want to say that even ALAC, even if ALAC decides not to comment on a subject, any RALO or any ALS may comment on it and should do it if they have an interest in it. What we are seeing now is that the regions don’t react directly, and this is not a good thing I think. I think that the regions have to react, have to put their comments, their feedback to public comments; and they have to participate in the ALAC statement about this subject.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thanks Tijani. This is Dev here. I mean part of the Work Team D was to come up with a detailed flowchart to try to insert as much as possible RALO inputs into the public comment period. But I mean it is a challenge. I mean when you have multiple policy issues coming up for comments… I guess my fear sometimes is that I think we just saturate people with so much emails that it’s going to, like mentally they’ll just switch off.
But maybe the thing to do is to try to use the At-Large mailing list to facilitate a cross-regional, you know, everyone in At-Large to have that discussion there because I realize the At-Large list isn’t really used… We don’t really use it as often as we probably could. So maybe the announcements need to just go into the At-Large and then everybody there picks up on the discussion, and then I think from that maybe comments from the RALOs come up a little bit faster. Tijani, you still have your hand up?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, it’s a new one.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, it’s a new one. Go ahead, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: I don’t think that it is a matter of period. I think that 30 days or 45 days is enough, but the problem is the interest and the awareness. And since the ICANN ALAC always comes in our email box we are all aware about any public comments on it. So the problem is more interest than period, and if the period is short ALAC can ask to make it longer – and we did it for some things. So let’s speak about the real problems. The real problem is the interest of the region, the interest of the ALSes.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. Point taken. Olivier? And Wolf agrees with you, by the way Tijani. Go ahead.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Dev. It’s Olivier here. Yes, okay – we are speaking about the agenda items for the leadership meeting. Maybe it would be very interesting to discuss what Tijani’s just mentioned, but also to say that as far a the transmission of information and the drawing up of a response to the public comments is something which Work Team D has worked on. And I’m not sure of the exactness of it, maybe Seth will be able to help me, but will there be a way to share the results of Work Team D on that meeting? Would that be worth doing, Dev?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: I think it would be a good thing to be done. Go ahead, Seth.
Seth Greene: Well, I was going to say yes, I would think so, Olivier, but Dev, what are your thoughts?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: I think if you can [summarize] the flowchart, it’s a rather long flowchart I remember in San Francisco. So if we can use that and see is that really truly possible, and if that can be implemented now. Sorry, Olivier?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Sorry, it’s Olivier here. There is only one caveat, which is that those recommendations are recommendations to the ALAC so they have not been yet ratified and effected. But that flowchart could just be explained “for information purposes only” – not something that is cast in stone. That’s it.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Of course. But obviously what can also happen is that, and there can be further modifications to this, so suggestions or improvements to this.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: So that could also then be taken in and incorporated then in time for when ALAC finally votes on the improvements.
Okay, let me just quickly see… Okay, so I think that will be, we’ll put it, Tijani, also as an item to discuss at the Secretariats’ meeting in Singapore regarding how to improve the regional involvement in the policy development process.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. I see here there is another possible agenda item here: suggestion to feature a monthly ALS presentation during an ALAC call or special purpose call, or I guess a conference call or other means. I would say that doing it during an ALAC call, which I know is always going for quite a long time – I don’t think an ALAC call is appropriate. But I’ll open it for comments. I see Olivier and then Tijani.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I’m sorry, Dev, my hand was up. I’ll put it down.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Oh okay, then Tijani? I’m sorry, Tijani, do you have a question? I think the discussion point was that there will be an ALS presentation. I’m not sure where it came from, but it was identify an ALS to do a presentation on a particular topic, on a policy issue – I think that was the idea. Correct me if I’m wrong about this, anyone. Okay, Tijani, go ahead.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, thank you. I think the ALS presentation is about their activities; it is about their involvement, I think so. And we do that during our calls in AFRALO, and honestly we are always two or three people who give a report about their activities; all the others are mute. So I think it will be a good thing to do a formal presentation for every ALS so that we will see where are the ALSes who are working really.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: This is Dev. Thanks, Tijani, thanks for clarifying what the intention of the ALS presentation is about – about the ALS activities more. But the thing is, though, is that… Well, how should I put it… The ICANN work is probably just one small subset of what an ALS does. So an ALS may be doing lots of things, but the ICANN thing is not at the forefront of what they’re doing. So I’m not sure.
I mean what we attempt to do during the LACRALO calls, we ask “Does anyone have anything to report?” and then somebody can say “Oh yes, I went to this (inaudible) of internet governance, and this event,” you know, that type of thing. So I suppose you could have a report of those ALSes that went to some IGF and what was discussed there. You can bring that into it, but to have a monthly report I’m not sure. Tijani, you want to respond to that?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yeah, yeah. What I mean is a report about their activities related to ICANN issues, related to internet governance – not the activity that I don’t know, in other bits. Sure.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, and I see that Darlene and Wolf are saying that it would not work in NARALO and in EURALO as well. So I don’t know about having it as a monthly feature. And besides, when would that thing be presented? Within a conference call, the RALO conference call; or have a special conference call just to have that? I don’t think, it’s not enough information to really warrant a special purpose call I think. Wolf, go ahead.
Wolf Ludwig: Yes, thanks Dev. It’s Wolf speaking. Well, I would try to say some of our members, they would simply tell me “Just listen to German media news from time to time and then you effectively know what we are doing.” And if I know what ALSes are very proactive, I don’t think I need further proof of them. If anybody asks me about this I can send links or whatever of what they are doing.
The point is for what I consider the inactive ones, where I have no clue what they are actually doing. I check from time to time whether they are still existent. I may do a Google search and I see that there’s still an existing webpage that is even updated, but otherwise I don’t get any feedback anymore. And I would like, I would first more like to concentrate my time and energy on the inactive ones than following up the ones from whom I know that let’s say are rather active.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay.
Wolf Ludwig: It shouldn’t become too much bureaucratic; it shouldn’t become too, how to say… I would have difficulties to trace our ALSes and to force them to become more active in ICANN-related issues. I think this is other criteria we need to discuss in detail in Singapore.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. I think I saw a tick from Darlene about that, agreeing with you, Wolf. So I think we can say that okay, “I’d like to feature a monthly ALS presentation.” I think, Tijani… Go ahead, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, just to say, just to inform you that the purpose for which it was done in AFRALO, it wasn’t to verify if they are active or not. It was only for information sharing, it was for best practice, etc. – not for anything else. But it was one of the ways that you can see who is working and who is not working, that’s all. And it’s not the aim of this issue, thank you.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thanks Tijani. The problem is that who exactly listens to that and is aware other than the active ALSes? It’s like a perpetually self-fulfilling, self-circular thing though. But okay, I don’t think we need to really dedicate that much time to it in Singapore, so we don’t really have to put this as an agenda item. Because I think we’re not going to do it during the ALAC call or a special purpose call, I think, because I think I’m seeing from the comments I don’t think people would want to attend this, even if we created a special purpose call. I mean I think the only way to do this is really just to incorporate it as part of your RALO call, any report from any ALSes. And the ALSes can then present to the region.
Alright, so we are now six minutes past the hour; we have five minutes left. Any other business. Actually, we’re quite on the agenda, that’s excellent. Any other business? Any other ideas for the Secretariats’, or possible agenda items for the Secretariats’?
Wolf Ludwig: I’ve just a question.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, go ahead Wolf.
Wolf Ludwig: As I posted, forwarded yesterday, I think immediately after our Secretariats’ meeting in Singapore there will be this preparatory meeting of the ICANN Summit on the Developing Countries. And this could be worth a short consideration during our meeting – who will follow up on this, etc.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay.
Wolf Ludwig: Alan and Dev are the [Chairs] for Participation for official representation from At-Large so far.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yes, thanks for posting that information because I was only hearing vaguely of the wording of this thing but I never saw any information about it. So thanks for posting that.
And so far I think that you should have some sort of regional participation from all the regions in such a meeting, and just to answer Oksana’s question – yes. It’s open to anyone to participate But do you have any particular thing to discuss with regards to that, Wolf, or…
Wolf Ludwig: Pardon?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Regarding the Developing Nations Summit, is there any particular item that the Secretariats need to do other than to discuss it at the Secretariats’ meeting?
Wolf Ludwig: In my opinion there is only some kind of need for coordination, and if I know that it’s covered by other RALOs, followed up by other RALOs, I wouldn’t see a need for us to get too much involved in this. (crosstalk)
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, I see, I got you. Okay. So in other words, making sure that the information is- Well, it sounds like not an action item to discuss at the Secretariats’ meeting but more ensuring that there’s information from those persons who do attend gets to all the regions. Is that-
Wolf Ludwig: Right, exactly – that’s the point.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Oh okay, I think that can be done. It’s not an issue. Any other suggestions or any other business? Okay.
Wolf Ludwig: Looking forward to seeing all of you in Singapore soon.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yes indeed. I think we can then close off the meeting. Thanks everybody for joining the call, and I see as just acknowledged, Charles came in in the last half hour. Thank you, Charles, for coming.
Charles Mok: Yes, I got in late. I really didn’t contribute much to this meeting or anything, but I’ll do better in the physical meeting in Singapore I guess.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, well actually you’ll probably be chairing that meeting in Singapore (laughter). So since it’s in, yeah. So okay, well I’ll be glad and it’ll be good to see everybody in Singapore as well. And I’ll close the meeting and thank you and take care, and have a good day.
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