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Yrjö was previously a GAC member representing Finland, and a member of the ICANN President's Strategy Committee and has been active in At-Large since 2009. He is currently a delegate to the Nominating Committee

ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN66, Montreal, 5 November, 2019

Continuing a practice that started at ICANN56 (Helsinki, June 2016), the ALAC/At-Large and the GAC had a joint meeting at ICANN66 in Montreal 5 November, 2019.

The agenda covered topics of joint interest that have been discussed at many previous meetings: capacity building, EPDP and SubPro. Willingness to move forward from “comparing notes” to more concrete cooperation could be sensed from both sides.

Under AOB, a suggestion was made to develop contacts and cooperation between At Large elements and relevant governmental entities, represented on the GAC, also on country level.

Capacity building

Joanna Kulesza, Co-chair ALAC Capacity Building Working Group confirmed the readiness to cooperate with the GAC on capacity building by having At-Large members participate in the capacity building pre-events of the GAC in Cancun and Kuala Lumpur. Details will be worked on intersessionally.

There is interest in the GAC to learn about the capacity building, practices and working methods of At-Large. Joanna replied to the question by GAC Vice-Chair Luisa Paez by pointing to ICANN Learn, to online resources developed by At-Large and to the At Large Policy Platform that is under development. She also welcomed the Information Transparency Initiative that will make information about ICANN better organized and more accessible.

EPDP

Hadia El-Miniawi, one of the two ALAC representatives in the EPDP, presented an overview of points of common interest between the ALAC and the GAC with regard to the expedited process for gTLD registration data: first and foremost, complying with GDPR and other relevant data protection laws; having a standardized system for access/disclosure automation; accuracy of registration data; and distinction between natural and legal persons. On the last point, a study is going to be launched, something that arose from EPDP meeting in Montreal.

(Reference is also made to the joint GAC – ALAC statement on Phase I of the EPDP at ICANN64, Kobe, 13 March 2019, and subsequent discussions on a follow-up to it concerning Phase II)

SubPro

Justine Chew, the ALAC Liaison for SubPro, listed SubPro issues that are important to At-Large and that ALAC has commented on in the process, such as global public interest, safeguards including verified TLD’s and registration restrictions for highly regulated sectors, CCT review recommendations, closed generics, new appeals mechanism, applicant support, community priority evaluation and possible enabling of change requests. She confirmed that ALAC is open to working with the GAC in a way that GAC is comfortable with to see if there is common ground on some of these topics or topics that the GAC wants to put forward.

Replying to Justine, Jorge Cancio (Switzerland) noted that already at the previous ICANN meeting (ICANN65, Marrakech, June 2019) the GAC and ALAC had more or less agreed to try to find synergies between the ALAC and GAC SubPro groups. He hoped this can still be done, and pointed out that at least some in the GAC had called for some urgency in tackling the issues that are crystallizing in the PDP working group. He said he hoped that the GAC could share with ALAC its scorecard of SubPro issues which covers 95% of the issues that Justine listed. “So it would be a shame if we didn’t work together on this because our resources, yours and ours, are very limited”, he said,

Luisa Paez, the Chair of the GAC Focus Group on Subsequent Rounds of New TLD’s, agreed that the GAC and the ALAC have a lot of synergies, and that an intersessional call between the GAC Focal Group and ALAC will be planned. She also welcomed sharing the scorecard or parts of it, after it has been updated and reviewed by GAC members.

Contacts and cooperation “on the ground”

Under AOB, Ricardo Holmquist (ALAC-LAC) suggested preparing a joint GAC-ALAC statement encouraging At Large elements and relevant governmental entities to talk to each other at country level. This would facilitate capacity building, help developing policies related to ICANN and building a better internet in our countries, he said.

Next steps

Moving on to next steps, Ana Neves, the GAC Liaison to ALAC, noted the difficulties of getting the policy dialogue going between bodies that represent governments, on one hand, and consumers and users, on the other. Nevertheless, she insisted on a more active and energized partnership to get the most out of it.

Yrjö Länsipuro, the ALAC Liaison to the GAC, said he realized the ALAC and GAC are “very different animals” but they nevertheless represent the same people whom the GAC calls citizens and ALAC calls individual end users of the Internet. He also thanked Luisa in inviting At Large participation in the GAC Focus Group.

Concluding the meeting, both Chairs, Manal Ismail and Maureen Hillyard, agreed that the GAC and the ALAC should get intersessional cooperation up and running, looking forward to having active engagement between now and the next ICANN meeting in Cancun.

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Two other events with ALAC-GAC engagement at ICANN66 need to be noted:

1)   At the joint ALAC-GAC-NPOC Communications and Capacity Building Session (2 November), Bob Hoggarth, Vice President, Policy Development & GAC Relations, explained the special capacity building needs of the GAC, taking into account the high turnover rate of GAC representatives that 178 governments send to meetings. Over 12 months, the committee has seen 99 new participants, and 62 have departed.

2)   Joanna Kulesza and Yrjö Länsipuro participated at the session of the GAC Human Rights and International Law working group (6 November) which discussed the new draft template for human rights impact assessments.

Joint ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN65, Marrakech

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