At-Large Community/ICANN Board Meeting – Cairo ICANN Meeting
(Held November 04, 2008)
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Name: 52 - 0.31.06 We will identify a foreign language in square brackets with a time code for the beginning and end, so that you can quickly identify those passages. At the top of the transcript, we will advise you of the name(s) of the foreign languages you'll need to search for. For example, some transcripts may contain German, so you'll have to search for “[German” instead of “[French” to find all the passages. The speaker identification is the same convention as all the others. i.e. If we know the speaker's name we'll include it, otherwise we'll put a question mark after it, or if we can't even guess, then Male, Female or SP.
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List of Participants
Important Note: Please note that this should not be considered to be an "official" list of the attendees. This is just a list of the participants that we were able to identify during the transcription. There may have been others present that didn't speak and some people may have participated that were not on the official list of attendees published on the internet.
Aizu, Izumi
Ashton-Hart, Nick (ICANN Staff)
Bachollet, Sébastien
Bertola, Vittorio (ALAC Review WG)
Brendler, Beau
Dengate Thrush, Peter (Chairman of the ICANN Board)
Drakes, Tricia (ALAC Review WG)
Greenberg, Alan
Guerra, Robert
Jennings, Dennis (ICANN Board)
Kleinwächter, Wolfgang
Langdon-Orr, Cheryl (ALAC Chair)
Leibovitch, Evan
Narten, Thomas (ICANN Board)
Peake, Adam
Samuels, Carlton
Scartezini, Vanda
Seye Sylla, Fatimata
Subrenat, Jean-Jacques (ICANN Board)
Twomey, Paul (ICANN President)
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Cheryl: …minutes.
Most of you have heard this before, but because it may come to pass during this meeting that someone who is not normally sitting at this table will take to the microphone to ask a question or a point of clarification, please be advised of the following: We have simultaneous translations into Spanish, French, and English, depending on which way the dynamic needs to go. So when you speak, you are either introduced by me – so I will say, “Thank you, Carlton,” and then the interpreter can say, “Carlton,” and everyone knows listening on the other language channels that it is Carlton speaking – or you, if I have not introduced you, need to say your name. And above all, you need to speak slowly, concisely, and clearly.
Thank you very much. We have a draft agenda which in the established process, I will now ask for a short discussion on the agenda. The three questions have previously been transmitted to the Board via staff. We will not have questions other than these discussed with any expectation of reply or commitment to respond, but I will ask – because 01.32 they’re pre-warned questions – I will ask if there is any particular matter that anyone wishes to put on the agenda and with my indulgence it may be listed, but there is no guarantee that a response will be received.
Is there any other matter for anyone to raise on the agenda? pause I see no hands.
Thank you very much. We assume the agenda is adopted and we will now move to the first question, which is as much a discussion as a question, but one that has been raised by various of our members when we’ve been discussing the role of… our expectations of liaisons and how we can ensure that our liaisons to any entity have equity in the mind, in the view of the organizational part of ICANN that we’re sending it to. Because we’ve had discussions with each of the leads of the other ACs and SOs, so we know what type of criteria or expectations, requirements they have for our liaisons that we send them. So we know what SSAC specifically want out of our liaisons, we know what GNSO specifically want out of our liaisons. We actually… We think we know what we want out of our Board liaison, but it’s been raised that there are other AC liaisons with a different dynamic, and it’s that question, not a performance metric of any particular person, that we are interested in. Okay? pause Any question or point of clarification?
Now this particular point was I think raised – before you popped that in your mouth laughter – by you, Sébastien, because I’m going to ask you to introduce it because it’s… Sorry. Go ahead, Robert. Point of clarification, I assume?
Robert: Well, point of order in a way, because if we’re talking about our Board liaison, is she here?
Cheryl: Not that I can see, and we are not talking about a person, we are talking about role, which if I did not make clear in my first introduction I certainly would like to make clear for the record now. I’ll also make clear for the record that our Board liaison was in person at the meeting when these questions were agreed. Are you comforted by that?
Robert: I just think going back to the earlier comments made by Carlos, and particularly in that if there’s a discussion even if it’s generic terms about a Board liaison and that person does not have the right of reply, I think is a bit unfair. So I’ll just raise that just for the record. Thank you.
Cheryl: And for the record, we are not talking about a person, we’re talking about a role. This could be the liaison to the Board in 2027. Go ahead. Sorry, Thomas, did you…?
Sébastien: It’s… I guess Thomas will say the same thing, that the Board, she’s Board member even if it’s just a liaison, and the Board is split into different meetings and it’s usually the fact that the liaison is not going to the meeting to the bodies they are liaised to. We can be disappointed with that. I was a little bit astonished the first time I heard about that, but it’s the case that she is not here because she is with another group. And it’s not because she doesn’t know about it and because we didn’t want to have her here, it’s the organization of the Board.
Cheryl: Sébastien, just before you go on, sorry Robert, I did assume seeing as that has been established in several of these meetings before that Wendy is not able to be here at the Board meeting with the ALAC because she is allocated, like any other Board member, to one of these cross-constituency days, so there is no implied criticism that she is not here. Are we all clear on that? Thank you.
Go ahead.
Sébastien: Yeah. Thank you. One of the reasons I was pushing that on the table is that at the same time that we are in a review, and maybe in the next year, or six months or a year, it will not be anymore useful to discuss liaisons because we will have other means to have relationship with the Board – maybe elected Board members – but I wanted to know if for you as Board members, there is something different when it’s a share of the AC who is liaison with… from the AC with the Board, if it changes something or not, if you get enough feed from us through the liaison for the work of the Board, and that type of question. It was that in my mind when I put that question for this meeting today.
Cheryl: Is there any point of clarification from anyone else on the ALAC, or can I ask one or two very brave Board members to indicate who might buy into that question? laughter Thomas is saying, “No way.” Dennis, go ahead.
Dennis: Well, Dennis Jennings is my name. This is a very interesting and difficult question because we’re not… First of all, I’m only the Board for a year, so I don’t have lots of history as to how these liaisons are working. But from the perspective of the Board, all our liaisons appear to be providing input to us as experts – not as representatives, as experts – in the general discussions that we have. We’re quite strict that liaisons are not supposed to be there to lobby but to be expert and contribute to the discussion. And the ALAC liaison has certainly been doing that. However, we’re not in a position to judge whether it’s working well or not because all we see is what we get from the liaisons. We have no ability to close the loop and see whether that expertise is being applied and we are being informed adequately about the views of the ALAC as a contribution to our discussions.
More pertinent I think is to reverse the question and to ask you, from the comprehensive minutes that Board publishes, whether you see that the views – not the representations, but the views – are being at least expressed at Board and therefore being considered in the Board discussions. And I don’t know that. I am not able to close the loop. I think you might be able to close the loop. I’m not.
Cheryl: Thank you, Dennis, and if you don’t mind, I won’t take that as a question to respond to but rather as a mechanism of how that loop needs to be closed. I assume that is what you meant, rather than…
Dennis: Yes. Yes, because I’m looking for…
Cheryl: Exactly, because I think that it’d be highly inappropriate to answer, but rest assured that the executive, one of the roles that the executive has is to go through the Board minutes and look at exactly that metric, and I should make it very clear to the Board members from ICANN that any Board liaison from the ALAC also is expected to attend as many as is practical, humanly possible, the executive meetings, not just the whole-of-the-ALAC meetings. So there should be a very close ability to have that loop closed.
I think Sébastien’s question specifically was going to the point of “Does it make a difference when it is a chair of an AC or SO?” That is, the liaison as oppo-… So they are by definition having to be speaking on behalf of the group, not as a lobbyist or not as expert, but they’re literally running, steering the ship for the AC or the SO at all.
Did you want to pop in before Dennis, Thomas?
Thomas: I just wanted to add one comment. I mean, I agree with what Dennis was saying, but the one thing I would sort of add too is the liaisons participate in many discussions, not only the Board discussions, and so I wouldn’t… What I want to say is if things are missing from the Board meeting minutes, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the liaison is inactive, because there are a lot of times when the discussion has basically taken place essentially before the Board call and there’s no need to repeat them.
Cheryl: Thank you. Dennis, do you want…? I do have Alan as well.
Dennis: No.
Cheryl: Go ahead, Alan.
Alan: You just said something, that if the chair is the liaison, then by definition you’re speaking on behalf of the group. I would strongly disagree with that. I’ve spent I don’t know how many hundred, perhaps in the thousands of hours in the last two years being the ALAC liaison to the GNSO, and I can tell you I don’t know what my performance, how my performance is rated by the GNSO, but I can rate myself as being probably somewhere around the level of annoying. I speak a lot and very little of it… I hope most of it is fairly representing the needs of At-Large but rarely is it something which I can say formally is an At-Large statement.
Cheryl: Clearly there’s a difference between a statement and speaking on behalf of. Let me be painfully clear, as a chair of this organization, anyone who sits in the chair gives up their personal views and really should be forwarding the views, the consensus views, or the divergent views of the group, and that is very much what I am saying. So it’s not a matter of individual view. You actually lose power sitting here, not gain it.
Go ahead, Vanda.
Vanda: Yeah, just a minor 12.16 clarification. Once you have a liaison, it’s supposed I guess legally to have to bring, to take the vision of the group that you are linked to. Even you are in the Board as part of the group and in the interest of the Board, liaisons are supposed to take to the Board the views from that group they are linked – because if it’s not, why the name is liaison?
So it’s very important that I guess is a kind of misunderstanding that becomes true, that the people there are only their behalf individually, and this is very wrong because it’s not what happened. We… Board members that are indicated by the constituents. So because they are there and they are mostly defending and present the view of the GNSO, the ccNSO, and so on, and most of the time inside the Board we directed questions as a member of ccNSO, “What is your opinion, Demi 14.11?” or another one, or Peter or something, because they are there with this particular expertise and they need to be using this expertise. So I believe that must be clarified 14.29, even inside the Board. Thank you.
Cheryl: Go ahead, Robert.
Robert: I just wanted to ask in regards to the great amount of activity that takes place in the Board, I’ve been told by past and current Board members that at times it could be a third to a half of one’s available time. I think going forward and in lieu of some of the recommendations that are being looked at in regards to, you know, ALAC and possible Board seats, I’m just wondering if I could get from the Board members here, what are some resources or information about how much of your time is taken up with Board activities that you could share with us, because that would be important for any future Board liaison, especially if they would be able to vote. So I’m just curious how much of your time and what resources you believe could be provided to the ALAC Board liaison for them to be more effective. Thank you.
Cheryl: And Jean-Jacques is taking that question. Thank you.
Jean-Jacques: Merci.
Interpreter: Thank you. Two comments. The first is that when I became part of the Board I was told that it could need approximately up to one-third of my time. In fact it required more, but it’s very difficult for me to measure it because it’s not constant. It changes as we go closer to an international meeting of ICANN like the one we’re having here in Cairo. There’s quite an acceleration in the work. There are much more documents to read, contacts to be established. So it’s not regular, it’s irregular.
Second observation. As a member of the Board, we are called upon not only to fulfil the obligations of the Board, the meetings, mainly telephone meetings, particularly telephone meetings, but we are members of different committees. In my particular case, three committees, three bodies, one which is not exactly a Board committee, PSC, and I think it’s a basic element of my work. I consider it as being particularly significant since we work and deal with the future of ICANN – you know the three papers prepared by PSC. Secondly, the two official committees of the Board of which I am member is reconsideration. In the course of an entire year, we haven’t had a single meeting. I didn’t know whether the theme we are supposed to be dealing with on reconsideration remains important or whether there have been no contestations in the course of the year. And then the Board Governance Committee which is an important point of distribution in the ICANN system since that is where, up to now anyway, the decision concerning the choice or selection of consultants was made for independent review mechanisms.
Moreover – and that’s my third comment – we’re called upon to volunteer for working groups. And in my particular case there are two working groups – ALAC Review Working Group, which is a fascinating piece of work and chaired marvellously by Tricia who is modestly isolated in a corner. The second one is a Board review which also requires quite a bit of time.
So if I gave you my own personal example, it’s not because I’m of particular value but it’s rather typical for all the colleagues, members of the Board. So I believe that the answer to your question is it may require varying lengths of time but it would be reasonable to say that work well done needs more than one-third of your time. Thank you.
Cheryl: Thank you indeed. I think it is appropriate that we move to our second question because I suspect it’s one that’s going to be very important to those of us on the At-Large side of this table, but it is really our only opportunity to stop talking about “Please sir, may we have some money?” and to start talking about the real deliverables. But particularly from your perspective or that of the Board, the question for you to consider, and I suspect some discussion will ensue, “What outcomes do the Board wish to see from the At-Large summit? How available will Board members make themselves to participate in the Summit sessions?”
And the reason we need to discuss that second part is of course we are aware that we’re running on a Saturday and a Sunday immediately before the Mexico meeting, but we all know that whilst it says it starts on Monday, the real work is obviously fairly fully scheduled on those two days as well. We’re also aware that the Geneva IGF meeting is running immediately before and we’re unaware how many or who perhaps from the Board may be involved there. And as one of our key outcomes is to increase awareness so that more generally the Board – not just you gentlemen who keep making your time available to come and listen to us and I guess get to know us better than most – may be able to observe not just us, the ALAC and the RALO leaders, but possibly up to the 110 ALS representatives that may be gathered at this occasion, because we have 110 ALSes now accredited. And correct me if I’m wrong, is there 3 or 4 applications coming in, Nick? Something like that. Anyway, there is more to come. We won’t go into those details.
So perhaps in two parts, what outcomes do the Board wish to see from the At-Large summit? pause
Thank you, Jean-Jacques.
Jean-Jacques: Answering your two questions, the first part is what expectations from the ALAC summit. I would answer with two words and develop each of those just a bit. The two words are, first, “awareness” and the second is “contribution.”
So on “awareness,” I would say that I think that it would be a remarkable, a unique opportunity to bring forth to all the end users you represent an enhanced awareness not so much of the mechanisms of the internet or of ICANN in particular but more broadly of the challenges and of the trends which are affecting and which will, whether we like it or not, impact the wider internet in the years to come. And as a consequence of that, I think that it would be your duty to underline the importance of the proper engagement and participation of people At-Large – that’s your title – in contributing to this enhanced awareness of the user population worldwide.
My second key word was “contribution,” and here I would say that what is required is to enhance the contribution of your body to the accountability of ICANN, because you are an essential part of that, and part of the credibility of ICANN as a mechanism, as a multistakeholder body hinges upon your participation. And as a result of that, you would increase I think the necessity for proper representation at all levels and therefore contribute to a better form of governance, which will be one of the great items of the future for the internet. And I think that also you have to increase the impact on policy formation within ICANN.
So that was my first point, which is two key words, “awareness” and “contribution.” And your second question, Chair, was Board participation. I think that there are two answers. First is that Board participation is left to the wisdom of the Executive Committee to decide because we are at the disposal of our colleagues of the Board collectively, and it is the Executive Committee which will decide.
My second answer is that in any case, if I were asked for my opinion, I would advise that at the very least the current Board members who have the opportunity of being on the At-Large Review Working Group should be in attendance. Thank you.
Cheryl: Thank you very much. Does Thomas or Dennis wish to add anything? Dennis?
Dennis: I agree with the outcomes that Jean-Jacques has outlined. Just a comment, I think it’s particularly important that the end user, whether they’re registrants – that’s customers or consumers or citizens – have appropriate inputs to policy formation so that it is not just the industry and large companies and intellectual property lawyers, but it’s also the citizen/customer/consumer who has an input into the policy development process.
In relation to availability of Board members, Jean-Jacques has said, yes, we get scheduled, and of course we have other stuff on the Saturday and Sunday. But also just a general comment, it’s not valuable to try and have Board members participate in everything. It is more valuable that Board members work in a structured way with the outcomes of your meetings and discuss those. So rather than sit through two days, it would be much more useful if once a day or at the end of it or whatever, the tentative propositions that are coming out of the summit would be discussed with the Board, with Board representatives, with the Board members to get some feedback, to get some input in both directions. One of the things I observe is that there is a tendency for everybody to try and participate in everything, and that just doesn’t scale. And certainly it doesn’t scale… as you heard Jean-Jacques, the amount of work the Board members are expected to do is ridiculous. So it…
Cheryl: You know, the boss is just here, don’t you? laughter
Dennis: Yeah. No, no. No, no. He’s not my boss, I’m his boss. laughter
Female: Ah, yeah. 27.25
Cheryl: Sorry, sorry.
Dennis: So one thing I have to… Sorry, Paul. One of the things I’d appeal to you is that think in terms of making best use of the Board’s time and not to expect participation but to actually construct your discussions that the outcomes are presented at various times to Board members and there is cross-feedback.
Cheryl: Thomas.
Thomas: Yeah, I’m not going to say very much. I think Jean-Jacques and Dennis said a lot already, but I think probably one of the other important things, and you’ve heard this before, is, you know, is to… What’s the right word? You want the summit to lead to something that’s sustainable and be a stepping stone to the next level and not be a one-shot kind of thing that after it’s done, you know, the results sort of sputter out and aren’t sustainable.
Cheryl: Might I ask, you mean “sustainable” in terms of the increased participation of grassroots, the increased involvement of end users?
Thomas: Right, and just in making ALAC more successful in terms of where it wants to go.
Cheryl: Thank you. Sébastien.
Sébastien: Just one word. It’s not an ALAC summit. I know that it’s difficult with the acronyms we use, but it’s important for you to be sure that you understand that it’s At-Large Structure summit. It’s our members who will be joining us, and ALAC is just 15 of us, it’s just a body. That’s important. And I think what is important is that you, what you say, it’s really one of our major goals, it’s to have those people who will come, these organizations coming to be able to be more engaged in the future, to participate to the work of At-Large, ALAC, but of ICANN in general.
Cheryl: Go ahead, Dennis.
Dennis: Just very briefly to follow up on what Thomas said, this is a one-shot investment and we expect you to make good use of this investment. It’s significant, there’s no intention to have a second summit or an ongoing summit. That’s fun-… I mean, you may have… the community may have, but we have no intention that we will fund it, and therefore it has to be outcome-driven – that is, as Thomas said, sustainable and continuing.
Cheryl: Any further points on that? Yes, go ahead, Alan.
Alan: I guess just a comment on that. Having run operations where the words that we use around it is “Your job” – talking to the participants – “is to go home and spread the word and make sure that you’re not the only one who understands that,” because things are never sustainable if you’re assuming one body in a region, in a country is going to be the only person. Typically the best you can hope for is some percentage of them do it and if they do, I judge that as great success. Okay.
Cheryl: I’d like to welcome the President. Thank you for joining us. I do apologize for not having a place at the table, but I must say I wasn’t told that you were going to be able to join us, but thank you for making the time and I will hand the microphone to you now. Thank you, Paul.
Paul: Thank you, Cheryl. Well, I think for planning purposes you should assume that at each meeting myself and/or the Chairman would definitely want to meet with this group. I think it’s very important. And so thank you for sort of reorganizing the agenda. Perhaps I will talk to issues that are separate to what you have there on your draft agenda, because they struck me as a longer dialogue with the Board members who are attending. And I’ll just point to three or four things that are presently underway that you… that we’re very much looking forward to the feedback of the ALAC and the ALSes and the original At-Large organizations, and potentially all together or potentially even separately, depending on what they are.
The first obviously is on the new Generic Top-Level Domain implementation program. As I said yesterday morning, that is a program proposal that has been thought through, an attempt to try and find an implementation path through what in some areas are conflicting policy advice from various organs. The advice of the At-Large has certainly been part of the consideration and implementation of that… draft implementation, so we thank you for your advice. And we are looking for your response, if you’ve got concerns, very useful.
I would strongly recommend… I recognize that it’s a lot of material that’s put down. We’ve tried to write it, in particular the applicants’ guideline, we’ve tried to write it in a linked way that makes it easier to consume. The last times we produced RFPs basically, you know, one step short of a contract out as the communication tool, and that’s been always very difficult for people to comprehend. And we’re also trying very hard to have it out in multiple languages.
And we are looking for your feedback, looking to see if you’ve got concerns or the particular issues. May I ask, if you’ve got a concern or you’ve got something that worries you, try to make… try to walk a little while in my and Doug and Kurt’s shoes and try to make what you have as proposals as much directed around implementation. So I would recommend “Instead of you try to meet this need in the following four steps, that you put an additional fifth step in which does the following,“ that sort of… rather than a response which is at a higher level, because that means we’ve got to guess again how to try to address the concerns. So as much as you can make any feedback implementable in its focus, we’d find that very useful. But please don’t be limited in that.
Similarly, we have the President’s Strategy Committee process underway for Improving Institutional Confidence. You know we’ve been doing multiple consultation processes around that. Very much appreciated the cross-grouping meeting yesterday afternoon and the responses and conversations there.
Can I clarify what we’re trying to achieve here? I just got asked upstairs in the ccNSO what’s sort of the vision? The vision here is how to keep building an institution that is fully accountable and has the confidence of all its international and stakeholders and members. Alright? This is not per se about ticking some box for a Joint Project Agreement with the United States Department of Commerce. We envisage, if we keep building that confidence, that the JPA itself will come to an actual conclusion. But I wanted to reinforce that’s our goal, that’s what we’re aiming towards, and we’ve been addressing a lot of issues in the documentation that were raised through mid-term reviews, that were raised by some groups. So I wanted to reinforce that there’s been a lot of consultation and the emphasis now is again about implementation about things that have come out of that and we’re still looking for further feedback.
Can I just make an observation? I am particularly pleased that our community and the institutions that our community’s been building for the last 10 years have reached such maturity that we are able to do very significant, substantive work – such as IDN ccTLDs, such as new gTLDs, such as looking DNSSEC deployment into the root – that we’re able to do that work and at the same time maintain what is quite an intense process of self-reform, and we’ve been able to take the self-reform process in chunks, we’ve been able to break it down into reviews – we’ve got reviews of the Board process at the moment, you know the reviews of, you know, ALAC, just to mention that, new gTLDs and others. But I think it’s a tribute to the community that we’re able to do that review process, think about things that need to be changed, and still get on and do work. If I’m reminded if we go back to where we were in 2001 when we started our evolution reform process then, essentially the machine stopped while we spent a lot of time getting the spanners out and sort of changing bolts and, you know, shifting the cylinders. We’re not stopped now and I think we ought to sort of give ourselves a pat on the back as a whole community that we’ve actually got to a stage where we can keep doing the real work while we still review what needs to be tweaked in the institutional framework. So please consider that we do want your feedback on that Improving Institutional Confidence. But we need to keep doing these things. We mustn’t let it coagulate or get to a stage where we all stop because we’re looking at our navels, trying to think out how to keep changing. We’ve got to keep doing our work and consider this reform process as part of everyday ICANN life.
The other area we’re looking for feedback obviously is on… we’re exhorting people to respond to the Notice of Inquiry process the United States Department of Commerce has issued for DNSSEC deployment. Now let me give you some history there just in case… just to clarify. We have had in our strategic plan for 18 months or more that we would… that it’s important for us to be prepared to be able to implement DNSSEC at the root. So we’ve been doing a lot of work operationally to test it. We’ve actually had a signed version of the root available for the last 12 months. We’ve been doing the work on taking that through. We’ve been talking to DNSSEC experts about what’s the most secure way of establishing a chain of trust between the TLD operator process and the IANA process through to having something issue into the zone file. And our…
And then we talked a lot to the Department of Commerce when the Kaminsky vulnerability became obvious – for those of you who may not know, this was an internet security expert who discovered that there was a particular vulnerability in the DNS and this DNSSEC is probably the most substantive way to address that in the long term. We raised that with that with the Department of Commerce. We put forward a proposal to the Department of Commerce. VeriSign also put forward a proposal. The difference between the two proposals was discussed or is being discussed in workshops here. Ours comes from an origin of saying what we think is the most secure way of maintaining that chain of trust, theirs comes from what’s the best way to deploy from their perspective DNSSEC while maintaining all the existing processes that presently exist between the three parties involved with the root zone, and that’s a matter for discussion.
But I think it’s important that if people have got views on this, they need to respond to the Notice of Inquiry process from the Department of Commerce. It’s not sufficient to come to meeting and voice views. There will need to be something written. So if you’ve got views, you’ll have to write something down. And I don’t think it’s just a question of “We like the ICANN proposal” or “We like the VeriSign proposal,” I don’t think it’s something as simple as that. I mean, it’s simply the ICANN proposal envisaged quite some period of time of consultation, but if you’ve got perspectives, we’re just exhorting people to actually put them in and to write to those.
Obviously the IDN ccTLD process is still continuing. There’s a working group process in that obviously your input into that is useful and I think you’re having that on an informal basis which is very useful.
So they’re probably some of the key things that are underway. The other big one obviously is the Board review, and you’ll have picked up that the Board review process makes certain observations around ALAC representation on the Board, but there’s quite of lot of thinking in the Board review process. It’s only just been released, we’re not expecting responses, but you do need to look at it and think about it and respond to that.
Cheryl: Thank you, Paul. And I think that it’s appropriate that on behalf of all of us, we note that there was a regrettable clash in schedules that meant we were having a relatively important meeting with the NCUC – there’s this user house thing needing to be worked out – at the exactly the same time as that workshop on the Board review was going on, so it was not any indication that we were not passionately interested. laughter We most certainly are.
Male: It’s at the same time as the Server Security 41.37… overtalking
Cheryl: Yes, it was just literally short of cloning ourselves, we couldn’t be there. But I do want to assure everybody that Patrick Sharry has offered to come at our beck and call and give us a brief précis.
Paul: Thanks. Can I just explain that so you understand why that happened? I think there was quite a discussion by some of the people who have been hoping to coordinate this review within the Board as to how best to do this. The consultants wanted an opportunity to take the Board through what their draft proposals were – which, as you can understand, inaudible 42.11. But the only chance we really had for that to take place face-to-face was on our workshop day on Sunday. Then there was a discussion internally about “Well, it’s only after that that the consultants will feel that the document is in a state that they’re happy to put to the public,” and then the question was “Well, do we release it immediately or do we wait?” And the judgement of the Chairman – and I think it’s an issue, one you should be aware of – was that the Board should not be seen to be any different to any other organ of ICANN, that it should not be seen or people perceive that the Board sat on the report and had time to consider it and responded and that the report was out in exactly the same way the report on the GNSO was out or the report on the ALAC was out, and that in the Board was in no different a position to be able to respond to it and deal with it then than any other organ.
Now unfortunately, that decision process was late in our discussion and the poor consultants already had other work booked for later in the week. So what took place was that because their own air transport requirements were already in place and they had other work involved, we had to sort of schedule their meeting early on the Monday. So my apologies.
I would certainly exhort you to look at the transcript when it comes out of that session, because it was a really good clarification by the consultants on some of the things that they had put forward. So I think the transcript’s valuable to read.
Cheryl: Thank you, and please there was no implied criticism. We’re painfully aware of the challenges of scheduling at these sorts of meetings. It was we did not want to be thought of as not being interested – we most certainly are – and it seems like one of those ideal topics that we will have briefing on because of course you as Board members are all very aware that we’re doing virtually monthly meetings on briefings now. DNSSEC is scheduled for a future one and I would suggest that this will be another ideal one.
Yes, Alan, go ahead.
Alan: One clarification and one question. Regarding the review, unless I’m mistaken, the ALAC didn’t see its review until it was made public, so there is some different treatment of the Board. laughter
A clarification on your first point on new gTLDs. Are you looking for any comments or are you looking for comments on the implementation? And the difference is if we still disagree with some of the policy that the GNSO passed on and you approved, are you looking for comments on that? Or…
Paul?: Not really.
Alan: …are we looking for comments on how to implement it? Of course, there were a few occasions where you did not follow the advice in the implementation, and that certainly is open for comment, but…
Paul: That’s right. I think it is the latter. There was opportunities for comment on the policy process prior. It eventually… I mean, it was open for quite some time as you know, and eventually the Board did actually approve that policy. So I think the comment we’re looking for now really is on the implementation program and plan.
Cheryl: Beau.
Beau: Yeah, my question is about DNSSEC. Just briefly, I was wondering if there has been much dissemination or public engagement about it, because it seems to me if it lives up to its promise, it could be, you know, amazingly popular and like quite exciting for a lot of consumers and everybody who has security concerns.
Paul: I think that’s right. And the answer is no, I think it’s still something seen within the technical aficionados – oh, sorry, translators – technical experts. And there is a real opportunity to explain that.
We should be quite clear about what we are considering. It is simply DNSSEC deployed to the root zone. So at the moment, that’s only for 280 or so entries in the root zone. DNSSEC deployment right down inside large TLDs is another issue, but it certainly helps make the business case for investment in that on behalf of big TLDs if consumers and others are saying, “This really adds a benefit.” And one of the things we’ve heard from some of the country experiences, discussions around DNSSEC deployment, we’ve had ISPs saying, “Well, what’s the point?” – you know, because the consumers won’t be able to tell because the browsers and the… whatever, we 46.50 aren’t showing that. Well, we understand that the browser community is already beginning to move on that and that Microsoft’s beginning to move as well. So, you know, I think a general user/consumer/registrant understanding and desire for this will make a big difference to business plans and deployment. So it’s a very good point.
Cheryl: Thank you, Paul. Can I just ask, and I’m sorry to do this via the mic, how much more time do you have with us?
Paul: I’m double-booked now, if that gives you an answer.
laughter
Cheryl: But if I could then perhaps say thank you very much for making time to be with us and share. I’m quite sure that the Board members remaining will pass on the burning questions and comments that might be made now, but we really will just, if you don’t mind, continue on. If you’ve got any final comments, please…
Paul: Thanks so much. My only final point on this is, I know it’s a topic you probably have raised, and that is the question of your advice and how much it’s listened to. And I know that Denise has provided back some feedback on how things have been incorporated. We do need to keep looking at that and if we… just talking, just personally, but if we need to be looking more at how do we write back and communicate how advice has been dealt with, some advice, that would be useful.
I’d also in that context just cla-… it might not be as applicable for the At-Large, but just being sure in clarity what you consider to be advice is also important because if you think about all the organs that make up ICANN, the people, they’re always generating words, they’re always generating comments, and frankly, again from an administration perspective, it’s almost impossible to start saying, “What I am responding to and what am I incorporating?” So something which formally understands “This is advice” versus, you know, “This is just discussion” – I mean, that will be useful too. Okay? Thanks.
Cheryl: Thank you, and thank you once again for sharing a very valuable part of your day. It’s I think a truth in these meetings that several people need to be cloned, and I suspect it’s the whole executive and the Board as well.
I have Alan, then I have Adam.
Alan: Just quickly before Paul leaves…
laughter
Alan: No, it’s a very short one. You said it’s really important that users in the world understand the importance of DNSSEC. Even if we’re only closing the root zone with 16 entries in it, we need a one-sided piece of paper with large type and one diagram to give some clue to people what that means. We may have it and I haven’t seen it, but help us by doing some kind of thing like that.
Cheryl: Nick’s going to answer that.
Nick: You’ll be unsurprised to know that this is something that we have asked be developed in one of the 1200-word issue briefs, firstly, and secondly that there will be a briefing on DNSSEC and what it is for the uninitiated in November, which all members of the policy committee will be invited to attend.
Alan?: Is 1200 words too much to fit on one side inaudible 50.04?
Cheryl: Alright. We’ll do a cut-down version. Yes, it will happen.
Adam, go ahead.
Adam: If Paul’s still here, if not, then don’t worry, I can address it to the Board members because they’re on the review committees and it’s about reviews, and I think you’re right saying there’s an enormous amount of work going on in ICANN and the reviews in particular are interesting because they seem to be at different stages and they all seem to be at stages where they’re affecting each other. So there’s now a Board review where I imagine you’re looking at the structure of the Board, and of course the ALAC review is suggesting that there may be two new Board directors, and then there’s a GNSO restructuring which is suggesting other things, and then there’s a NomCom review going on which is suggesting that different structures of the Board might be adopted, and then overarching that in some kind of ether-type cloud way is the President’s Strategy Committee making different suggestions. And I’m just wondering how much of this is being joined up in the different recommendations that are existing and who is doing that and how can you do that, because this is an enormous amount of…? I don’t see it being done and it’s a concern that there are these different tracks at different stages that are suggesting slightly different things.
Cheryl: Go ahead, Paul.
Paul: Adam, if you can’t see it being done, then I have been very successful. laughter Sorry. There are three… You were supposed to laugh then, but that’s okay. There are three reviews that actually clearly potentially interact with each other – the Nominating Committee review, the ALAC review, and the Board review – and they have continued and they have been independent, but the people, the working groups coordinating them, and the consultants involved have all understood that there would potentially be interoperable issues between those three reviews. And timing has been managed a little bit to ensure that the Board review came in so that then the sort of discussion you’re talking about 52.08, that the interoperability, interaction between the three recommendations can worked through.
Having said that, that’s the little of coordination that’s taken place. There’s been no attempt to try to in a secret fingers, you know, manipulate them so they all come up with certain answers. We try to let the three reviews come to their own conclusions, but we have just been trying to manage messaging around timing so the three could come together. And I think you’ll find it’s actually the working group process, working on the Board Governance Committee, which will try to draw the conclusions together so that it has a single comprehensive response rather than a piecemeal one.
Adam: I didn’t think it was clear, certainly from the point of view of how one would make public comments on those related processes and so on, and that is really the sort of input I was thinking about.
Cheryl: Thank you, Adam. I’d just like to recognize and welcome to the room the Chairman of the Board, Mr. Peter Dengate Thrush. Thank you so for joining us. We…
Peter: Thank you. But I’m sorry I’m late. We’re sort of inaudible 53.11.
Cheryl: laughter And a switch. Thank you, Paul.
Paul?: Tag team.
Male: inaudible
Peter: So let me just say thank you for having me. And I gather that I’ve timed my arrival perfectly so that Paul has answered all the hard questions, but I can be here for the coffee. So…
Cheryl: Oh, no sir, I can assure we’ve saved up a hard question. Is there any particular statement or issue you’d like to raise? If not, we might then move to the third and final discussion point on our agenda. So you are here for a question. The question here is “What feedback do the Board have vis-à-vis the current status of the ALAC review” – remember this was written when we hadn’t actually got hold of it – “and as it relates to some of the recommendations of the working group, what is the status of the statements the ALAC sent to the Board this year?” Can we recognize that this question was written in advance of information we have since received?
Denise is in the room and I want to thank you personally for sending what must have been, you know, quite a little bit of detective work, but thank you very much for giving us exactly what’s happened to everything we’ve sent. We are well aware that these questions have been addressed in other ways now, but it is on our agenda so obviously we’re open to discuss that. Over you to. 54.33
Peter: Thanks. Just dealing with the second one first, I think it is something that we haven’t, for reasons that I can’t understand, given the size and professionalism of the organization, it does seem to be something that we haven’t done particularly well, not just with the At-Large but also with the GAC and also with the GNSO. We seem to have a murky trail in relation to this kind of correspondence. So I can confirm that I am aware of it. There is a draft line in the CEO’s performance metrics for the coming year which hopefully is intended to address that. So there will be a formal program of… all being well, of acknowledging, immediate acknowledgement of letters such as that and then later on some much more substantive responses to what happened to the letter. It’s something that everybody thinks is happening and everyone thinks someone else is doing, I think, and then all of a sudden we find out that “Hang on, it hasn’t been done.” And part of that is because we have such good relations in some ways and things get dealt with sufficiently well by the informal processes and, you know, by an e-mail or inaudible 55.48, you know? So part of my being the lawyer, I actually want to see all these things slightly differently documented, and so that’s coming. I think you got your answer on the particular questions which you’ve thanked Denise for.
The first part of that question, the Board has not considered, is the simple answer, the status of the ALAC review. So I’m not su-… And I’m not sure that it has any intentions of doing that. It’s not on the agenda for the Board for this meeting.
Cheryl: Okay. Thank you. Yes, but we do have Trish. Tricia, would you care to join us at the table at this point? I think it would be most valuable. Or can we organize a microphone, please?
Nick: There’s one right here.
Tricia?: inaudible 56.32
Cheryl: Ah, well, you positioned yourself inconveniently. Do we have a microphone at that table?
Nick: inaudible
Sébastien: inaudible Carlton and Adam.
Cheryl: There are. This here. Please make the magic happen, gentlemen. Don’t mind how the magic happens, it just needs to.
Male: That’s an implementation detail.
Cheryl: It is an implementation detail, correct. laughter Thank you. Tricia Drakes.
Tricia: Thank you, and I deliberately sat at the back because this is your opportunity to speak with the Board, not one of the Chairs of the Board Governance Working Group. But just on practical and procedural and sort of proper points, Peter is absolutely correct. This hasn’t yet gone to the Board because in terms of the procedure, the working group is a committee of the Board Governance Committee. The report is a mid-term consultative document which is really our current thinking for getting additional consultation and aspect which has been released with the approval of the Board Governance Committee, and the intention is that the final report with all of the input that we’ve gathered not just from yourselves but from GNSO and from other parties can be reflected in. And then the Board Governance Committee… Hopefully, because they can actually say, “This report is rubbish, you’ve got it all completely wrong so we’ll ignore it all and put a different recommendation to the Board.” That could happen in Mexico. We’re hoping in the work that we’ve done that that won’t happen. But in the formal positioning, this is a mid-term status, “Where we are with the consultation we’ve been done 58.38,” agreed by the Board Governance Committee as a mid-term point of that.
The other point, while I’m here, which just might be helpful to add and support what Peter has said and Paul before him, clearly in terms of the review process, the improvement process, the timing of the different reviews is challenging for all including the chair of the working group, and I have to say including for the 2009 NomCom chair as well – I think it’s going to get even more interesting. And in fact, we clearly were not aware of what might be coming from the Board report. I did have some, because I was on the GNSO improvements groups, understanding of the area there. But we actually sought to do, I think firstly behind the scenes – and I think that Jean-Jacques and Thomas would confirm here – to encourage that the reports come out as swiftly as possible, and secondly also to encourage yourselves as ALAC to know our thinking so that perhaps you can respond very quickly to giving input in so that we could hope – and this might be totally impossible but this is what we were hoping to try and do – that actually there can be the bringing together of these different aspects of the ongoing improvements area in a timely way.
Equally in terms of the Board, the view of the working group currently, or the basis of what’s been done so far, that in principle we felt that there should be two Board seats. Again we did that deliberately on the basis of the current status quo, and in the report, in the body of the report itself it actually said that there is currently a Board review, there is currently a NomCom review going on and we might need to adjust. But unless you did it on the basis of the status quo, you really were completely lost.
So I hope that’s helpful to everybody, including the chair and the directors that are here. It’s really… It is quite an interesting dimension that is being added on there. Thank you.
Cheryl: Thank you, Tricia. And now you’re at the table, you really ought to stay. laughter I appreciate that.
Is there any other comments that we need to make regarding this particular matter? If not, I have Izumi as the final speaker. Wolfgang? Okay, I recognize you. That will be the end of this matter.
Go ahead, Izumi.
Izumi: Thank you, Cheryl. We had a very good interaction with the working group or the BGC about this ALAC review, so the general sentiment was the mid-term review is very well accepted by the ALAC, if not in the details. One thing I might ask a question or give any comment is that in relation to whether there should be two Board seats or not or any Board seats or not, there’s some suggestion in the report that says that to let the Board explain to At-Large or ALAC when the Board doesn’t accept the advice from ALAC, just like similar to the way that the Board has with GAC, which may sort of enforce… even though there is a liaison still there, it may sort of reinforce sort of the our weight in the whole ICANN picture. So I’d like to see if you have any comment for these matters or any advice to how we should consider about these.
Cheryl: Thank you, and please go ahead.
Peter: Just by starting by stating the obvious, of course if ALAC appoints two directors to the Board, they will not be available as a source of exchanging information with the ALAC. They perform a completely different function and in fact what tends to happen is people go out of their way not to act as liaisons or representatives of the organization, which is of course the basis for the Westlake recommendation, that you would actually lose position by appointing directors because you would lose the ability to have the exchange that you currently have. But that’s a choice obviously that the community makes.
The second point is that in general, is any… I think it comes back to my earlier point. When somebody sends the Board some advice, as a matter common courtesy, they should hear back from the Board and I say we’re looking at all the formal mechanisms for making sure that there is an immediate acknowledgement of receipt and then a subsequent explanation of what’s happened to the advice that’s been given. So that’s in 08.
Cheryl: Thank you, Peter. Wolfgang.
Wolfgang: Had interest in comment on the whole review process. I think this is really one of the big achievements for ICANN to have started this review for the different bodies. If I compare with the United Nations, you know, the United Nations has discussing reform since 20 years and they never had a review of their various bodies, so I think this is really a very good example, you know, a model, you know, for other international organizations. However, if you go through the history of ICANN, we had the first ICANN model from 1998, then we moved to the second after the reform process in 51, and now thirdly after 2009 there will be something like an ICANN 3.0, a new one. And what I see now is, and that’s a problem, that we have with this review process, we have a very good picture for the various bodies – At-Large, the various supporting organizations, the Board – but what I see is that we are moving now towards to be put into various silos and there is no… we need such a new approach for a holistic review, such like probably, you know, after 2009 there would be a need for a committee of the whole, you know, which brings all this together again.
And I think you made already, or ICANN made already a first step in developing a new instrument with all these various liaisons, because a liaison is a very good instrument to move forward. And when you say, “Okay, if you go to the Board seats, then you will lose the function to liaise,” I think you have to do both. That means you have to have, you know, a channel where all the 55 constituencies able to delegate voting members to the Board because they represent, you know, a large constituency which is not the constituency of the cNSO or the GNSO or the ASO, but it’s a separate constituency. But to have this system of liaisons is extremely important. I don’t know whether we should have them, a liaison and two Board members, but to liaise in working groups I think… There was an argument for a long time here, “A voice is more important than a vote.” So I think that it is not a question of what is more important. It’s important to have a voice and it’s important to have a vote, but you have to define exactly, you know, where the voice is needed and where the vote is needed.
Cheryl: Thank you, Wolfgang. And Peter, you obviously came in perfectly timed, because you’ve had to field every one of the questions so far. Go ahead.
Peter: Well, just again to stress the point that you do not get a vote. You may get… You get to appoint directors. They are not your vote. This is not a representative structure. And it sounds like this needs to be said again and again and again. When you appoint to directors to the Board, you lose them. Okay? You are not gaining anything. You are losing, and you are… All that you have is you’re able to apply the skill and knowledge around this table in the process of selecting Board members.
Cheryl?: They’re gone.
Peter; They’re gone and they will then be focussing largely I can tell you on what’s going into the RAA amendments and contracts and things that they probably have very little idea about until they get there. That’s the first thing.
This does pick up really on more of what Wolfgang’s saying, and that is that this whole concept of structural review in ICANN is actually very, very important. And it is actually a very powerful tool for refreshing the organization and checking that it’s working properly. I personally would rather see it as review, not revolution, and I’m a little bit jumpy that you’re putting it into the same context, as the same upheaval that we got with the ERC in 2002 and 3. I don’t think really the sort of scale of changes that are coming out of the reviews are of that level, but you and I can have a beer and discuss that later on.
What I am concerned about, as you are, is the coordination of those and the processes by which they’re done. And I think it’s pretty clear that we stumbled into this from a bylaw requirement which we basically overlooked for a few years and then had to catch up, and we are now in catch-up mode and we have more reviews underway than probably we should have in terms of the staffing and other requirements. The Board is in the process of forming on Friday a brand new Board committee to supervise polic-… create policy, because we don’t have any. We’ve got some ad hoc practices that we developed largely around the GNSO review. There will be a Board committee which will design the processes for going forward with review. My personal hope and intention is to make sure that directors have much less to do with it personally than they do at the moment. Part of my general thrust as chairman is to make sure that directors are constantly engaged in director-level activity, not management and volunteer activity. And as a part of that process as well, a senior staff member has been recruited and will be in charge of staffing the reviews because it’s fundamentally important to me that the staff who do the reviews are independent as well. The independence of these reviews is a key requirement in the bylaws – and this is no disrespect to any of the staff involved, we’ve had to use staff who on the one hand are daily involved in dealing with the policy development work in the very organization that they are then turned around and expected to support a review of.
So, you know, it’s a very important principle. We are working our way through. It’s been challenging to implement and we’ve learned a few lessons, but hopefully we will be taking this forward in a more professional, more organized, more cohesive way, and part of that will also be the coordination when there are independent… when there are separate reviews going on.
Cheryl: Thank you, Peter. And just to warn you, the next speaker will be speaking in French. So if you would care to put your earphones on, I recognize Fatimata, then Alan. And then I assume in that four minutes’ time you will need to leave. Is that correct, sir?
Peter: 20
Cheryl: Might I thank you now for the time you’ve spent with us and I hope you weren’t too exhausted. laughter
Peter: Yeah. laughter
Cheryl: Go ahead, Fatimata.
Interpreter: Thank you, Cheryl. Fatimata, ALAC, from Senegal. I would like to thank most sincerely the members of the Board for the explanations they have given us. At the same time, I have another feeling, another feeling of frustration or perhaps misunderstanding regarding the review work which has been carried out because for us and according to the meetings which we have had including this morning’s meeting, the ALAC review has helped us see a new hope being born within the Board to listen to the views of users and the voices of users. And now the understanding I have is that nothing will be changed because this is a true change. So therefore I ask, if through naïveté or through a lack of understanding due to my own culture and background, what would this review be of use? Why have you brought it if we cannot implement the recommendations which we are going to make, or even if these recommendations even when implemented will be of no use regarding the change or vis-à-vis the change we wish to see occur? Thank you.
Cheryl: Does any of the Board members wish to respond to tha-…? You wish to respond or you wish to speak, because Alan is the next speaker? Peter, did you wish to say anything?
Peter: Umm… pause I’m not sure that it wasn’t entirely rhetorical in that there really isn’t a question there for me. Yes, the process will go through and yes, it will be implemented and yes, it may be useful. But equally, it may not be implemented because of reasons the BGC or the Board decide, and I’m not quite sure how to respond.
Cheryl: It was difficult, but I think we can all struggle to come to terms with making sure that we discuss and explore those very options.
Alan and then Sébastien.
Alan: I just wanted to raise an idea that I have started pushing and plan to continue pushing, but if the Board members present think it’s a really dumb way of approaching then this is a good opportunity to say so. The ALAC is given opportunities to comment on a very large number of things, both from public comment periods, explicitly being asked so by the GNSO, and various other things. We don’t have the capacity to answer all of them thoughtfully and in many of the cases I think we can make a reasonable judgement that this is an issue which is important to ICANN but not necessarily of import to the users that we are claiming to be speaking on behalf of, and I think we’re going to have to pick and choose which ones we think are important for the constituency we’re representing and which ones we can just pass on, to make sure that the quality of the ones we do answer and that are important are high. And if that doesn’t make sense, then I guess I’d like to hear it, because I’ll stop pushing it. But I think that’s a rational way for us to try to make sure that we give good quality advice on things that truly we believe are important to those who we are here for.
Cheryl: Thank you. Peter.
Peter: Yes, as a matter of practical politics if not policy development, you pick…
laughter
Peter: …you pick your battles and you do your best on the ones that you choose, and if you… This is every manager’s problem, it’s every general’s problem, is, you know, marshalling the troops and the resources to win battle and hopefully win the war. The most important thing that comes out of that, I think, should be a constant analysis of the resourcing problems and presenting clear submissions to the Board which is in charge of allocating resources to carry out the intentions of the corporation. If you are constantly finding that there are, you know, a large number of issues that are properly addressed by your constituency but you don’t have the resources to deal with them, a properly worded submission to the Board along those lines should or might result in a better allocation of resources.
Cheryl: That was transcribed for the record, wasn’t it? laughter
Alan: Well, I must say I wasn’t particularly aware that we had any resources to do our actual policy work, although there may be someone to help in the mechanical aspects of it. But we at this point have no policy staff in the sense that the GNSO does.
Peter: Sounds like a…
Alan: Last I heard.
Peter: Sounds like a properly worded statement is long overdue then.
laughter
Cheryl: Well, on what I can only consider to be quite a high point in the conversation… Thank you so much for sharing your time with us this morning, Peter. We really do appreciate, and my only problem is now that the remaining speakers won’t have access to you and your answers, but I’m sure the rest of the Board members will pass on what goes on. Thank you so much.
Peter: Thanks for having me.
Cheryl: Always a pleasure. Sébastien and then Vittorio would like the microphone.
Sébastien: In fact I wanted to speak after Fatimata because I think the main issues she’s raising, it’s maybe a question of difficulty to understand and language problem. And…
Female: 13
Sébastien: No, no, no, no. I’m not… Not “language” as… because it’s English or French, but words, ideas, vocabulary. It’s… And I was struggling this morning in our little working group about the fact to have elected Board members, and I tried to say exactly what Peter said, it’s that as soon they will be elected, they will not be anymore belonging to ALAC. And that’s a point that was made by Peter, but for the rest of the review, if it’s decided it could go through and even we are able to implement or to push ideas for that during that review. Now he’s left but I wanted to 13 as one of the President’s Strategy Committee members that it’s also one of the topics that we are working on, but I’m sure that the other members of this group will pass this word to him. Thank you.
Vanda: Thank you, Sébastien. We have a long line. Please, Vittorio is in the queue, then we have Jean-Jacques and Thomas, then Robert, then Carlton, and Fatimata.
Vittorio: Thank you. I didn’t mean to speak today, so I will try to be brief. I became a little concerned that the 51 that this meeting was going on by the direction it’s taking. I don’t mean to be offensive to the committee, but you had two hours with several Board members including the CEO and Chairman, and I would have expected that the ALAC would use them to push for their policy positions. So there’s some important issues being discussed at this meeting, starting from new gTLDs and assigning the root, and this is the moment where the decision maybe will not be made at this meeting but will be made in the next month or so. And this was your only chance to get to influence directly Board members about your positions. And all of the meeting went, I mean, about procedures and 31 and Board seats and… Yeah, about procedures, meetings, Board seats, and… Okay, this is fine, it’s an important matter, but why isn’t there an ALAC statement on new gTLDs and you’re lobbying the Board members for that?
So, I mean, I don’t know, maybe you’re preparing it. But I went to your website, the only one is from Paris and it’s basically a copy-and-paste of the NCUC statement. So there’s… I think this was your opportunity to push for policy positions. 03 keeps coming on when you talk with other people outside of the ALAC. I mean, where are the advice? The ALAC continues to complain about their advice not being heard, but basically there is no advice that one can perceive, at least on the topics that are being discussed in the meeting.
So maybe this is a problem with perceptions, and so you have to deal with these perceptions, but I was a bit disappointed by the agenda and was a bit disappointed by the fact that the only person who raised the policy issues were Paul Twomey. And he exactly said what I am saying to you, in a very diplomatic way, he said, “We need your policy advice,” and he got only two 15-second replies which were… 42
Vanda: Well, just remember that we have done a lot of statements and sent to the board, and in more thoughtful, because just opinion for members around the Board is not really the position place of ALAC. And those items we agreed that’s very, very important to us to debate as the summit 07, as the ALAC review that’s the most important issue for this people around the table.
Jean-Jacques, please.
Jean-Jacques: Thank you. Two points. The first one is the one just raised by Vittorio, and that brings me back to what Paul Twomey said earlier. He brought up essentially three very important topics or items. And it is true that we hope for a written position or advice on each of these things, which is new TLDs, DNSSEC deployed at the root, and Board review or review mechanisms in general. I insist on this because actually the discussion or whatever discussion we may have, it’s rather difficult for the Board as a complete body to take that into account if it’s not in a written form, if it has not been vetted by you all, and agreed upon by you all. So that’s a question of method.
My second point was to come back to what you said about voting or non-voting. Now we have the facts. The ALAC Review Working Group has examined the report by the independent reviewer and there we are. You have the choice of asking for the present situation to continue with the system as it is or to have a different system where some people would be integrated onto the Board. But I would like to come back to what Sébastien underlined. I have the impression that yes, there is some misunderstanding, not because of language but because of the content we give to words. And I would insist on the fact that there is a sort of transmutation, a sort of karma in which when a person is elected to the Board as a director, the nature of that person on the Board changes – whether we like it or not, it’s a truth, we have to face the fact. And then when that person leaves the Board, perhaps to come back to his or her initial organization, he or she regains his status or her status. But I think that… I’m sorry, I have the impression of repeating something which is very well known, but I thought I would say this once again because your question begged that answer. Thank you.
Vanda: Thank you. Thomas, please.
Thomas: Yeah, I just also wanted to comment again about the role of the, you know, voting Board member, because this topic came up. And, you know, Peter made it kind of stark-… said it kind of starkly where you “lose” – you know, they leave ALAC when they come on the Board. I think, to be clear, people that come to the Board as voting members don’t lose their expertise. They still have expertise in a lot of knowledge about ALAC issues, ALAC concerns, and what has worked and what has not worked and so forth. That is extremely valuable and is a perspective you will continue to get on the Board. However, when somebody joins the Board as a voting member, their duty is to the corporation. That is a condition for being on the Board as a voting member, and that means that they are no longer representing ALAC and ALAC’s interests solely, they have to look out for the good of the organization as a whole. So it changes the nature of their obligations. And that’s what I think is meant by “you lose them” and they’re not really representatives in the sense that if ALAC wants X, that’s what they’re going to push for.
Vanda: Okay. Thank y-… cuts out
Robert: I’ll make my comments in Spanish.
Interpreter: They just announced what has been commented before. Many of the comments we heard in many parts of the world are not in English. And unless I choose to speak in English. It was said a few moments ago what Vittorio said, that it is rather unjust. He can say that what I’m going to say might not be to the taste of the members of the Board. What we said is interesting to us, it has to go from the lower level to the upper one and not the opposite. Concerning the changes to the At-Large Structure, there has been a committee which met twice and tonight we should be drafting a text, the comments that were made yesterday not only concerning the vote on the Board but other very important points that were made. The aspects of voting is important.
Robert: I’ll just say this point in English because I think it’s important as well. For the comments in regards to the ALAC review, we do see the voting rights as something that’s important, but other points were equally raised that are important as well and we will be commenting on them – one of them being strategy, one of them being outreach. In order for us to be effective, we must be able to learn how to plan long-term and strategically both at ICANN processes but also engaging users. And because that’s not been mentioned does not mean we don’t see that as important.
In regards to the Board vote discussion that’s been taking place now, I think that if ALAC gets to appoint, they will be able to appoint someone not only that has knowledge that comes from an At-Large perspective but a perspective from At-Large, and we might feel that that is not the case now. So while they might lose that liaison role, they will bring a perspective and reinforce maybe existing Board members that might be in the minority. And so if, you know, ICANN has a mandate to engage internet users, it is seen by many that in many parts of the world if there’s representation on the Board, then ICANN is serious about it. If it’s a symbolic measure, many points of the world will not think that engagement is important. So it’s a symbolic gesture that we see.
I’ll just get back to an earlier comment that I made – the issue of linguistic diversity. My esteemed colleague, José and Carlos mentioned it this morning, a lot of these comments are in English and it’s very difficult and it’s a big challenge for At-Large Structures in many parts of the world to engage when there are a scarcity of documents and discussion drafts in languages rather than English. I must say that not only are comments not available in English, and I’ll finish, they’re also not available in Mandarin, which is where the number one internet users are in the world. And if we want to engage them, we should also think about producing more comments in that language. And Arabic, we’re in Egypt. I don’t see comments in Arabic. So thank you.
Cheryl: Thank you, and thank you, Vanda, for letting me take a much needed break. I now have Carlton, Fatimata, Izumi, Adam, and Evan, and I suspect that will be the closing. And we will see… Okay, Wolfgang, I recognize, but we will see for time. I’m not running into my people’s relaxation and break time again.
Wolfgang?: 48 to reply.
Cheryl: Oh, that was a right to reply. I’m sorry, I didn’t have your name prior to Robert’s. So please go ahead if it’s a right to reply, make it concise.
Wolfgang: Yeah, just I want to make a comment to the issue of whether… if we have a voting representative of ALAC will we lose it. I think, you know, the ALAC is responsible for the corporation as a whole and I 10 fully the argument that a director, you know, is responsible primarily for the corporation as a whole. But the Board has to represent a certain diversity and so if I wasn’t in NomCom, we were looking, you know, how to get various backgrounds and various skills into the Board so that the Board as a whole represents the whole internet community. And I think certainly the cNSO would send different people to the Board and ALAC would send different people to the Board, and ALAC… and directors from the cNSO certainly will lose their direct contact from the cNSO because they are not reporting back to the cNSO. They are ICANN directors and the same will happen with people, you know, which are selected by the At-Large Advisory Committee. So I think we should not be confused by this argument that ALAC will lose if they send two directors to the Board. So they will enrich the Board and it’s good for the Board as a whole.
Cheryl: Thank you. Carlton.
Carlton: I was going to comment on the Board issue but most people know where my position on… so I’ll just stay out of it. There’s one thing though that bothers me about this and…
Cheryl: Sorry, can I 29? The Board made a very important point, they don’t know your position, so please feel free to concisely share.
Carlton: You know, context is very important to how you think about and decide things. I have always maintained that ICANN is an American corporation, it has the sensibilities of an American corporation, and therefore the way it thinks, acts, it behaves that way. And when you get to the Board, you’re expected to support the mission and the objectives of the institution, and that’s where it stops.
That’s the context. The issue for me is that I am constantly bothered by a lack of recognition of how policy is supposed to be made and communicated, or policy positions supposed to be communicated in the ALAC. It’s supposed to be bottom-up. You’re supposed to go out and you’re supposed to consult with some things called At-Large Structures. However imperfect, however imperfect the organization is today, that is what we agreed to, and I see here many times direct attempts to undermine that structure. I find it really very disturbing. When the comment was made that the ALAC has not passed policy advice to the Board, I also think that is incorrect on fact. What I’ve always said is my bugbear is can you tell me when – and I challenge every time anyone to tell me – when the Board is seen to have accepted the advice of ALAC on any policy? And I wanted to know, anybody inside here, tell me when other than the summit – and I make the point, other than the ALS summit – tell me when.
The point I’m making is this – the way to Board advice from the ALAC is a long one. We need to maintain the structure. It’s a bottom-up process. Just like the Board says ICANN works in a bottom-up policy direction, ALAC works in that way too, and that needs to be maintained. I do not wish to see any more of this direct undermining of the structure. If we wish to do away with it and have a 15-member group of experts, let us go on record and be intellectually honest about it. But until that day comes, let us retain what we agreed to. Thank you.
applause
Cheryl: Thank you, and you will find that the majority certainly agree with many of those things that were said, but I think it’s important to realize that the Regional At-Large Structures are an integral part of… that they are the nexus, they are the aggregation point, they are in fact the liaison to each of the At-Large Structures. That is in fact why two-thirds of our 15 member make-up is directly from those RALOs, so that should be a continuous thread.
Go ahead, Dennis.
Dennis: Just a direct response, and speaking personally, that’s what I expect, that’s what I’m looking for as a Board member. That’s what I want, that you bottom-up reflect the views globally of the citizens, consumers, customers, registrants. So…
Cheryl: I now have Fatimata. And just to remind you, French.
Interpreter: Thank you, Cheryl. And I would like to thank 49 and Sébastien for the explanations they gave us. Generally speaking, we do understanding the role of the members of the Board, that they’re working in the interest of the institution as such. The problem we have faced is linked to the fact that when we express ideas, advice, we get the impression that it’s not taken into account. That is why when we had the opportunity in this study which says two representatives, we were in favour because we said it would allow us to be more visible, to be taken more seriously, and I think we all share this feeling. Nevertheless, two members or one member would be elected by us would be those who somehow in their expertise will be expressing our concerns. They will be human beings, not robots so that they may convey 08 today, the other tomorrow.
Anyway, concerning our participation, and that is in answer to Vittorio somehow, is that we have worked with and on documents, and as Carlton just said, it’s a bottom-up process. We work together and if we do not receive responses, it is not encouraging. And again, if we’re told that it’s not worth having representatives on the Board, we will see if we’re interested. Sometimes you react too late, we can’t look at that. We have to think of a mechanism allowing us to be better considered, to feel well as human beings and as real partners who represent the majority and the largest number of people who can participate in the functioning of ICANN. Thank you very much.
Cheryl: Thank you, Fatimata. It comes back to valuing volunteers, and you can value volunteers in a number of ways. The more effective that is, the more work we will do for you.
Izumi.
Izumi: Thank you, Chair. This is my 31st ICANN meeting and I will stepping down from ALAC within a few days, so… and I have enjoyed a lot and I may enjoy more. In view of the Board review and NomCom review and GNSO review all in place, I’d like to get away from some dichotomies – Board or liaison, policy or structure. I think these are all important and integral parts of our business together, so I think we need some more creative thinking. Meaning the function of Board is not only just to vote, right, to conduct some or engage in ICANN’s core business. Of course I know that there is some discussion about the number of Board seats or, you know, functions, whether it should be more of the executive or more of the supervisory or however you define. So it’s not a fixed thing yet. So the seats, if we are given two may not have the same function as we know it. It’s likely modified or improved. That’s where we should work together.
And also these… I think that I cannot think of reasons why these core functions are not sort of shared by the individual internet users similar to the other stakeholders. If there’s a good explanation, I’d like to hear for that. So there are certain merits of having a Board broadly and for ALAC. I’m trying to define what are these. Just not only saying we need the votes or power, I would like to rather see more functional reasons or why we looking for some functions like that. One is that of the representation as we all know and awareness combined. We have been suffering so to speak of the lower level of interest from ALSes or At-Large 26, and one reason is if I join ALS, what kind of difference can I make? And sometimes it’s very difficult to say, “Well, there’s this structure and that structure, and we send one liaison and we have RALOs.” And so sometimes it’s much easier to explain, “Okay, we have the elected officials who are from ALAC… At-Large community who will be represented at the Board so that our voices will be heard” – not into the details but in the perception. And it has an interesting effect for that. As well as within ICANN community, it may make more seriousness to the SOs, advisory committees, people, and also the staff if we, you know… that, you know, be treated as equal with others. And these are the areas that… And the downside of a liaison is that “We are just… Occasionally we are listened to” was a perception if not the real fact.
So I haven’t really made my position with the Board or the liaison is the best way to go forward, but I think we need to consider these different areas before concluding. Thank you.
Cheryl: And Dennis, did you wish to reply to that?
Dennis: Just a quick response on one specific, and that is the submitting communications to the Board. Peter assured you that we had recognized that gap and it was something would be done about it. Jean-Jacques has just brought to my attention a memo that’s just been circulated to the Board, “Draft Process for Submitting Communications to the ICANN Board of Directors.” So we are… You know, this is live. We are taking that very seriously. We will improve our processes, improve the acknowledgements. But I do think that you need to distinguish between statements, concerns, and when you have a formal policy advice that’s a consensus of the committee council here. So anyway, we’re working on it and we will work with you.
Cheryl: Thank you, Dennis. I’m aware of four minutes available and two speakers on my list, and that is Adam and Evan. Adam, do you have a microphone where you are?
Adam: If it’s… Yes, I think I do.
Cheryl: Great.
Adam: I wanted to make a bit of a comment about DNSSEC, which I don’t know a great deal about, and I’ve been hesitant to do this because I’m a new member and I’m not yet an ALAC member and also I haven’t discussed any of this with anybody in the room, so this is just a thought from me. There was a very interesting paper, I think it was about 2006, summer of 2006, by Becky Burr and Marilyn Cade which was looking at how… I think it was called “Promoting Responsible Global Private Sector Management of the DNS,” and it was mainly looking at the US government’s authority over the root. And sorry I’m not doing very well with this mic. And I think if you look at that proposal and took away the word “root” and started thinking about how DNSSEC might be implemented with the mechanisms they’re proposing, that could be quite a useful starting point for some of the problems that are going on. They’re essentially saying that perhaps the US government’s authority could be replaced by an international working group to monitor changes to the authoritative root which might be actually a signing process rather than changes to the authoritative root.
Anyway, this document is quite widely available and at some point I hope the ALAC will consider it and perhaps either reject it or amend it in some way to put it to the Board. But I’m wondering if the Board members here could perhaps take a look at it and they may find it useful sort of food for thought on an ongoing basis while you’re thinking about how to deal with DNSSEC and the problems.
Cheryl: Thank you, Adam. And I have just heard, “Yes, certainly. Just send us the link,” so I don’t think I need to hand that to a Board member to repeat that.
Evan, concise please.
Evan: First of all, without giving my own opinion on the issue, I just want to note that the ALAC review document was a very, very impressive, thorough work that was 24 pages on many things, and yet both sides in this discussion continue to harp on a single point of it. I’m very, very saddened by that and I had hoped that we would have been able to go beyond that. I hope as we move forward, we’ll be able to address more than just a single dimension of this thing.
Secondly, I wanted to go back to the comments that Vittorio and others had made about the issue of “Well, why aren’t we bringing up policy?” Within the North American RALO, we’ve been really concerned about, you know, the stimulus response pattern that is expected within the At-Large community. Something is tossed out, we’re given a period of time to respond to it, and, you know, “Can we get it translated? Can we get this done? Can we move in time?” and so on, and it becomes a very, very stressful and very often a non-functional situation.
On the other hand, where in fact we’ve been at our most effective have been on occasions where we have created ideas and created things that have been for consideration. And I would note the efforts on the AGP and the domain tasting issue, which I think… and, you know, as Alan was quite happy to point out last night, it’s probably one of our best achievements so far. This was something that was almost an initiative from within us, not something that we responded to but something we created. And in order I think for us to be at our best, this is where we are – bringing things from the individual user community into the process as opposed to simply knee-jerking to the things that the Board and other constituencies think should be important to us. And so I’ll just address that and hope you can consider that as we move forward, that sometimes when we’re at our best, it’s not just that we’re, you know, reflecting on something that has been shoved upon us.
Cheryl: And forecasting would also help a great deal for us to prepare ourselves so things aren’t coming out of the blue.
Dennis, go ahead.
Dennis: Just on that, the… What was it called? My God, I have a blank now. laughter
Nick: Domain tasting?
Dennis: Domain tasting, thank you. I just couldn’t think of the words. I’m old. It’s a senior moment. That’s my excuse.
Female: 14
Dennis: laughter Pardon me. Yes, the domain tasting thing, I hadn’t been aware of it until I came on the Board. I was truly horrified that it was going on. I think the stimulus from ALAC was extremely important and a number of the Board members got, you know, quite upset that this was going on and insisted that something be done about it. So yes, I think concentrating on the issues that are important to end users is very important in providing that advice.
And on that note, as a consumer and citizen and registrant or customer, I was horrified to discover that the DNS system can be spoofed, that it’s not reliable. I was more horrified to discover that governments were more concerned about who does it than that it be done. So there are two messages as a consumer, the root has… DNSSEC has to – or an equivalent, and DNSSEC is the 12 one – has to be implemented, and then outside the domain of ICANN, DNSSEC has to be propagated throughout the whole of the internet, because I as a consumer am appalled that this system is fundamentally flawed. So I want this structure to… Maybe I don’t reflect all consumers, but if consumers knew – and I’m not trying to alarm them – if consumers and citizens knew that it was that bad, there’d be uproar I think.
Cheryl: Thank you very much. We have managed two minutes… No, I’ve said no to Alan, and I’m being… No, that’s it. We’re two minutes, three minutes past our closing time. I wish to thank the Board members and indeed those particularly who are part of our Board Governance Review Working Group, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for the time you’ve spent with us today. And I certainly want to just reiterate in my thanks and in closing what Evan quite rightly pointed out, we have spoken about 1 of 22 points. The working group that is continuing to work during the Cairo meeting, and the traffic on our list will prove it, are also addressing 21 others, rest assured.
Oh, yes sir, you can do that because you can pull rank on me. Go ahead, Jean-Jacques. laughter
Jean-Jacques: I just wanted to, as one of the participants in this very interesting exchange, underline how important it is that we have the help of the interpreters. I think especially in At-Large activities, translation and interpretation are of the essence, so I would like to thank the organizers for providing this facility. Perhaps in the future there will be more languages taken on board in this kind of meeting, but it is very essential. So I would like, with your permission, to thank the interpreters. Especially as we are in Cairo, I am reminded of something. The word “drogman” – I’m not an Arab speaker but “drogman” is more than just interpreter or translator, it is the channel of mutual understanding, of cultural understanding, of putting at the same level of comprehension, so I would like that to be my parting word. Thank you to the team of “drogman.”
Cheryl: Thank you. Return to this room at 1:30, is that correct? Uh…
Izumi?: Housekeeping 39.
Cheryl: Our housekeeping, sorry. We certainly don’t need to detain the Board any further. Thank you. We’re returning here at 1:30. We have got the tickets here at the front. Come and collect them from me. And go ahead, Izumi. What is your housekeeping matter?
Izumi: Thank you. The working group on the At-Large review agreed to meet again this afternoon from 3:30 to 5 here to discuss not only the Board seat matters but all the, you know, wonderful, interesting things together to prepare the draft statement. So here, 3:30 to 5.
Cheryl: And Beau, another…
Evan: So does that replace the secretariats’ meeting?
Cheryl: I have no idea…
Izumi: No, no.
Cheryl: …if the secretariats are in that working group.
Izumi: In parallel.
Cheryl: 27, fight it out. Go ahead.
Beau: overtalking
Nick: overtalking …the secretariats.
Cheryl: Stop. Go.
Beau: I certainly don’t want to detain the Board folks for this announcement, but there is a housekeeping matter. We did ask Bob Bruen who spoke briefly yesterday who represents Knujon who has done a lot of work on fraud and other matters. He has been told to address the ALAC today at 4 o’clock here. So that seems to conflict with a few things that are being discussed and that are going on. From 4 to 5. Yeah, 4 to 5 here in San Souci.
Alan: Okay. And I’d like to make an announcement out of band, that after the AGP, the domain tasting PDP was passed, the Board also implemented a budget policy as part of that to reduce domain tasting. The first statistics are out two days ago which no one has bothered talking about in any form. For .com, the numbers in May were 16 millions drops; June was 17 million drops; July was 2.5 million.
Female: Ah, 43. Good.
Alan: And I think we can take some credit for that.
Female: Absolutely.
54 to 1.51.09
Izumi: So what to do in the late afternoon then? Do parallel or do one each…?
End of Audio
