Summary Minutes of the At-Large Advisory Committee’s June Teleconference
Present: J Morris (Chair), W. Seltzer, A Muehlberg, S. Bachollet, H Xue, V Cretu, C Aguirre, C Langdon-Orr, I Aizu, A Greenberg, N Ashton-Hart (Staff)
Not Present: V Bertola (joined late), H. Diakite, M. El Bashir, A. Munyua, J Ovidio Salgueiro (Vice-Chair)
Summary Minutes taken by N Ashton-Hart
Minutes of the previous meeting adopted
Action Items from Previous Meeting
• Top 10 Items discussion tabled to San Juan
• Action items 1&2 moved to San Juan
• Suggestion to meet with the Ombusdman was made. Izumi suggests that we wait to see how the board decides. Jacqueline suggests any meeting would need to be very specifically scoped.
• Wendy wants to return to her action item after the travel policy discussion.
Liaison Reports
Board Report – written report taken note of. More information requested by W Seltzer on board discussion of her blog postings and those of Patrick Vande Walle on RALO formation.
WHOIS: No written report provided. W Seltzer provided as a verbal report that she is sceptical there will ever be progress on WHOIS; vested interests will stall it out. She recommends as a general note that consensus policies should have sunsets to re-confirm the consensus after period of time.
IDNs: Written report taken note of. H Xue further noted that the three-stage test recently outlined for implementation of IDNs does not have a timeline associated with the stages. The Committee requested that the Board Liaison seek clarification on whether there is a timeline and what it is.
ccNSO: Written report taken note of. S Shahshahani noted that in addition to the contents of his written report he should like to add the following: The two largest groups of TLDs have put out separate proclamations on IDNS, saying ICANN should let each ccTLD come up for one candidate string for idn.idn with a six month comment period to allow for objections to each string. Without objection the string would go into the root. Strings proposed would conform to the GNSO guidelines.
GNSO Report: Written report taken note of. Not much discussion in the GNSO on the IDN subject as far as Alan knows.
• Nick to get IDN proclamations from the two groups and link to the page.
• Vittorio to be asked about timeline.
Report of the Chair: The Chair apologised that this report was not submitted on account of her being unwell.
Report of the Staff: Written report taken note of. A point of order asked whether the report could be made publicly available and the staff confirmed that its reports were not intended to be confidential. Members noted their appreciation of the content. A point of order was raised to ask whether this was the first such report. It was made clear that this was the first such report, as the Staff had informed the committee that it would begin to provide its reports in writing in the same way as the Liaison and other reports are being provided in the interests of time and efficiency of the teleconferences.
Agenda for San Juan
A discussion of the agenda for San Juan was conducted. Points of order in respect of several administrative queries related to travel and meeting timings were raised and answered. The need for an additional, 2-hour administrative session of the ALAC was expressed in order to try to reach some rough agreement on certain topics, especially the various issues surrounding ALS applications handling. These could then be presented at the public ALAC meeting on Thursday for comments before adoption.
Current ALS Applications
A brief note was made of the pending ALS applications. A point of order was raised to see whether or not the additional information requested of the two applications which need to be re-voted upon had been received and the staff answered in the negative. The staff did make clear that the information would be provided as soon as it was available, and that the applicants were aware that it would not be possible to finish the voting on their applications without receipt of this information.
Voting Practices and Transparency
It was agreed that the issues of elemens of the voting, as follows, were to be the subject of discussion and agreement gained at the administrative meeting:
1. How to handle abstentions,
2. Whether or not to provide reasons for ‘No’ votes,
3. Whether or not the votes of individual members of the ALAC would continue to be public, or whether there would be a change to secret balloting.
Travel Policy Applied to W Seltzer
A discussion was conducted on this issue with the general agreement of the Committee that ICANN is urged to be flexible in the implementation of the rules so that W Seltzer is able to attend the San Juan meeting.
Meeting adjourned at 1430 for the presentation of the ICANN FY08 Budget. It resumed again at 1545, and ended at 1630 UTC.
Action Items
1. V Bertola to provide W Seltzer with further information on board discussion of her blog postings, and those of Patrick Vande Walle, on RALO formation
2. V Bertola to provide information on what the timeline for the three-stage IDN test is, as the test does not provide any clues about this information.
3. Staff requested to update the IDN Working Group page with links to the two *TLD proposals on IDNs recently made.
4. Staff requested on a standing basis to provide the text of attachments in the body of emails for convenience of those travelling.
5. Staff requested to ensure thatthe ALAC membership and biographical info on icann.org and the wikis is updated
6. Staff and the Chair requested to set a 2-hour meeting slot for an administrative meeting not intended for the public. Breakfast is an option.
7. Staff to ask the Regional Secretariats for a monthly report of regional activities.
8. In order to help to get more volunteers involved in the policy working groups, the Staff are to request to the Secretariats to help recruit one member per each region for each of the main working groups
9. Staff to send out the list of all currently operating policy working groups and committees.
