Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay well good morning, good afternoon and good evening everybody this is the ALAC Finance and Budget Subcommittee teleconference call on the 20 January 2012. The time is 1509 UTC. And we have the pleasure of having again Xavier Calvez join us along with Janice for this second call which we’re having with ICANN Finance.
We actually had a call yesterday already, but that was just an internal ALAC Finance and Budget Subcommittee call and today we are going to go through some of the requests that we have looked at yesterday and perhaps ask questions to Xavier or Xavier being able to ask questions to us. It's going to be quite a free call. And so what we will start with I guess is a roll call please.
Nathalie Peregrine: Yes on the call we have Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Charles Mok, Cintra Sooknanan, Dev Anand Teelucksingh, [inaudible 00:01:25].
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Can someone - someone is not muted and I cannot hear anything.
Gisella Gruber: Sorry we are just getting that sorted and Cheryl Langdon-Orr as well. Our guest speakers today are Xavier Calvez and Janice Douma Lange. From staff we have Heidi Ullrich, Matt Ashtiani, Silvia Vivanco and myself Gisella Gruber. Have I forgotten anyone off the roll call because we also have Gareth Sherman on the Adobe Connect as well as Siva Muthusamy? Siva and Gareth are you on the call? If I could also please remind everyone to state their names for transcript purposes, thank you, over to you Olivier.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much Gisella. And have we actually forgotten any name in addition to Siva and Gareth? Hearing no one shouting out, right well welcome everyone -
Matt Ashtiani: Olivier this is Matt. I believe we missed Ganesh Kumar.
Gisella Gruber: He was mentioned.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: He was mentioned yes. it was just the line dropped out when Gisella said his name. Okay and I see that Shiva is also on the call. Okay well welcome everyone and so without any further delay, the first document which I thought we would look at and a quick introduction. I guess the first thing is we have received nine requests from regions for extra funding in the budget request process. Of course it's still a little premature for you Xavier to have been able to look at those yet since we have not transmitted them over to you.
But looking at a helicopter view of the whole situation that most regions if not all of them are looking at a general assembly as being their primary priority and the general assembly being a face to face general assembly, being able to meet with other At-Large structures. We’re looking at a similar type of request as what was done for AFRALO in Fiscal Year 2012. And some requests are asking for more or less funding depending on various reasons. But they all seem to be very valid in this.
I know that you have asked in a previous call to be able to have a look at some kind of roadmap into what our requests used to be and are going to be in the future, so as to look at a multiple years scheduling of those general assemblies and also looking at the future possibility of having a second At-Large summit. And so the document which you are now seeing on your screen - and I hope that everyone is able to see the document clearly - is everyone able to see it clearly?
What I've done is I've clicked the unsync button so you can control that document by yourself on this and thank you Matt for putting it up there. And so that document looks at the various Fiscal Years from year ’09 all the way down to ’21 and basically down at ’21 I think this can all be very speculator for the time being but if we are looking at what has happened so far, we see that Fiscal Year ’09 the At-Large summit took place and that included general assemblies for all of the regions as well. Whenever there is a number in a column that’s the actual real cost of it.
Whenever there is a ‘1’ in the column it's actually taken as a placeholder where no specific cost has been calculated. But there is either a request for something or there something has happened. So in there there is a ‘1’ in each one of the full GA’s a year column. Next to it, the ‘Other Events’ column is any other events that would be taking place outside of an ICANN meeting. next to it is of course the year, well Y-2 is two years before Fiscal Year ’11 which was taken as Y0, and Fiscal Year’12 which is Year 1 this year. And next to it is the column for the summit. I think the document is quite self-explanatory. May I ask Xavier do you have any immediate question on this or should we just go immediately to the numbers?
Xavier Calvez: No I don’t have any specific questions other than I think this would be a document useful for us to obtain so that we can use it during our work because I'm not going to memorize the information that is on it during this call. But I think it is an extremely useful document to have on hand so that we have at any point of time when we work on the requests the history of requests. So this is, I think, a very useful document and if we could have it that would be extremely helpful.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you Xavier. Yes, no memorization required at this call. Perhaps in the future there will be. And I open the floor for questions or comments and I see Cheryl Langdon-Orr has put her hand up, Cheryl?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you very much. Thank you Xavier, thank you Janice it's great to have you back on the call in this preparatory and ultimate stage. I'm really delighted to see this particular document put together. It's what being a number of heads for a number of years and of course it's drawn out of the prior agreement in previous budgets where there was requests for general assemblies and [inaudible 00:08:24] long term planning for general assemblies and we had the acceptance there would be a rotational roster of these sorts of things interspersed with possibilities for future summits as well.
Probably important that we realize that previous budgets have indicated that the ICANN staff support and administrative support were going to be able to be made available for these types of rotation. But the actual travel support for the general assemblies to actually occur themselves had never been part of a budget prior to the cobbling together or what was allocated to of course the three regions, both on their individual requests for the current budget year that we are in. We all know how AFRALO managed to get its very successful general assembly and capacity building.
And I think that’s important to realize it's actually just a general assembly. It is the much larger aspects of capacity building and the interaction and involvement of the At-Large structures and the internet end users. Of course I think is one of the crowning jewels that ICANN has to offer in the internet ecosystem with its rare ability with its multistakeholder model.
If this type of thing can be seen as an [imprinciple] structure that tips to the side for future years but is there as part of the background planning it may of course stop us getting the annual rebirth of the general assembly request from all regions in competition with each other and surprise, surprise, guess what? This is what has happened this year.
We have all of the regions wanting to do similar and identical things so someone has to play Solomon unless this type of thing is in place. I could say a lot more but I will leave of it to [inaudible 00:10:51]. Thank you very much.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Cheryl. Xavier do you have any immediate response to this? Or should we go through the comments and through the lists?
Xavier Calvez: I'm not sure yet what comment we should provide in this call. And let me take a step back before trying to address a little bit more specifically Cheryl's comment. Olivier I just wanted to clarify with you what you would like to obtain from us during this call on these requests. I'm not entirely clear as to what is the objective of the call with us now.
Ganesh Kumar: Could I?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes Ganesh.
Ganesh Kumar: I think that's a great question Xavier. We don’t really expect you to say yes or no to the individual requests. But what would help us is since you're new and we are trying to struggle and find out appropriate and effective ways of how do we budget. Because I think in my opinion from what little I have learned and what little I have learned from Olivier and Cheryl and other people who have been here for a longer time, this seems to be a zero based budgeting exercise where we start from a plain, white sheet of paper, start writing and we are forced to kind of prioritize and rank among the things that we believe need to happen in every region regardless.
And that’s the minimum requirement. So what we would require from you at this point in time, also is some sort of advice on how we should go about this thing more effectively because zero based budgeting is not clearly working for us. In our opinion this document that Olivier put together shows that there are certain things that need to happen to keep the lights on for ALAC. And we would need a minimum level of funding.
And there are some discretionary things that we can prioritize and rank, which you can, depending on the overall ICANN budget, make an approval or not. But sometimes we need to at least say what that base is and convey that and work with you to get some level of predictability in our funding situation.
Xavier Calvez: Okay this is helpful. Let me clarify maybe the way I'm looking at this process so that you correct my understanding if it needs to. And then we can then probably have a more effective communication on the requests. I believe this process is - that we are talking about now that we have initiated and presented at a high level in Dakar and that we have communicated either by email or with also supporting template - is what we’re calling an additional SO/NAC requests process as part of the budget. And the word I want to emphasize here is ‘additional.’
My understanding is that we are basically carving out an envelope of funds that is intended to be included in the overall ICANN budget that is specifically dedicated to absorb and fund requests or special requests or specific requests from the ICANN community about activities that they would like to do or to expand upon what already exists in the core activities that are funded in the ICANN budget and have been. To me it's not a zero based budget. There is a certain amount of support and activities that are carried out on an onigon basis that are funded in the ICANN budget.
But because these actives may not always include specifically what each organization would like to do either on a very specific time frame basis or [inaudible 00:15:52] manner then we have suggested to create this process where we look at additional requests with an envelope that is aimed at trying to accommodate a certain amount of additional activities or expansion of existing activities across all the ICANN communities.
And I think the point of that and probably Janice will be able to correct my understating with the perspective she has from a historical standpoint and you guys as well, I think the point of this was to ensure there is a little bit of flexibility given to the budgeting process so as to allow input from the community as to specific activities that may not necessarily be the same across all organizations but really specific either in the timing or the nature of them to a given organization. I don’t view this process at all to be zero based.
And maybe it's my being new that creates this misconception but I don’t see it being zero based. Any of you who want to comment on that so I'm getting the feedback I should if I'm wrong, please let me know.
Ganesh Kumar: I don’t mean to say the budgeting on ICANN side is zero based budgeting but that’s how it gets translated from our side because what you say is the base, we don’t know what the base is for ALAC budget. And therefore every time we have to do, the way we do this is we go around, we compile all the inputs from different RALOs, different initiatives and it is a bunch of - it's basically a zero based budgeting effort effectively.
That’s what I'm asking your help since you feel very strongly it's not a zero based budget it would probably be more effective for us and efficient use of our volunteer time if we could know at the beginning of a cycle what that base allocated to our activities are. Because they are clearly we can categorize them as Olivier has done, there are meetings. There are outreach efforts. There are general assemblies. And there are summits.
And if we can know we can then tailor our own requests back to you in a form that will help you a lot more in terms of making decisions. I think the critical thing here is we don’t know the base.
Xavier Calvez: Understood. I think that one way or the other we’re going to have to make sure we can come up with that view of across - and by the way I'm sure that this is something that will be relevant for other organizations than ALAC as well - is to have an adequate understanding of the activities that and ideally as complete as possible, of the activities that are carried out on the core budget so that then the picture of the support that’s funded by ICANN is as complete as possible and then facilitate your work on formulating requests, things that [inaudible 00:19:33] provide [inaudible 00:19:33].
I am sure that the requests that you guys have been working on are things that don’t already happen. I'm sure of that. But I think to your point it would be helpful to understand how these activities complete and how they add themselves onto what already exists. And in the support - not going into the details because I don’t have this detail in hand and I think we need to work on formulating that - but the activities I have in mind is the Secretariat support or the travel support, the conference call and a number of activities that happen, that’s already part of the budget.
It may not be relating to meetings or sometimes for a number of organizations we do provide in the core budget, support for meeting and so on. Dependent upon the organizations, dependent upon the activities there is a number of activities that are already in the core activities that the ICANN provides in support across all the organizations or sometimes more specific to a number of organizations.
That’s why I'm saying there is a number of activities that are funded and what we are more specifically talking about today are additional activities to those existing core activities. I definitely agree with the point of we probably need to have collectively a good understanding of what is already done, what's already embedded in the core budget so that then we look correctly at what we want to add basically.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Xavier and I think that what Ganesh was speaking about was probably a baseline of additional activities in addition to the of course core activities which are funded by ICANN, the core activities of the ALAC, that meeting at the ICANN conferences, staff support, all of the - that is another baseline which is just the day to day running of At-Large with the staff members and with the work that we’re doing within ICANN. but as you will see in all of the requests that are going to be sent to your services in a couple of days time, all of them relate to one of the core activities, one of the actually bylaw mandated core activities of the ALAC.
If I - and I don’t expect you to remember all the ICANN bylaws either - but in the bylaws under the ALAC there is an actual mention in there where the ALAC is responsible working in conjunction with RALOs for coordinating and one thing says ‘promoting outreach activities in the community of individual internet users.’ And that is a core activity which unfortunately has been so far treated as an extracurricular if you want to say, an additional thing.
And so as a result there has been absolutely no baseline on the actual face to face outreach which is proposed in all of the proposals that are being sent or that are going to be sent over to you.
Xavier Calvez: Okay understood.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Right so effectively there are a number of questions which come in play. One of the requests actually asks for some kind of courses - well ongoing capacity building, that was a request from AFRALO - ongoing capacity building post-Dakar that was going to just involve some staff time and some conference calls taking place. And one of the questions that came in our discussion yesterday was how is staff time budgeted with ICANN and for At-Large. Is this something that you and your services would be able to shed some light on please?
Xavier Calvez: I can't right now. I'm just covering the question and I didn’t gather any specific detail to the subject, so I don’t know.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I'm not expecting a quick answer but I think that was one of the action items we had yesterday so it is a very [inaudible 00:24:23] question.
Xavier Calvez: Okay.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: But it is something which perhaps we would after this call send over to you and ask. There is staff time. There are experts for lecturing in particular this sort of thing.
Xavier Calvez: And just so that I understand the context, when was this request formulated or was there an agreement or - I don’t know. I don’t have any background so I'm trying to understand how all the request was formulated, I don’t know.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Well since our last call Xavier, the RALOs have been very busy preparing their proposals and so all of these proposals are available on the Wiki page which is linked to the confluence or in fact, linked to the agenda page as well - the agenda Wiki page. And so what we will do when we send our requests to your services we will send a pointer over to that location for the requests.
Xavier Calvez: Okay and sorry I thought I had understood that the AFRALO request had been formulated in Dakar and had been already shared and communicated. That’s why I was asking.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: No, no it was a follow-up to Dakar. So they formulated it following up after Dakar.
Xavier Calvez: Okay.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: But they didn’t formulate it in Dakar. But it's obviously as part of the continuous system of capacity building which actually would be very positive for all of the regions, not only for the AFRALO region. And in fact, what came back from yesterday’s meeting was that this type of capacity building exercise which would be just a regular calls with experts would benefit not only AFRALO but would benefit all of the RALOs.
Xavier Calvez: Okay.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Oh I see Tijani has put his hand up. Maybe he can say a few words, Tijani please.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes thank you Xavier. I have to think I have a [inaudible 00:26:45] and a question. First for the [inaudible 00:26:47] sessions you are asking for we cannot probably not cost anything for ICANN except staff involvement. So we were thinking about to put it as an addition to the request or not to put it as an addition to the request. There is not a [inaudible 00:27:12] request. The second point now, it's a question, in our request, the AFRALO request, we didn’t put money, we put the unit.
For example, how many persons are requested for this - how many persons are proposed for the request [inaudible 00:27:36] for travel support etc., do you need compulsory the amount requested or is it enough for you and you will [inaudible 00:27:49] giving the money?
Xavier Calvez: I guess the - I don’t necessarily need - it would be helpful but it's not indispensible that you guys put amounts with the travel. We can make our own guesses. I guess what I would like to know is whether in the request it is specified whether the travel is within a given region or is an international travel. What I mean by that is if we are talking about the members of a given region travelling to a common point within that region it is probably a different type of cost than if it is an international travel from one continent to the other or. You see what I'm saying?
For example, if that is specified I think it narrows down the subject and we can make an estimate ourselves I guess. And we have some tools to do that from the meetings team so we can do that. If you have your own standards, benchmarks or information it can't hurt to provide it as well, so at least we have a point to start from. But I'm not going to tell you that it's indispensible that you do that especially at this stage of the process.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay I think that all of the requests as Cheryl points out in the chat are in [inaudible 00:29:40] requests taking place in the region except for just one. All of the other requests are for general assemblies to take place in the region where the RALO is located. And the AFRALO request which we are speaking about here does not involve any travelling as Tijani very kindly said. It's just effectively ICANN staff time and electronic resources such as Adobe Connect rooms and telephone costs which is, I think, another budget even separate and a lot less than the budget for travelling.
Xavier Calvez: Okay and then that will be part of the requests that we will get?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: He will yes. You will receive all of the requests - sorry I hear -
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sorry Olivier is it possible for matt to just put that on [inaudible 00:30:35] Olivier is saying that - sorry Xavier is saying the fact that we’re happy to think out to 2016 or beyond 2021 and he will get this and he can chew over the pretty thing that’s on the screen now. But what we've done is exactly what Xavier and his team asked for which is taking in from the regions their specific requests. We have sifted and sorted them.
We’ve seen where they are blended or can be blended and we've given them priority ranking. Let's have a look at this one from AFRALO as an example because it is an example of one which is rare compared to the others because it doesn’t involve any travel support. And yet is has multiregional opportunity, for example, Janice you will look at this and I'm quite sure see clear ramifications for where all of the fellowship both graduate and yet non - to be graduated could benefit from [inaudible 00:31:47] similar things as Tijani is suggesting would be a very worthwhile as a build or a next step on the successful capacity building work that we've done in Dakar. If Matt could bring that other up and I could -
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Matt is working on it.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I'm filibustering here. I'm very good at it. There is a point at which it becomes [inaudible 00:32:12] and I will have to start talking about the fact that it's middle of the night and something is upsetting my Galas and I can take you all out the front and give you background noises. There we go okay, I filibustered long enough. And it's not the right one Matt but we will go through this as an example. This is an APRALO one workshop at the regional IGF; the one that has absolutely zero travel ramifications is the AFRALO one which is the building. Here we go. Well done, ta-da thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s not the right one either.
Heidi Ulrich: Matt it's the first AFRALO one, the one about the capacity building. This was AFRALO. The first one that we looked at yesterday.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s not the correct one.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: You're right. That’s the one that - the one that’s on the screen now Xavier and Janice is the one that is out of region travel. [Inaudible 00:33:19] as a filter anyway, ta-da - phew!
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Now none is showing on my screen.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yep okay Janice and Xavier you're both looking at the request form in the tool that you provided and you will see it says a ‘Virtual Capacity Building Session’ for AFRALO ALSs. Well hopefully the screen has clarified itself in front of Olivier and he can take over for me.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: It still hasn’t.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Do you have it in front of you Olivier?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I've got it, I've opened it separately.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay back to you then.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Cheryl. Thank you for bridging the gap here. Yes this community request is one which deals specifically with virtual education and training and does not require any funding for travel or anything like that. But what it does do though is ask for specific tasks and staff time, coordination, logistics, providing courses and also interpretation since the AFRALO region is both French and English speaking. But then there is also an extension of this which could be done for all regions since this is something that could benefit everyone. There is no number attached to this and we just wondered to what extent a number needed to be attached to that or is that something you and your services would be able to fill in?
Xavier Calvez: Well we welcome the fact that numbers would be provided and if they are we would like just a little bit of understanding of the basis and assumptions that have been used to formulate them. If we don’t have a cost estimate in the request it's completely fine and I think then we are suggesting to try to formulate what the cost estimates would be for the items suggested. And it's fine as well; we can do that as part of our review of the requests.
And then in this case, the only thing that we need to make sure that we have is enough information about the assumptions to be able to formulate a cost estimate. Let me just take an example, I'm on the page that appears right now - let me rephrase that. it looks like I can scroll up or down. I'm on the Page 2 of the request that is on the screen. I'm looking at the top and I see an item that’s called ‘Coordination Logistics’ with a number 4 in each quarter of the Fiscal Year with a total of 16.
What is the 16 -- 16 meetings, 16 calls, I don’t know. Just so that and maybe if I would have had time to read the request it would be obvious and I apologize for that but I didn’t. This is the type of thing that will be helpful to understand.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay.
Janice Douma Lange: Do I understand correctly that what you're trying to show here is the staff support that you expect separate from At-Large support but additional staff support for expertise or presentation, that kind of thing?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: That’s correct Janice, yes.
Xavier Calvez: But when you say four, I'm not understanding. Is it four meetings, four people, is it four hours?
Janice Douma Lange: I think it's four [inaudible 00:37:28].
Tijani Ben Jemaa: May I explain?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes please Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay. [Inaudible 00:37:34] so it will provide those who provide the courses and we need [inaudible 00:37:41] in this period, July to September (four times) [inaudible 00:37:46]. And the other period, October to December the same, so the [inaudible 00:37:54] would be 16 times, 16 courses prepared.
Xavier Calvez: Sorry 16 calls? I just couldn’t hear you well Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Please [inaudible 00:38:07] provide the courses you see? Do you see the column?
Xavier Calvez: Support needed, I was just looking at the first top one that says staff support needed not including subject matter expertise.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: [Inaudible 00:38:30] those are [inaudible 00:38:32] number.
Xavier Calvez: Staff number?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: This period four times we will need staff support.
Xavier Calvez: I'm sorry it's staff support for a conference call?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: For example a conference call or we [inaudible 00:38:53] everything [inaudible 00:38:55] only an online course then staff would help in putting the [inaudible 00:39:00] in the right place and advise the members about the place where they can find the call, what [inaudible 00:39:11] the call and how they have to [inaudible 00:39:15].
Xavier Calvez: Okay so is it fair to summarize this information to be it's four events that will require coordination logistic staff support?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Exactly.
Xavier Calvez: Okay understood, okay.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: And this of course because it is ICANN staff is something that we have very little knowledge of since you access to information we don’t. Hence the reason why there is no actual cost that is there.
Xavier Calvez: Yes though I would assume you know who is the ICANN staff that supports you guys right?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Yes we do. I think we do. We absolutely do. But Heidi has not given us an hourly cost of her services and neither do we wish to delve into that.
Xavier Calvez: And my point is to make sure that I understand how we’re going to try to assess this request from the perspective - because I can see there that to the point that we were making earlier that this specific item of the request pertains to the need of time to support an activity from a staff member which is a perfectly adequate subject and request. And what we will need to in the point we were making earlier, I think we will need to do as it relates to that request is understand how much bandwidth this request adds to - or bandwidth requirement this request adds to the existing staff and see how the response can be made.
Because to the point that I think we had discussed before, if a request asks for staff support and we think that based on bandwidth and [inaudible 00:41:33] we can absorb it but then it's a fairly easy request to potentially accommodate and it's an element that should enter into our assessment of how to select the requests that will make their way into the budgets. I understood, so we will go through the requests and I think this is helpful as long as we do understand what is mentioned there. But I suspect that spending a little bit of time on each request as we intend to do, will help us make sure we have less basic questions and more substantial questions once we have reviewed them.
Therefore I'm coming back to my earlier question, because we've talked about one request over the past 15 or 30 minutes. The call finishes in seven minutes and I think we have also something else to talk about, I wanted to make sure I understand what input from us you needed because I don’t necessarily have the impression we have answered or addressed the purpose of this call. And if we have, it would be helpful to just understand that.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay well the purpose of this call is actually being fulfilled. We had questions specifically with some of those requests.
Xavier Calvez: Okay.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: All of the other requests are effectively showing that there is a demand for general assemblies, face to face general assemblies and because we have more than the three that would have to be presented as a classification saying “Well which ones are your three top requests, having five regions it is pretty hard as we've mentioned earlier to chose three requests without having two regions particularly unhappy about the outcome.
That’s going to be a tough one so what we've done is to classify them as high, medium or low priority and strangely enough it all ended up as high priority but various levels of high priority. And of course this probably is the consequence of underfunding for a few years which got everything to become high priority at some point.
Xavier Calvez: Okay understood. Are there other requests where there are questions that pertain to how to formulate the request of what type of information to provide in it?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: I think that all regions haven’t had any problems in filling the templates. But I see two people have their hands up, Cheryl and Rinalia. First I will let Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you Olivier. just quickly and one of the reasons I think having this one up on the screen is important for meeting the purposes of this call Xavier and that is you for example, while you were going through this document seems to be, I think, making an assumption that part of what we were looking at or in fact, we were all looking at in terms of allocation of staff logistics was to do with our own more than valuable working 26x7, not even 24x7 At-Large staff. In fact, these courses would be interactive and required as skill sets and involvement of staff specific to their topic.
For example, if it was a new gTLD roll out related topic, that unit would in fact rely on input from staff at a number of levels and a number of different prorates. How much does [inaudible 00:45:41] time take and how much of that time is costed at what? What input Scott may or may not to have so these things are polished. It's actually the stuff that is outside of our little bubble in the wonderful world of At-Large that this type of request is formulating and trying to say these are black box things that we don’t have the information for because they're a mix of both core costs and existing infrastructure and how much does it cost per hundred words of interpretation.
There is a mix between what we need to know and what we would rather you fill in providing you know that’s what we are asking for, thank you.
Xavier Calvez: I didn’t mean to convey the idea that I'm only thinking about staff support the way we already provide it today because we were looking at the line called ‘Staff Support Needed’ and talking about coordination and logistics. I didn’t assume that it was a skill set that is outside of the skill set that already exists in the staff today. I completely agree that if there is, in the requests, which again I haven’t read from beginning to end to yet, elements that pertain to staff support that are required skill set that we either don’t have or is not available with the existing staff that supports ALAC today then we will seek it either outside of this ALAC support staff within the organization or outside of the organization. I didn’t mean to restrict the thinking about the staff support to the existing staff.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Xavier, next we have Rinalia Abdul Rahim.
Rinalia Abdul Rahim: Thank you Olivier. Xavier I have two questions that need clarification. The first one pertains to financing policy. Olivier had highlighted that there are some thing indicated in the ALAC bylaws that should be our core activities that are currently not funded under core budget. In terms of financing policy would you be able to pool these activities into the ICANN core budget?
The second question pertains to the envelope that you mentioned that will cover the other activities that we would like to do that is not covered under core budget, and I haven’t heard a figure. I'm sure you have a figure in mind. It cannot be limitless. And this goes back to Ganesh’s point about a baseline, so do you have a figure, even if it not official, I would like to know what it is.
Xavier Calvez: In the figure you're talking about the is the cost of the activities already provided or the -
Rinalia Abdul Rahim: No it's a figure that could be a maximum limit that ICANN has in mind for this practical envelope that Xavier is talking about.
Xavier Calvez: Okay that - we do have a figure which is not necessarily a maximum envelope but which is a placeholder amount that we have communicated as part of this as soon as the request process. That was an email that I think we sent on the 7 or 8 of December, which is $500,000. And that’s a - we have provided this amount so that people understand what we are having in mind to allocate. It doesn’t have to be considered as something hard in stone and that cannot be amended or changed. It's just a reference point for people to be able to formulate requests.
The only intent of this of formulating this placeholder or this envelope amount at a very high level was to give the understanding to everyone that formulating 10 requests at $1 million each is not very useful because this is not the type of funding that we are talking about. And formulating three requests of $1,500 each is probably not necessarily addressing the full extent of the need. And if it that’s fine but we’re not assuming it is.
That’s what has been communicated, this $500,000 is across all organization it's not just for ALAC. And I was assuming that everyone had been working with this understanding of that $500,000 envelope.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Xavier, Rinalia?
Rinalia Abdul Rahim: Yes sorry my question about financing policy in terms of whether or not thing from bylaws can be pulled into the core budget.
Xavier Calvez: I need to be able to get a little bit of history and background. I would assume that we would always want to try to ensure that the activities that are carried out are consistent with the bylaws. And I'm assuming that this doesn’t start with me here. I suppose there is a history of doing that and verifying that that’s the case and trying to accommodate as much as possible meeting the bylaws and meeting the charters or any guidelines or requirements.
In principle I would assume that we would on a permanent basis look at the activities that we carry out and that we always refer to the documents that exist whether it's bylaws or guidelines or anything else that help us determine whether the activities meet the requirements that we have. And I will try to go back and try to understand how much that has been done in the past and if it's [inaudible 00:52:30] how do we deal with it so that we can have a path forward. There is a very basic, pragmatic and unavoidable concept which is when you have the dollar bill you can stretch it up or down, it's still one dollar.
At the end of the day it's what resources we have. But having said that this is how I think that we need to make sure that the activities that we carry out are consistent with the requirements and if we don’t carry out activities that are in the requirements then we need to look at them and have a plan to be able to accommodate them which may mean that other activities that we carry out that are considered less consistent with the requirements may have to come out.
But I agree with the point of ensuring that the charter and bylaws are respected. I think this is a criterion that we need to absolutely take into account in assessing the requests that are being made.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Xavier. Referring to your earlier mention of the $500,000 envelope, looking at our roadmap we - well I can only note that the total amount of requests for this year from our community would be in the region exceeding $200,000. Is that $500,000 envelope to be distributed evenly across SOs and ACs or is the on a case by case basis?
Xavier Calvez: It's neither. To distribute evenly I'm not even sure what evenly would mean depending upon some organizations are bigger than others in terms of members or I'm sure are different from a structure standpoint so even [inaudible 00:54:46] is difficult to determine but I think that what we are suggesting to do is so once we gather all the requests, I suppose we will arrive at something that is higher than $500,000.
Second we need to look at the requests across the board and each request individual and what we will do is before we complete this review we are going to suggest a process and a method to select the requests and ideally we would have been able to provide that process and suggested method and arrive with the representation or the organizations to a compromise on this process and method would be prior to you guys formulating their requests.
We just didn’t manage and have time to do that. But our intent is to be able to provide the organizations and probably the executive members of each organization to with a suggested approach to select their requests and that we agree together on retaining that method or something different in order to select their requests and come up with a compromise. And if we have requests that across all the organization that arrive at $500,000 it will make our lives easier to make the selection.
But it's not just because it fits within the envelope that anything should be done. We still need to assess the requests against a number of criteria. And I'm trying to formulate quickly this process and method so that we can share it with probably as it relates to your organization with Olivier and Cheryl to gather their thoughts on how that makes sense, do the same thing across other organizations and try to come up with a compromised approach and process that everyone can live with in order to select the requests.
And I think it's those criteria that will be the defining factor on how we select requests. As a result coming back to my answer to your specific question Olivier, those criteria will probably lead to different results than spreading the funds evenly. Because by the way spreading the funds evenly is exactly the opposite of ensuring that the activities that ICANN carries are consistent with its mission and the support of the community because even lead doesn’t mean anything in relation to the purpose of the organization. That’s how we are intending to define the process of selection of the requests.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you for this interesting insight and I think there is certainly agreement from many of us around the virtual table here. We’re seven minutes over the hour; would you have another 10 minutes please to spend with us? I think there are a couple of more questions to address.
Xavier Calvez: Okay, I do before we get to those questions we intended to use this call as well to review the framework budget with you which has been published as planned on the 17 January, so a couple days ago.
Heidi Ulrich: No there was some confusion about that apologies. We are going to schedule another call for hat this next week to focus on that Fiscal Year’13 framework. That will be a wider call with the full At-Large community by the way.
Xavier Calvez: Okay so you will send a Doodle poll emailed I suppose because next week is not going to be easy honestly, but that’s fine we will try to accommodate.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Or the week after Xavier, I'm sure whenever it's easier for you. I was only made aware of that yesterday so I think it was a little fumble here. The purpose of the call today is actually pretty good for us. Because going through each one of the requests would have taken way too much time. Yesterday we took nearly two hours to go through each one of the requests. I think that for you to discover a request and be able to comment on it on the spot is not a fair thing to ask of you. The requests will be sent to you in time. I see Rinalia still has her hand up.
Rinalia Abdul Rahim: Sorry I'm trying to get it down but there is a lag.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Ah okay so we’re faced with problems. I don’t still have the additional requests from AFRALO on my screen. I've got a very big lag as well. The next part of our agenda is just a brief discussion on the At-Large Academy, ICANN Academy proposal.
Xavier Calvez: Okay.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: And I wonder if the budget for this could be brought on the screen. It's just a four or five minute discussion on this. The proposal will also be filed I guess in time or perhaps the deadline for filing proposal is the 22nd isn’t this month?
Xavier Calvez: I think it was meant to be the 20th being basically the end of this week but we have granted a grace period until the end of the month.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay well you will have all of the other budget requests, the RALO budget requests filed by the ALAC that will come to you within the next two or three days. The ICANN Academy Budget is following a slightly separate track in that it has its own working group working on the budget itself and it required much input also from ICANN staff to be able to provide details of costs because the Academy itself works or will take place during an ICANN meeting and might make use of the local ICANN meeting facilities. It's a slightly different process.
I just wanted to find out from you whether this would be treated and I guess this is just a confirmation whether this would be treated as a request from ALAC or would this be treated as a more general request since it is a project that we are looking at expanding to every SO and AC out there. Would this be a cross SO/AC project bearing in mind the fact that we haven't had the chance nor the time yet to contact the other SOs and ACs to include them in the project development and in the budget as such.
Xavier Calvez: I think that I would say whatever process we retain or channel we retain it stands to me that we just need to make sure we allow ourselves to look at it. Now it's because to your point it requires validation across or at least it would be relevant considering the nature of the request to go through validation and a review by the other organizations. I suspect we may have to try to find a specific process for that one.
I'm thinking while you were finishing to explain your question on the request I was actually wondering whether - trying to find some time in San José would be helpful in trying to at least provide a view across the organizations on this request because I can imagine that a number of your organizations to your point would be interested, could have questions and it sounds to me that it may end up by being the most efficient approach to just have maybe a specific meeting on that across the number of organizations with a number of representative members participating to a meeting on the subject. I don't know if you think it's a good idea or not or if you have other suggestions I'm happy to hear. But that’s what comes to mind suddenly.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you Xavier the planning is actually for the working group to prepare both the academic side of the project but also have a finalized budget and look at preparing the exact logistics of it. But as soon as it is possible it will then involve members from other SOs and ACs with the aim of having a joint meeting taking place in the Costa Rica meeting. It will be opened by that time to the rest of the community for discussion and then finalizing everything by the Prague meeting.
But the first time it would actually meet in public and answer questions and possibly build up a larger working group than what it currently is or will be in the Costa Rica meeting. I see Sebastien has put his hand up. Sebastien?
Sebastien Bachollet: Yes thank you, just hello everyone. It's just to let you know we have aboard the Public Participation Committee next week and one of the topics it's the ICANN Academy and I will make the following suggestion that this topic could be one even THE topic of the meeting of the Public Participation Committee in Costa Rica. One of the reason is I think if we want to move quickly we need to have a full engagement of the organization and I think the best way is to put that in front of the PPC and it would be discussed the 26 January.
And it will be easier to discuss policy content and the money and not just the money at the beginning and then to decide what is inside. That’s also to inform Xavier that we are working on that with staff and it may come back another way for the budget next year. But we tried to keep that together and to culminate. It's one of the reasons why I participate in this conference call just to let you know all that, thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Sebastien. And just to add you can see on the screen currently a first draft of the budget which has actually been changed since and we will have an updated draft sent to you Xavier in time because we have already had input from ICANN staff with regards to conducting the meeting within the confines of an ICANN meeting or taking the Academy outside it in another venue just a few days before the ICANN meeting is due to take place, the aim of this being to have the first test of that taking place in Toronto at the Toronto meeting.
Understandably because it involves SOs, ACs, staff, etc I would urge you and your colleagues to synchronize well together. As Sebastien has just mentioned the PPC also being involved I think it's particularly important that we all work on the same leg. And I see that the time is running out in our meeting. Our next steps are to send you all of these requests. Could I just ask what your next steps will be after you receive this please?
Xavier Calvez: Our next step when we receive this as we explained in the email that I sent early December would be to acknowledge the receipt of the requests. And what we intend to do or what we do for anything that comes in is when we usually - so we have to receive the requests by email through the controller at ICANN.org email address. We check that address every day usually several times per day and we get the requests.
We look at it quickly to try to identify immediate questions that maybe we have and then send within the same day an acknowledgement of having received the request and if we were able to formulate already some questions or comments then we provide those questions or comments in the acknowledgment email. That’s the first step. Then we schedule among ourselves a review of the requests and define what we - and so do a more in-depth review of the request to make sure we understand it.
We have historical background. We have as an example, for another organization who has provided us a request in late December we have looked at the request. We've had a call with the ICANN policy staff support to get background historical feedback on what the request had been in the past and how it fits into the overall picture of that specific organizations support and activities so that we understand correctly their request.
In parallel of doing that I'm coming back to what I was formulating to you before on the process and method for selection of the requests. What I want to complete as quickly as possible is providing you and the other organization with the suggested approach to select their requests using a number of criteria, one for example being the one that we mentioned as to whether the activity supports and meets our - or is an activity that is consistent with our bylaws.
And but other criteria should be used as well and I want to make sure we have that compromise on that method and approach so we can use that method to work through the requests and assess them against that. That’s what the next step is and as part of this we also need to provide you with a calendar or the process for the public comment period which as you know includes a period of public comments and a period of response.
And we want to use even though this is not a [inaudible 01:11:28] public comment process typically we still would like to make sure we use this framework of communication that has been implemented January 1 to ensure that we receive your information and provide comments in a timely manner to you guys.
I will also provide you with the calendar but basically our approach to look at the requests as soon as they come, formulate immediate questions if we have any, schedule the review of the request in more in-depth and potentially schedule a call with the policy staff support of the organization so that we have that help to look at the request and assess it and by that time I'm expecting we will have formulated the process and method for selection and therefore assess each request as per this method, compile it and my expectation is to review the results of that approach with all the organizations in Costa Rica in order to be able to formulate a final list. And what would make its way therefore into the budget.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Thank you very much Xavier for your extensive insight into what's coming up next. Thank you for spending time with us. We’re 22 minutes past the hour. One last thing which I was asked was whether there was going to be an official response for the LACRALO requests for extra funding. I understand this is coming next week hopefully.
Xavier Calvez: Yes, I was intending to try to respond this week but it's been a challenging week on a number of fronts. If I can respond by the end of today I will but otherwise I will try to make sure we have a response by Monday.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: It needs to be fast because time is ticking of course.
Xavier Calvez: I understand Olivier. I agree and I understand and I will try to do my best to respond. I think the outcome in principle is known but we need to have an official response I agree.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you very much.
Janice Douma Lange: I just want to make sure, just to follow up that after the call we will receive a recording of the call. I think they are posted on the Wiki, I just want to make sure and that we will receive the documents that we get memo rights?
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Absolutely yes you will receive all of the documents which have been shown will actually be sent over to finance and the recording of the call is going to be made available - well everything basically is - and even the chat, the discussion notes and the chat will be with you as well.
Janice Douma Lange: Fantastic that was my next question thank you.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Okay thank you Cheryl? Quickly please because we really are over time.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I understand, Janice just following on I think it might be useful if we make sure you have the link to the chat and not necessarily the transcript but just the chat at least of the meeting where we went through and sifted and sorted and prioritized these as well. I'm sure we will give you as much background material as we possibly can.
Janice Douma Lange: Absolutely and Gisella as always is right on it and Jabbering with me that she will make sure that all of this is available, so thank you very much.
Olivier Crepin-Leblond: Fantastic well thank you very much to everyone for having spent so much time here today and have a wonderful weekend, this meeting is now adjourned.
