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ALAC should be more selective in the amount of advice it seeks to offer, focusing on those issues which might have the greatest impact upon the end user community, and going for quality rather than quantity. ALAC should develop a more transparent process for distinguishing between different types of advice, and publish that advice on the At-Large website.

Quality vs quantity of ALAC advice produced.

Support

None

The ALAC currently focuses on quality vs quantity and does not as a rule issue comments that the ALAC does not believe are important to ICANN and users. This has been a very conscious policy that has evolved over several years. The importance of this will be reinforced as new workers become involved in At-Large. The ALAC agrees that its web site does not always fully represent the diverse nature of its various statements and will work with staff to improve upon that.

The recommendation

It already represents the status quo. Records over the last five years demonstrate this.

While ALAC responses involving community input are usually quite comprehensive, a small proportion were simply supportive statements where the ALAC felt a nominal response was advisable but did not warrant any substantive effort. Similarly, advice to the Board composed just a small fraction (fewer than five such statements in the last several years) of the overall documents drafted. The ALAC believes it is far more desirable to influence the policy development processes before issues come to the Board, than to advise the Board after the fact when it may have little latitude to alter the outcome.

It has been the general practice of the ALAC, that when a public comment issue arises, the ALAC will identify a penholder who, often with others, is prepared to take responsibility for initially assessing if ALAC Reply to At-Large Review Draft Report - 24 March 2017 7 there is a significant user-impact reason for further investigation and community consultation. If this is the case, then the writing team collects and organises data to put together an appropriate advisory statement or comment for consideration and formal endorsement by the ALAC, before the response is returned to the relevant section of ICANN. This is a time-consuming process, inviting members from across At-Large each time, to contribute to the many different subject areas for which ALAC is tasked to research and provide appropriate advice. The ALAC also encourages RALOs and ALSes to comment.

The importance of this will be reinforced as new workers become involved in At-Large.

The ALAC agrees that its web site does not always fully represent the diverse nature of its various statements and will work with staff to improve upon that.