Board Questions: 

Message from Maarten Botterman, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors: 

Dear Constituency and Stakeholder Groups Chairs,

Please reply no later than Monday 24 February 2020

Our first meeting of the year is approaching fast! The Board and I are very much looking forward to engaging with you during our Community Forum in Cancun, which is taking place from 7-12 March 2020.

As we continue working with you on the format of our engagement with your groups, we would like to experiment a new way of interacting by offering you to choose one or two area(s) of interest and having an open discussion with the Board on those, instead of asking you to come up with specific questions.

We are also suggesting that the list of areas of interest be shared with the entire Community using the Policy digest, in order to increase transparency and allow the groups to improve their own understanding of their peers’ point of views on different issues. 

As for time allocation, we propose to allocate the first part of our time together to be spent on your specific areas of interest, and to allow sufficient time to address the areas of interest indicated by the Board, if they have not been covered by that time.    

In preparation for our meetings, the Board proposes the following areas of interest to have an open discussion with you:

1. Key priorities for action of ICANN constituencies in 2020 (e.g. prioritization of recommendations, streamlining of reviews, improve effectiveness of ICANN’s multistakeholder model, …)
2. Specific developments coming up that ICANN constituencies feel need to be addressed when updating the ICANN Strategic Plan. 

We would be very grateful if you could send Board Operations your area(s) of interest, in order of priority, no later than Monday 24 February 2020.

So you are aware, we are not changing the current total time allotted per group. 

We look forward to hearing your thoughts on our suggestions and on how to further improve our interaction.

We thank you in advance for your time on this matter and we look forward to welcoming you in Mexico!

Best regards,

Maarten Botterman

Chair, ICANN Board of Directors

**

Response to the Board topics: 

With the mandate to represent the interests of "individual end users," the ALAC is painfully aware our representation, in the ICANN community, is anemic compared to the proportionate interests of our constituency as stakeholders. The multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-economic and overall heterogeneous nature of our community presents unique challenges both in terms of outreach and consensus development. We are much like a third party participant to a legal dispute, reminding the parties (and adjudicators!) that there are downstream consequences to their actions. Our mantra to "remember the users," leads us to focus on two areas primarily when it comes to ICANN policy development: Security/Stability and Trust. Therefore, we often take issue with the almost "entitled" drive to expand the the namespace before truly understanding, and accounting for, the implications. We were vocal in 2012 about the lack of operational readiness for the new round and were largely vindicated in those concerns. Hence our focus on DNS Abuse and Universal Acceptance.  With the near total failure of the new safeguards and the near total failure in take up of the new strings by even the biggest of websites, the ICANN community should be devoting nearly ALL of its energy to resolving those issues. Much like a software company constantly developing new versions of their product while spending insufficient resources on testing and debugging,  ICANN must be ever vigilant of drifting into the realm of trade association and away from it's public interest mandate. Improving the lives of applicants and registrants is certainly a noble goal and a core mandate for the organization but doing so at the expense of the public, at-large, is to call into question ICANN's legitimacy as a 501c(3). As such, our "priorities" for 2020 are implementation of security, stability and trust oriented recommendations from both the CCT and SSR2 reviews. Our organizational priorities are to ensure that the "evolution" of the multi-stakeholder model doesn't unduly limit our participation in GNSO policy development because our voice, while often annoying, is at the crux of ICANN's credibility as a public interest organization and community.

Questions to the ICANN Board: 

DNS Abuse

Of course, the Board must now recognize that the ALAC will not miss any opportunity to discuss DNS Abuse. While we recognize the Board has yet to pass formal judgement on our most recent advice on the topic, we would welcome the opportunity to hear from individual Board members on what they imagine to be the best path forward on this issue. We’re well aware of initiatives to better define DNS Abuse but it’s fairly clear that, even considering the most restrictive of definitions, there’s a great deal that needs to be done. The current “brown out” of registrant data has only made matters worse for reputation engines, law enforcement and others who had grown used to the availability of those tools. While certainly not the fault of the Board, these factors certainly make the situation more dire.

 

The Sale of PIR to Ethos Capital

The ALAC would welcome any color commentary from individual Board members on how they perceive this is playing out. We submitted advice to ICANN ORG, via the Board, that the .ORG contract be amended to ensure the ideals of .ORG survive this and future transactions. What are your current reflections on where things stands and where they might end up? While the ALAC are most certainly not the voice of non-profits, individual end users benefit from their work and also represent a portion of the registrations in .ORG. Our primary concern is that the broad “character” of ORG registrants and PIR as a thought leader among registries might change leaving us all poorer for it.

 

The GAC

While it may seem like a strange question, how are things with the GAC? The ALAC believes that the GAC, along with the ALAC, plays an essential role in the legitimacy of ICANN as a multi-stakeholder, public interest organization. There are, in fact, three areas in which the GAC might imagine the system is rigged in such a way so as to downplay their interests. These areas are:

1. An overly cautious outcome from the EPDP
2. An overly laissez faire outcome from WT5 (Geonames) of the Subsequent Procedures Working Group
3. Insufficient focus by ICANN on DNS Abuse

 In all three instances, the case could be made that, the outcome of the policy deliberations have reflected the  economic interest of the contracted parties. While the ALAC is, by no means, in lock step with the GAC and, in some instances, the GAC, itself,  lacks consensus, the ALAC remains concerned that too many "disappointments" for the GAC could result in less cover for ICANN at national levels and an overall drop in trust in and credibility of ICANN. Our intention is never to speak for the GAC but the ALAC joins the GAC in expressing their concern about each of the above topics but wonders, in particular, if any of the Board are concerned about ICANN’s relationship to the governments that make up the GAC.

Agenda for Joint Board/ALAC Session: 

1. Introductory Remarks by the Board - Leon Sanchez, Vice Chair of the ICANN Board

2. At-Large Priorities during 2020 - Maureen Hilyard, ALAC Chair

a. At-Large Review Implementation Plan
b. Evolving Multistakeholder Model (Marita Moll, ALAC Member)
c. Capacity Building (Joanna Kulescz, ALAC Vice-Chair)
d. Collaboration and Partnerships with other ICANN communities

3. Policy Discussion: At-Large & the Board (Jonathan Zuck, ALAC Vice-Chair

a. DNS Abuse

b. PIR/.ORG

c. ALAC-GAC

CEO Questions:

1. Key achievements of ICANN67 from an ICANN org perspective.
2. In your perspective, how did the first virtual ICANN Meeting go? How do you see the future of ICANN Meetings?

ICANN Board Chairman Questions:

1. Key achievements of ICANN67 from an ICANN Board perspective.
2. In your perspective, how did the first virtual ICANN Meeting go? How do you see the future of ICANN Meetings?

GAC Questions: