Page History

Note: This draft was discussed and accepted at the 19 Dec 2011 meeting of the ALAC New gTLD WG (ANgWG) with approval to:

WG Chair Discussion Draft

Note: there has not been a decision by the ANgWG to recommend to ALAC that they send a letter.  That decision and the content of such a letter, should there be a decision to recommend one, will be discussed on Monday 19 Dec during the ANgWG meeting.

• send it on to the ALAC for consideration
• forward a copy to Kurt Pritz and Chris Disspain as chair of the Board WG for Applicant Support.

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• (Salutation for a letter from ALAC to the Board)

The ALAC appreciates the efforts that have gone into the preparation of the Preliminary Support Implementation Program and is intially encouraged is initially encouraged by the decision of the Board to give some applicants a fee reduction.  In its first review of the  ICANN Board Resolutions 2011.12.08.01 – 2011.12.08.03 and of the Preliminary Support Implementation Program released by ICANN Staff on 10 December 2011 to the Joint Applicant Support WG (JAS WG) and to the ALAC New gTLD Woking Working Group (ANgWG), concerns have been expressed by members of At-Large.  These concerns, each of which is discussed separately below, relate to the following issues:

• The application of the $2 MUSD to the fee reduction as opposed to other financial needs of aspring aspiring registries
• The lack of specificity on the criteria by which the financial need of a support applicant is judged.
• The lack of action on the creation of a Foundation and/or Fund for the purpose of fund raising.
• The composition of the SARP 
• The Outreach Program of new gTLDs and for the Support program 

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The JAS WG was quite explicit in its recommendation that the $2 MUSD that the Board had allocated to Applicant Support should not be applied to fee reductions.  It is clear that this will not accomodate accommodate a large enough program, as the Preliminary Support Implementation Program itself discusses, only 14 applicants would be aided by this program. Of an estimated 500 possible applications this would mean only 2.8% of the applications would be able to receive aid.  The conservative projection by the JAS WG was that at least 10 - 20% of applications should be enable able to come from developing economies.  The current $2 MUSD would leave developing economy support short by $5 MUSD of the conservative 10% of application estimate. While it is true that Preliminary Support Implementation Program does discuss the other future fund raising to make up the difference, it was recognized by the JAS WG that raising money from external sources in order to pay ICANN application fees was a very improbable.  The JAS WG proposal included the recommendation that some of the full application fees intended for the ICANN Reserve Fund be applied to cover the Support Applicant's application fees.

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The Preliminary Implementation plan does not include sufficient discussion of the criteria by which a Support Applicant will be judged as meeting financial need requirements.  While the JAS WG recommendation was also deficient in this matter, there was recommendation that further work be done by the JAS WG together with the Staff Implementation team to develop objective criteria for the financial evaluation. The need to do this has been made greater by the punishment documented in the Preliminary Implementation Program for 'gamingaming', i.e. by designating forfeiture of the application fee and exclusion from the New gTLD program for those judged as not meeting the financial need criteria. While this may be a clever mechanism for dissuading ICANN's professional gamers, how can an applicant from outside the ICANN community trust that that the process won't find them insufficiently needy when they are being measured against  unknown criteria.   $47 KUSD is a great sum for an applicant from a developing economy to gamble on being being judged insufficiently needy against an unspecified set of financial criteria.

ALAC advises that the Staff Implementation plan work with a group of JAS WG volunteers and others to develop a set of objective criteria that take the realties realities of the developing world and its variety into account.

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The Outreach Program of new gTLDs and for the Support program

At-large Large members have expressed concern on the reach of the current New gTLD Outreach Program, in that it has not seemed to included include outreach beyond centrally located communities in the capitals of the world where the ICANN President can travel to give presentations.  In many communities, there is still no knowledge of the New gTLD program.  In extending the Outreach program to include the Applicant Support program, there will be a need to increase the reach of the program beyond the current scope.  As the Preliminary Support Implementation program does not yet contain the specifics of the revamped Outreach program, ALAC advises that the board instruct the  Staff Implementation team to work with a group of JAS WG volunteers to develop a revamped Outreach program.  ALAC also requests a briefing from the Staff Implementation team on both the general Outreach program and on the extended program of Outreach for Support Applicant

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