- Original draft prepared by Olivier Crepin-Leblond and Evan Leibovitch
The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) welcomes the opportunity to comment on the GNSO Working Group Guidelines, as approved by the Policy Process Steering Committee (PPSC).
The ALAC supports the recommendations included in this document, especially those for a Working Group Model, since this Model has the potential to enhance the policy development process by making it more inclusive and representative. We believe that thanks to this new model, the whole policy development process will be more effective and efficient.
Specifically, we recommend that the GNSO involves active representation from other constituencies -- and in particular ICANN's standing Advisory Committees -- in policy development Working Groups, from the beginning.
Such early involvement ensures widespread community investment in the policy process, especially from stakeholder representative groups that are strategically mandated by ICANN bylaws to be involved in policy.
Early community participation in policy issues avoids the need to resort to corrective measures that are never as effective as "doing it right the first time". Such corrective measures, a number of which have proliferated to address deficiencies in the existing policy process, exact a significant cost in time delay, human resources, and monetary expense by both ICANN and third parties.
Comments welcome through 16 February 2011 at 23:59 UTC
Comments received from Jean-Jacques Subrenat:
thanks for the draft, which seems fine. I would suggest adding a fourth paragraph, along the following lines:
"The experience gained by the ALAC in relating with its global constituency allows it to further recommend that, from the initial stage of a trans-constituency group contributing to policy formation, sufficient attention be given to enabling the proper participation of our communities worldwide, including by making available the appropriate linguistic services, when these are requested and their cost justified."
