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(Maureen) A Third Team (ATRT3) has been established to conduct another review of ICANN's Accountability and Transparency .  Following the adoption of the ATRT2 report in Buenos Aires in 2015, the Board implemented a plan that covered the 12 recommendations under 8 headings. Among these were Recommendation #6: GAC Operations and Interactions and #, Multilingualism and and yet I believe that there were two issues that were incorrectly identified as "completed". The recommendations relate to #6: GAC Operations and Interactions and #8: Multilingualism

My question is what constitutes "the successful completion" of the implementation process from a Review of ICANN? From the perspective of those who were impacted by the two review items I have identified, their lack of resolution from the ATRT2 review compounded the original problem so that it still exists and creates even more of a risk to the work that the affected organisation does within ICANN? And both indirectly and directly the two issues are  related to At-Large. 

Item 6.6 of the GAC Operations and Interactions section, it states as an implementation goal: To Increase support and resource commitments of government to the GAC with specific deliverables that would  identify and implement initiatives to remove barriers to participation; and to improve GAC procedures to ensure more efficient, transparent and inclusive decision-making.  While this implemented item was checked off as having been achieved, I have to note that both the

The GAC was assigned responsibility to address the issues themselves to remove their barriers to participation. However what was later identified following the review was that in order to be more successful in removing the barriers to successful participation required ICANN input. The barrier was in fact the lack of support from ICANN to produce introductory information about some of the complex issues they were being asked to comment on, in a format that was more easily digested by non-experts who did not completely understand the complexities of the issues as expressed by ICANN.  ICANN had passed their lack of understanding of often expert knowledge, as their problem. The ALAC and the GAC have since jointly raised this issue of barriers to effective participation again to with the Board itself and we are grateful for the support that the Board has demonstrated for this continuing concern, . We would like some assurance that the Board will support our joint efforts to work with the Information Transparency Initiative in order to help to ensure Inclusive, Informed and Meaningful Participation at ICANN for both the ALAC and the GAC by further implementing what were the original recommendations of the ATRT2 , as well as our own recommendation in our latest submission on the Finance Operating Plan.and Budgetbut this time incorporating some further support from ICANN in order to more appropriately address a communication issue which is vital to the work of both our organisations and actually successfully complete that particular review item. 

Also of concern is Item #8: To support public participation, the Board should review the capacity of the language services department versus the community need for the service using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and make relevant adjustments such as improving translation quality and timeliness and interpretation quality. ICANN should implement continuous improvement of translation and interpretation services including benchmarking of procedures used by international organizations such as the United Nations. 

While there was major prioritisation of this project for the APAC region during ATRT2, there were major gaps on the achievement area of this implementation work which are still yet unresolved.  There was also no mention of another RALO which has experienced major email translation issues for years , which has have created major blocks in communication between the two key partners of this particular region. Until the Board prioritises the technical and communication issues for LACRALO, all the good work that has gone into the region to resolve other issues will be lost and ICANN will have to start all over again.  While Board priorities are not generally mentioned to the rank and file It is important the ICANN prioritises this critical resource to support the work of At-Large within ICANN.

While At-Large does not have any say as to what the Board prioritises, we have noted this in our submissions, as it is important that we understand what priorities the Board has so that we too can support those areas and that it would be helpful if the Board was more open about what its priorities were and how it prioritises these.  It would help our own planning in At-Large so that we too could incorporate them into our own strategic planning as well.  Not only are these But the issues that were identified in ATRT2 are important issues for At-Large and we believe they are also important for ICANN. they both   Both the issues we have mentioned above, are related to partnerships , both within ICANN but . These partnerships are vitally meaningful to us as an advisory organisation within ICANN to work working with another Advisory Committee, and also attempting to strengthen a Regional At-Large Organisation, so that we can .  For At-Large, our ultimate goal is to get better participation from the members within it members of At-Large - from the ALAC as well as from our own regional organisations - into our policy development and advice work that is what . In order to be successful in the implementation of our own review, At-Large needs in order to raise the support of ICANN to support the diversity of the voices and languages contributing to our policy discussions. 

(Holly)  What is the Board's view(s) on the challenges of the increasing use of social media as alternative electronic communications paths for business as well as the community - on the budget, and perhaps on ICANN priorities.  What impacts do those challenges have on the role(s) that ALAC can play?

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