Page History

In the interests of transparency, a clear indication of all opportunities for At-Large travel funding support and the beneficiaries thereof, should be published promptly and in one place on the At-Large webpage.

Need more systematic RALO participation in regional events.

The ALAC agrees that opportunities for travel and outreach should be well documented and easy to locate, as should reports (both the recipients and more substantive reports of outcomes). However, the programs themselves are managed by various parts of ICANN and often published on their respective parts of the ICANN web. Having information replicated on the At-Large site is likely to cause information to become dated or out-of-sync. However, the ALAC strongly supports making such information easy to locate.

The ALAC supports full disclosure of who receives such support and the monetary value of that support, but would object strongly if this were limited to just the At-Large. A similar policy must be applied for the entire organization including the SOs, review teams, the Board and ICANN staff.

While the ALAC does support transparency in travel funding, it also notes that this is not a one-sided relationship. In ICANN parlance, “volunteers” refers to all parts of the ICANN community not paid by ICANN. However, a large part of this community is in fact paid to participate in ICANN on behalf of their employer or by serving their self-interest as part of the domain name ecosystem. At-Large volunteers are in fact volunteers in the true sense of the word. Virtually all of their time at face-to-face meetings and when participating remotely (conference calls, e-mail, document preparation) is personally donated. The cost to them (such as lost revenue, unpaid leave or vacations not spent with families) far exceeds the actual out-of-pocket costs to ICANN. ICANN rarely factors in these contributions and it must do so to properly present the costs AND benefits of volunteer involvement. 

The decision to make such information available is out of scope for the ALAC.

ICANN regularly publishes the travel costs for ICANN meetings and events directly associated with them (excluding the Board and staff), but not for other activities. Staff costs are published only to the extent that they are required for senior executives under US tax law. Recently, in order to discover the costs of the annual GNSO Non-Contracted House Intersessional meetings, a formal Documentary Information Disclosure Policy request had to be filed (https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/didp-20160211-1-rrsg-request-2016-03-14-en). 

The programs themselves are manages by various parts of ICANN and often published on their respective parts of the ICANN web. Having information replicated on the At-Large site is likely to cause information to become dated or out-of-sync.