Page History
Participants: C Langdon-Orr, I Aizu, T H Nguyen, F Seye Sylla, A Greenberg, B Brendler, S Bachollet , P Vande Walle, R Guerra, C Aguirre, J Ovidio Salgueiro, V Scartezini, H Diakite
Board members: D Jennings, JJ Subrenat, T Narten, P Twomey (ICANN president),
P Dengate-Thrush (Chairman of the Board)
Apologies: None
Absent: M El Bashir, A Muehlberg,W Seltzer
The agenda was discussed and adopted
R Guerra noted that it was not fair that the Board Liaison was not at this meeting
For the record, it was stipulated that the object of the meeting was about the role in itself and not about the current liaison’s performance and that the current liaison could not attend due to her obligations to another constituency but had agreed to the agenda of the Alac Board meeting.
S Bacholet reminded that the liaisons were not required to participate at all the meetings of the body they were liaised to.
T Narten added that the Board felt that liaisons had to give inputs as experts and did not have to lobby. He expressed the Board satisfaction with the liaison role but added that the Board could not judge if the loop was closed and if the Liaison was effective. He added that if comments were missing from the Board meetings minutes that did not necessarily mean that the liaison had been inactive as many discussions between the Board and the liaisons also occurred informally
C Langdon-Orr specified that the Board Liaison should attend, to the extent possible, the ALAC ExCom meetings as this provided a mechanism to close this loop.
A Greenberg questioned the fact that liaisons only spoke in name of the group they represented.
V Scartezini reminded that liaisons should express the consensus views of the group they represented as their prime engagement.
R Guerra asked the Board members how much time they need to allocate to their activity in the Board.
JJ Subrenat answered that it represented more than one third of his time and that it fluctuated heavily due to other activities: committees and subcommittees and working groups in which he participated. He said that this was typical for any Board Members.
C Langdon-Orr asked the Board members about their expectations regarding the At Large Mexico Summit and whether they would attend in person.
JJ Subrenat responded that there were two outcomes expected: awareness and contribution. The Summit should raise awareness within ICANN of At Large importance and At Large contribution should be enhanced. At Large should be effectively represented within ICANN. He added that at least the current members of the At-Large review working group would be available to attend the Summit.
T Narten noted that the increased participation should be sustainable after the Summit.
S Bachollet clarified that it was not an ALAC summit but an At-Large summit.
The ICANN president, Paul Twomey, then joined the conference.
P Twomey noted that he looked forward to the feedback of the ALSes and the ALAC on the new gTLDs implementation. He stressed that the advice of ALAC had contributed to the making of the draft proposal and that he was looking forward to the ALAC’s reactions. ALAC should look at it from K Pritz’s point of view and make written suggestions that could be implemented. He noted that the goal with the PSC was to have further feedback on the ICANN’s institutional role and that the DOC issued an issues report on DNSSEC, asking At-Large for its opinion on it. He concluded by praising the ICANN community for being able to do very significant substantive work while at the same time being engaged in an intense process of self-reforms and by reminding that the current Board review would be treated the same way as with any other ICANN body. He apologized for the conflict in schedule of the Board review session and the Open Joint Session of the GNSO/CCNSO/GAC/ALAC.
The Board specified that the feedback from ALAC on the gTLDs guidebook concerned its implementation phase.
B Brendler stressed the security concerns raised by the users in the context of the new gTLDs to be launched.
P Twomey noted that the security concerns were still under study by the technical experts. Microsoft was beginning to move on the DNSSEC deployment to the root zone issue. The end-users users advice would certainly make a big difference in the business deployment - see details on the recording (141:40).
Further he said that D Michels has prepared a document that tracked the influence ALAC had.
N Asthon-Hart informed that there would be an issue brief later this month on DNSSEC and that a 1200 word document would be published shortly.
The Chairman of the Board, P Dengate-Thrush, then joined the conference.
P Dengate-Thrush said that he recognised that the Board had a poor record of responding and acknowledging the AC Statements. He said that a process document has been drafted. He said that the ALAC review had not been commented yet by the Board and added that the three ongoing reviews had interoperable issues.
I Aizu noted that though the mid-term ALAC review was well received by ALAC and had created expectation concerning the two suggested Board seats.
T Drakes noted that the document recently released by the ALAC Review WG was only a mid-term statement and should stimulate comments. He felt there should be 2 ALAC seats and that the Board should comment its final decision on the question.
P Dengate-Trush remarked that if two seats to the Board were eventually allocated to ALAC, these two new Board members would no longer work for ALAC but for the Board. Likewise, he promised that the Board would try to give quicker feedback to the ALAC statements.
W Kleinwaechter stressed the importance for ALAC to have both a voice and a vote and the need to define when a vote was needed and when a voice was needed. A liaison had its role as such. He expressed that the review was the best achievement of ALAC and praised the ICANN self-examination model.
P Dengate-Thrush insisted that by appointing members to the Board, ALAC would just apply the style of their ALAC member to the process of selecting board members. He announced that the Board was in the process of creating a brand new committee that would design the way for going forward with the reviews in a more cohesive way.
F Seye Sylla said that if the suggestions made in the review could not be implemented than there was no sense in making them.
P Dengate -Thrush referred to the Board as the final decision-maker on these.
A Greenberg complained that the ALAC did not have the capacity to respond to all the public comment periods thoughtfully and advocated for a pick and choose approach of the issues that really interested the ALSes.
S Bachollet suggested that the conflicting views about the two Board seats could be generated by a misunderstanding about the expectations conveyed by the words ‘Board member’ and ‘liaison’.
V Bertola expressed his disappointment that the committee did not seize the opportunity of having 2 Board members, the Chairman and the ICANN C&O at disposal to push the ALAC policy positions on the new gTLDs, root assignment etc. He reproached that the meeting was only about procedural issues.
JJ Subrenat reminded that Paul Twomey had raised 3 important issues earlier and that a written advice answer on each issue was expected from the committee. It was vital to have the responses vetted and agreed by all the committee members otherwise; they could not be taken into account by the Board.
He said that ALAC should see that there was a sort of transmutation occurring once elected to the Board and that the nature of that person once on the Board changed.
T Narten clarified that the ALAC members did not lose their expertise on the Board, but their duty moved to the whole corporation and was no longer to ALAC solely. He remarked that an ALAC Board appointee could be a gain in terms of perspectives at the Board. He also pointed to the lack of non-English documents.
R Guerra noted that the WG will meet tonight to further discuss the Board review, two of the subjects would be outreach and strategy.
W Kleinwaechter said that an ALAC appointed Board member would enhance the Board diversity.
C Samuel felt that ICANN was still acting as an American corporation and not respecting the bottom-up mission and objectives of its chart. He asked when the Board had ever accepted the ALAC advise on any policy other than at the ALSes Summit.
F Seye Sylla felt that ALAC ideas and advice were not taken into account at ICANN and explained that the ALAC committee members endorsed the idea of the votes for the sake of making them more visible at ICANN. The lack of feedback from the Board on ALAC statements did not encourage the ALAC members to produce statements on policies.
I Izumi noted that this was his 31rd and last ALAC meeting, as his term of office would run out in the next couple of days. He agreed that a Board position would be an incentive for individual users to join ALSes, stressing that the role expected of a Board member could evolve.
D Jennings noted that a draft document has just been submitted to the Board members which a process to ensure that all ALAC statements be considered by the Board.
E Leibovitch was disappointed about the lengthy discussion on just one aspect of the Board review. He said that his Ralo had been the most active when they were at the source of ideas coming from the At Large community, and not just commenting on proposals. He further expressed his disappointment with the “stimulus process”, and the feedback delays it entailed.
D Jennings Concluded the meeting by re-asserting the importance of the At-Large structures in the ICANN decision-making process. He mentioned that some of the ongoing issues were of vital importance for anyone, i.e. the unreliability of the DNSS system. He urged all to propagate the importance of DNSSEC among all the internet community.
The meeting was then closed.
