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This will require adjustment of At Large planning cycle to become in sync with the FY12 development cycle.
EURALO input=> This year has seen a new calendar for the development, presentation and feedback process of the ICANN Strategic Plan.
With the introduction of IDNs, ICANN has truly demonstrated its efforts towards local communities. At Large also needs to reflect sensitivity towards its local communities, especially since it draws among the capabilities and capacity of a volunteer base. The new published planning phase diagram shows comment periods in November 2010, February 2011 and May 2011.
Nonetheless, the current Draft ICANN Strategic Plan was published at the end of November, opening a comment period spanning the month of December 2010 and the early part of January 2011. The enabling environment required to obtain quality input from communities worldwide must be times in regards when a volunteer community can be mobilised.
Thanks to busy religious and festive calendars giving rise to holiday periods for a significant percentage of the world's population, the months of December, January, July and August are not such times. On the other hand, Spring is good; Autumn is good. The calendar for comments as important as those towards the ICANN Strategic Plan would therefore need to be studied further and amended appropriately in order to have full community feedback.
New Plan Goals
At Large fully supports the new plan Goals of re-organise objectives to distinguish areas of control vs. influence as well as bringing in measureable objectives. It would be useful if ICANN kept track of those objectives and we are looking forward to see such tracking take place, alongside performance evaluation reinforcing accountability.
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Comments on Content Regarding the Four Strategic Focus Areas:
General Comments
LACRALO input=> LACRALO wishes to commend ICANN on the "stream-lined" approach undertaken to develop the draft 2011-2014 Strategic Plan.
We stress the value of the equal multi-stakeholder partnership among business sectors, Governments and end-users, with the ultimate goal to increase of end users’ participation.
Two suggested general improvements-
● The language availability of documents/slides used for stakeholder consultations in at least Spanish and French.
● Additional slides showing changes from the previous Strategic Plans to the draft Strategic Plan for each of the four pillars (DNS stability and security, Consumer choice, competition and innovation, Core operations including IANA, A healthy internet ecosystem) would improve the accessibility and review of the information provided.
EURALO input=> EURALO fully support the initiatives described in the ICANN Strategic Plan for 2011-2014.
It is the view of several ALSes that the document contains a good deal of stable material which has improved year on year, and this year's version continues in the same direction. This is appreciated by ALSes.
1. DNS stability and security
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AFRALO input=> AFRALO acknowledges that the stability and security of the DNS is an important element for ICANN and the global internet users. Therefore, it thinks that ICANN should prioritise the support for the implementation of DNSSEC. It highly appreciates the ICANN’s initiative to perform training for TLD operators.AFRALO argues that ICANN should come up with a plan for Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity for its own operations.<end>
APRALO comments->input=> APRALO notes that introduction of IDNs could cause new security risks to DNS (such as phishing) and thus fully agree with ALAC's statement that ICANN should increase international participation in unique identifier security. In addition, APRALO believes that, without prejudice to the expertise of technical community, ICANN should facilitate the participation of user community, particularly IDN language community, in development of security measures and policies.
ICANN should prioritize its efforts towards supporting regional and local efforts for the promotion of SSR of the unique identifier systems, instead of duplicating or commandeering its centralization. At this time, ICANN's role shall be best served, as a coordinator and facilitator, by directing its resources and funds towards regional and local efforts in the promotion of DNS security as well as IPv6 along with IP security. This includes resources and funds for RIRs, ALSes and other appropriate organizations that have initiated work on SSR as well as to support others that have not to get started. ICANN's priority should be to support regional and local organizations to become leaders in SSR promotion rather than followers to ICANN.
EURALO comments->
LACRALO comments-> Under “cooperative TLD training in developing countries”, we are supportive of any such training to involve as many stakeholders as possible including At-Large Structures.
NARALO comments ->
2. Core Operations including IANA
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It acknowledges the ICANN commitment to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of policy development and implementation processes and the multi-stakeholder model that engages the global community.
APRALO comments-> APRALO agrees with ALAC that IANA contract should be renewed based on track record and take into account ICANN's independence and internationalization.
EURALO comments->
LACRALO comments-> LACRALO notes the presence of “IANA request processing” and wishes to suggest an item under community work or staff work relating to the accountability and transparency of ccTLD redelegation requests sent to IANA-
● ccTLD redelegation requests are not public. Hence not all members of the local internet community (http://blog.icann.org/2009/09/local-internet-communities/
) may be informed
in the discussions related to their ccTLD redelegation.
NARALO comments ->
3. Consumer choice, competition and innovation
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Also emphasised is the notion of mitigating malicious conduct. At Large is ready to help drive the process of developing a Registrants Rights Charter in collaboration with the rest of ICANN.
AFRALO input=> AFRALO argues that in line with one of ICANN’s core values, which is introducing and promoting competition in the delegation of Top Level Domains where practicable and beneficial in the public interest, ICANN should make the application fee for new TLDs within the reach of each applicant alike. Levying high application fees for all applicants creates the disparity between the have and have-not’s. Therefore, we urge ICANN to review the applicant guide book to reflect the almost unanimous wish regarding the application fees expressed in all public comments on the previous versions, in the Working Group 3 (at-large summit, Mexico) report approved by ALAC, and in the JAS working group milestone report.
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Conducting education and training programs in partnership with ISOC, local operators and local internet communities is an excellent approach. However, AFRALO believes that part or all of those programs could and should be conducted by ICANN constituencies, such as At-Large structures and regional organizations for the part related to Internet users.
APRALO comments->input=> APRALO agrees that introduction of new gTLDs and implementation of IDNs both in gTLDs and ccTLDs would saliently serve the purpose of consumer choice, competition and innovation. After more than 10 years' technology and policy development, it is highly time for ICANN to take action timely.
The implementation of IDN TLDs, including IDN ccTLDs as well as IDN gTLDs, is of great importance and urgency to many of the language communities in Asia Pacific. ICANN should follow its commitments set forth in the AOC and prioritize efforts to implement complete IDN TLDs policies and mechanisms that serves the most needed IDN communities. These include the implementation of Single Character IDN TLDs for non-alphabetic scripts and the implementation of variant management mechanisms for the root for those languages which have a fully developed and proven policy-driven framework utilizing existing DNS technologies. While the former serves as a critical competitiveness equalizer for single word TLDs in alphabetic scripts, the latter is a critical measure for the socio-technical stability of the Internet.
The time has come when the benefits and criticality of introduction of IDN gTLDs grossly out-weigh the costs of further delaying and clouding such with issues concerning the addition of more ASCII gTLDs.
EURALO comments->
LACRALO comments-> LACRALO is convinced that both financial and professional support shall be required to enable disadvantaged communities to effectively participate in the new gTLD ecosystem towards empowering consumer choice, competition and innovation.
As a consequence, LACRALO is eager for the ICANN community fully embrace the initiative vested in the Joint Applicant Support Working Group (JAS WG), that seeks to find and propose ways the ICANN community may provide effective support that will enable participation of these communities.
NARALO comments ->
4. A healthy Internet eco-system
At Large fully supports the recommendations contained in this sub-section. As a reminder, At Large is a core constituent of each one of the core strategic objectives outlined in this section. In particular, we welcome Internet Governance education and would urge ICANN to consider making better use of the power and outreach of At Large’s constituency organization of Regional At Large Organisations (RALOs) and At Large Structures (ALSes) present in over 80 countries around the world.
LACRALO input=> LACRALO is pleased to see the inclusion of “enhanced translation strategy” listed under staff work. The translation of key policy documents, briefing materials, presentations and transcripts; is critical to stakeholder diversity, increased multi-stakeholder participation and wider international engagement as listed in the draft Strategic Plan.No doubt there is general consensus regarding the benefits of increased document translations for the community to participate more effectively.
We acknowledge the hard work done by the new translators group led by Christina Rodriguez (ICANN staff). Due to technical and specific vocabulary used in our meetings it is of utmost importance to maintain a stable team of translators. In the past we have had to postpone teleconferences because it was impossible to understand the translator.
We must continue investing efforts in this regard to further enhance the worldwide end-user community input into ICANN.
We agree with AFRALO that funding should be increased for the translation of documents and simultaneous interpretation in all meetings, including the fellowship program.
Further, the number of Languages should be increased, not only to improve Brazilian Portuguese native speakers in the region but also to other languages such as Chinese,
Russian, Arabic, etc.
We believe there is general consensus among the representatives of the RALOs for the need for annual GA for each RALO. There is widespread evidence that a few days of F2F interaction gets matters completed in a significantly shorter time frame than via online communication.
We must assess the cost vs benefits for members of the community, ICANN Staff and other stakeholders and explore financing to hold an Annual GA per Region. If the GA coincides with an ICANN meeting funding can be shared. In the last fiscal year, ICANN modified its interpretation for “support to the RALOs”. During the signature of MOUs between ICANN and the RALOs, the was no doubt about the commitment of support (or at least an impression of such was made) for the RALOs including financial assistance to ensure a GA (apart from translations and interpretations).
In the same vein of AFRALO, we agree there is a need for greater ICANN initiatives to encourage workshop participation in the context of popular participation, governance and the
Internet. ALAC is best suited to spearhead this.
Further, we need a regional approach and an inreach/outreach program for the propagation of knowledge in the Internet community and beyond.
Building stakeholder diversity
ALAC input =>
AFRALO agrees that continued internationalisation of ICANN is crucial to maintaining a single, global interoperable Internet and a single Internet zone file used globally.It takes positive note that ICANN will formalize a cross-stakeholder model, and will also formalize input from the At-Large community into Board discussion.While recognizing the ICANN effort for a multilingual working environment, AFRALO considers that for an international organization, more commitment is needed to translate the most of the ICANN documents, and to implement simultaneous interpretation for the most of the meetings (face to face or telephonic). This interpretation is urgently needed for the fellowship program which is now restricted to the English speakers only.
APRALO comments-> APRALO believe that individual users community has been developing in the multi-stakeholder, internationalized and diversified environment and its influence can be felt in a couple of policy-making processes. But comparing with the private sector and governments, users community has still great potential for building a more healthy eco-system in ICANN. ICANN may wish to take systematic measures, including budget planning, to facilitate the participation of user community.
EURALO comments-> Of prime importance in this section, is the issue of accountability and transparency, including public participation. Whilst this section is well furnished with key focus points, a vacuum exists through the lack of mention of the eventual role of At Large in public participation and accountability. This has not been raised either in the ATRT Report.
At Large would welcome working with ICANN to define this together in time for it to be included in future Strategic Plans.
Empowerment of local communities is essential for capacity building. AtLarge, with its structure of Regional At Large Organisations (RALOs) and local ALSes plays a key role in this regional empowerment and this appears to have not been pinpointed in the current plan. Indeed, there is no mention of "outreach", nor "inreach" of communities; no plan on
how to reach those communities.
A first step to outreach is the fellowship programme as well as the provision of on-line workshops and material to educate community leaders and participants about ICANN. This is a key brick in the building of stable international relationships and an efficient bottom-up decision process.
We therefore re-iterate At Large's plan of reaching out to communities worldwide so as to have One ALS per country. Currently At Large has 130 ALSes worldwide in more than 80 countries around the world. This unique resource needs to grow to cover every country in the world. That said, this unique resource also needs to be sustained. We are working hard to define better or more suitable ways of public participation and one of the tools used to keep ALSes, the grassroots of the whole ICANN eco-system, empowered, is the regular staging of Localised General Assemblies (GAs), as well as At Large Summits.
General Assemblies are important for local capacity building. So far, they have been organised ad-hoc with little or no budget in conjunction with an ICANN meeting taking place in the region. Some RALOs have organised their GA with no budget whatsoever outside the realm of ICANN and physical participation has been low because volunteers already
offering their time for free cannot be asked to pay costs except when taken care of by other means.
The ICANN At Large Review specified the need for one local General Assembly per year per region and this should therefore be reflected in the ICANN Strategic plan as part of a healthy Internet eco-system.
The At Large Summit taking place in Mexico City in 2009 was widely acknowledged by all, to have been a key factor in the capacity building of At Large leading to the ability of the ALAC to produce quality output to the standard expected by the ICANN Board. Whilst it was a textbook demonstration of ALS empowerment, it also demonstrated how communities
worldwide can focus their attention on key challenging subjects and find solutions together by consensus. This synergy needs to be repeated as part of At Large in-reach. Its purpose goes further than a merely social issue of having ALSes meet with each other and with ALAC leadership. Rather, this formidable force of hundreds of "Starfish" can unleash
powerful strategic benefits if its key subject focus were aligned with ICANN's Strategic planning. We therefore recommend that an At Large Summit become institutionalised as part of ICANN's natural processes ideally every 3 years, with an interval no larger than 4 years to keepgrass-roots interest high. The subjects on which the ALSes would work on would be a mix of ICANN-defined strategic subjects as well as grass-roots-defined issues, whether local or international.
It is anticipated that the results from such regular Summits would more than adequately support the "One World. Internet" vision, competently build stakeholder diversity, considerably improve accountability and transparency, expand international engagement and build trust in ICANN's stewardship by thinking Locally whilst acting Globally.
LACRALO comments->
NARALO comments ->
Ongoing accountability and transparency.
ALAC input =>
On Trust in ICANN’s stewardship
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The ICANN participation in the Internet Governance events such as IGF and WSIS forum is of high importance. AFRALO thinks that this participation shouldn’t be limited to nice formal speeches, or an ICANN parallel event, but needs to be more effective by organizing substantial workshops addressing actual subjects and involving the large population of the forum. This kind of participation will give ICANN more visibility and better credibility. The impact of the so-called substantial workshops will be greater if they are organized by the ICANN constituencies rather than the ICANN staff and/or Board.
APRALO comments-> APRALO believes that ICANN should enhance its participation in pertinent global fora, such as IGF and WSIS, while coordinating with its community more closely and effectively in this regard.
EURALO comments->
LACRALO comments->
NARALO comments ->
Conclusion
LACRALO input=> Only through valuing the knowledge and perspective of end-users towards Internet rights and policies can ICANN reap future benefits for the proper use of ICTs in the specified public policy consideration makers.