Page History

Name, declared region of residence, gender and employment:

Tapani Tarvainen, Europe, male, chief engineer at Jyväskylä University, Finland.

Any conflicts of interest: None.

Reasons for willingness to take on the tasks of the particular position:

I have been fighting for freedom of expression and privacy almost all my life, looking for positions where I could make a difference. The Internet has become the major battlefield in that war, ICANN a key participant and NCSG a natural home for my distinctly non-commercial viewpoint.

Given my experience and skillset, I think I would be most useful in an administrative position that also requires technical knowledge.

So, while I was surprised and indeed humbled when asked to run for Chair, I think it is a position where I could be effective and useful.

My vision of an Executive Committee, which the Chair leads, is something like a well-oiled machine, virtual train engine if you like, that does its job in the background and carries the people who do the greater part of policy work to where they need to go without getting in their way.

We have been lucky to have strong, extremely hard-working Chairs like Rafik Dammak and Robin Gross, who somehow managed to do an amazing amount of policy work alongside the administrative stuff. But we really should not depend on having such exceptional people working for us: we need a self-supporting structure so to speak, an organization that doesn't depend upon a specific individual so much. Rafik clearly realized this when he set out to improve the operational aspects of NCSG. I would like to continue his work there.

More concretely, here are a few things I'd like to do:

• Improve and document administrative task execution to minimize overhead, to ensure continuity when people come and go and to make everything more transparent so that members can easier follow what's going on and participate without having to hunt all over for deadlines or references to what's been done before. 

• Push for more transparency in everything ICANN does. This is especially important with the transition going on: the more decisions are made and prepared in secret, the more power will slip away from formally democratic organs and elected representatives, and poorly-funded non-commercial interests will be the first to suffer. 

• Improve and automate membership management in such a way as to help constituencies as well, enabling members to easily review and update their own data. We need to avoid error-prone processes like having address changes done in three different places by staff. 

• Activate the NCSG Finance Committee and apply for grants to enable NCSG to do more things on its own as well as by giving money to constituencies to do their own projects. 

• Set up an independent website for NCSG, one not under ICANN control, to improve our visibility as well as to collect all our  archives, mailing list and other resources to one place where they're easily found. It should also include a collaborative platform usable by all members, including those in countries where Google Docs and the like can't be used – which has been a problem even for NCUC EC, as Zuan Zhang (Peter Green) has pointed out. 

• Push for more travel support, in particular to improve diversity of participation: even though NCSG is more diverse than most stakeholder groups or constituencies, there is still lot of room for improvement, let alone in ICANN as a whole. I would like to work with other SG Chairs here,including finding a consistent way of reporting member's geographical and gender distribution. 

• Facilitate more joint NCUC-NPOC activities when both want to and there's a common interest, as there is in many cases. Coordinate meetingswith constituency chairs prior every ICANN meeting to ensure we have NCSG presence whenever possible.   

• Choose a Vice-Chair for the NCSG Executive Committee to better reflect the diversity of our stakeholder group and to ensure there will always be someone able speak for us despite vacations, illnesses etc. 

• Make better use of monthly policy calls, e.g., by adding a councillor-only part or separate call (others allowed as listeners) to allow them to talk amongst themselves about the upcoming agenda, inviting guest speakers (senior staff, Chairs of other SGs, leaders of our organizational members, etc). 

• Improve collaboration with our academic members, perhaps setting up some kind of student research/internship program to produce independent research our community can use, like Arun Sukumar's students have already done. 

• Facilitate the production of more accessible documentation on who we are and what we do in NCSG, including briefs on our key issues. 

Qualifications for the position:

My job at Jyväskylä University has, as the result of a series of organizational changes over the years, become a mixture of legal and specialized technical support for researchers, sort of Special Circumstances  department called upon for things regular IT support can't handle, with occasional teaching thrown in the mix.

While I'm not trained as a lawyer, in both my work at the university and in Electronic Frontier Finland I have had to learn enough to claim someexpertise in certain areas of Finnish and European law, in particular those concerning freedom of expression, privacy, data protection and copyright. I have served as a deputy member in the Finnish Data Protection Board since 2012. I was also appointed to the Finnish government's Advisory Board on Copyright Affairs at the beginning of 2015.

I served in the NCUC executive committee in 2012−2013 and this past year I was selected by the NCUC to replace long-standing member Milton Mueller on the NCSG executive committee, so I have a good understanding on how these committees work and function.

I have extensive experience with other civil society organizations, in particular Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi), where I was President for five years and Vice President for a total of ten years (still serving in the latter role). Until July 2015 Effi has been 100% volunteer-driven organization with no paid staff, and I've been doing all kinds of tasks there, from building and managing member database to writing analyses on proposed legislation and presenting them to parliamentary committees and discussing them in national television.

I have been active in the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) since its foundation in 2006, and amongs other things I'm presently serving in the Steering Committee of Internet Rights and Principles coalition.  I have also been a regular speaker in the Finnish Internet Forum since its founding in 2010.

I am used to working with people of widely varying cultural backgrounds in Effi, in my present job at the university, where I regularly interact with foreign students and researchers, and in my previous job with Lucent Technologies in Saudi Arabia, where I trained system administrators for Saudi Telecom's mobile network management systems.

I also have a solid technical understanding of the Domain Name System and its underpinning technologies.

Statement of availability for the time the position requires:

Yes: I have agreed with my employer, Jyväskylä university, to be able to use working hours to Chair the NCSG. Combined with personal time and my ability to decrease my activity in Effi with the hiring of our new Executive Director I've made sure I will have enough time to properly Chair our stakeholder group.

Name: Marília Maciel

Gender: female

Region: Brazil, Latin America

Employment: researcher and coordinator of the Center for Technology and Society of Getulio Vargas Foundation Law School (CTS/FGV)

Qualifications for the position

I am an academic and Internet policy analyst with almost ten years of experience in the field of Internet Governance and Internet regulation. On the national level, I have been intensively involved with the process of developing the main laws about the Internet, such as the Civil Rights Framework for the Internet in Brazil (Marco Civil), the ongoing discussions about the privacy and data protection bill and the proposal for reforming the Brazilian copyright law.

On the international level I have closely followed the main UN fora and conferences related to Internet Governance, such as the Internet Governance Forum, the WSIS process and the Commission on Science and Technology for Development. From 2011 to 2012 I was a member of the Working Group on IGF improvements, created under the auspices of CSTD. In 2014 I have been selected by civil society to be a member of the Executive Multistakeholder Committee, which played a key role in organizing NETmundial, especially on the drafting of the outcome document. These experiences helped me develop the skills to negotiate positions in a multistakeholder environment.  I am also a member and co-chair of the NETmundial Initiative and I am a member of the working group on digital development and openness of the Freedom Online Coalition.

In 2013 I became involved in ICANN through its fellowship program. To this day, I continue to work with the coordinators of the program and of the NextGen to ensure that more newcomers become involved in the work of the Organization, paying special attention to those with a non-commercial background.

In 2014 I joined the NCSG policy committee, which allowed me to have a broad view of the issues that were under discussion in the GNSO and to have a good understanding of the positions of non-commercial actors. I also became involved with the cross-community working group on Internet Governance. Moreover, I have been invited to speak in several meetings and webinars, such as the At-Large ATLAS summit (ICANN 50), in the session on the Transition of NTIA´s Stewardship of the IANA functions (ICANN 50), the public session of the CCWG IG (ICANN 53) and in NCUC meeting on ICANN and global Internet Governance: the road to São Paulo and beyond (ICANN 49).

I have been actively involved in the discussion about how to incorporate human rights concerns into ICANN’s policies and procedures. I participated in the group that drafted the charter of the CCWP on ICANN and human rights and worked in the organization of public sessions on the topic. I am also part of the WP4 of the CCWG-Accountability dedicated to propose language to incorporate a clear commitment to human rights into ICANN’s bylaws.

I had the honor to serve in the GNSO representing non-commercial interests over the past year. During this period, I have been focused on following policy discussions that relate to human rights and to development. I have joined the working group on Curative Rights Protection for IGOs and INGOs as an observer and followed the discussions of the Non-PDP Discussion Group on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures. I have advocated for the full implementation of JAS recommendations in upcoming phases of the new gTLD program. Being a newcomer to the GNSO, I have frequently consulted with more experienced colleagues in case of doubt. I took advantage of their guidance throughout my learning process, and for that I am extremely grateful.

Reasons for willingness to take on the tasks of the particular position 

Development and human rights – two topics I have followed closely in the past year – tend to be increasingly important discussions at the GNSO. 

One of the main topics that the Council will need to tackle is the next round of the new gTLD program. It is important to ensure that more attention is given to foster the development of the domain market in developing regions of the world. Differential fees, financial and non-financial support are all important measures to mitigate the current state of concentration of the domain name industry in developed regions. These points need to be introduced as early as possible, since the comment period of the preliminary issues report on the new gTLD subsequent procedure. Community applications also need to be more carefully assessed and the incomes generated by auctions need to be applied in areas that need further resources, such as addressing developmental concerns.

Another topic of importance that the Council will need to discuss is the interplay between human rights and policies. The CCWP on human rights has raised the debate on what should be the appropriate mechanisms to ensure that human rights concerns are taken into account throughout the policy development process. The GNSO will probably need to evaluate how to introduce human rights impact assessments in its PDPs, and I believe I can contribute to this discussion.

One of my commitments when I put my name forward to the GNSO council one year ago was to reach out to developing regions of the world in order to raise awareness about the topics being discussed in the Organization. Prior to ICANN meetings, I have reached out to civil society mailing lists – specially those composed by members from Latin America and Brazil – to invite them to take part in events and sessions that were of particular interest to non-commercial stakeholders. Moreover, I am currently organizing an event about ICANN and the future of Internet governance in Rio de Janeiro, which will discuss the key issues that are on the agenda of the Organization, such as IANA transition, Accountability, Human Rights and the way to foster the DNS industry in the developing world. This will be the first event of this kind in recent years. In spite of these efforts, I believe that more outreach should be done, and I hope to continue being dedicated to that if I am elected to the GNSO Council.

Any conflicts of interest

I declare that I do not have any conflicts of interest.

Statement of availability for the time the position requires

I have a good record of attendance in GNSO calls and other calls of interest, such as the CCWG on Internet Governance and the CCWP on ICANN and Human Rights. I declare that I can commit the time needed to perform this function.

*Name*: Stefania Milan

*Gender*: Female

*Region of residence*: Netherlands, Europe

*Employment*: Assnt. Professor of New Media and Digital Culture, University of Amsterdam

*Qualifications*

I have served on the NCUC Executive Committee (EC) over the last two years (2013-2014). I have used this time to serve our constituency on the background, while learning as much as I could about the complex ICANN ecosystem. I have contributed to outreach, delivering several guest lectures on the ICANN and NCUC work, and bringing several new members (including organizational members) to NCUC. More recently, I have contributed to the analysis and revision of the so-called Westlake Report (part of the GNSO review), which some of us believed misrepresented the non-commercial efforts within ICANN. I see myself as someone who builds bridges and “translates” our complex world to the benefit of those who haven’t been “converted” yet--also thanks to my background in journalism and activism.

An Italian national, I have worked and lived in several European countries and beyond, including Canada and Brazil. I am primarily a researcher and an educator, employed as assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

I have always been interested in what people, and non-experts in particular, do with technology, and how they engage in both technical practice and policy advocacy. I am a scholar of social movements; over the years I have conducted extensive fieldwork on hackers and grassroots tech groups, and investigated civil society engagement in communications governance.

I have always been looking for ways to bridge research with policy and action. Alongside my scholarly work, I have been a media activist and engaged in grassroots work in a variety of fields, including community radio. In 2003-2005 I covered civic society engagement in the World Summit on the Information Society for the news agency Inter Press Service, giving voice also to the alternatives and the excluded. Since 2012, I co-chair the Communications Policy Task Force of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR), and in this capacity I coordinate the engagement of IAMCR members, mostly academics, in a variety of policy arenas. In 2012 I was selected to serve as an advisor on digital issues in the framework of the short-lived Monti government. I contributed to key legislation on, among others, internet literacy, digital citizenship and crowdfunding, and kick-started the process towards an internet bill of rights. (For the record, the charter never saw the light; the process I started bore fruit only a couple of governments later). For a short while, I also represented Italy in the ICANN GAC. Paradoxically, this is how I came across NCUC. On occasion of the ICANN meeting in Toronto (October 2012) I was invited to speak at the policy conference, in order to share my experience writing up the Italian internet bill of rights. I joined NCUC right after.

I continue my policy engagement also beyond ICANN. Currently, I am a member of the working group “An Internet free and secure” of the Freedom Online Coalition, alongside with a few other NCUC members; we advocate for an approach to cybersecurity that is human rights-minded by design. In May 2015 I was elected to serve on the Board of ISOC Italy, which I accepted to do although living abroad in order to “rejuvenate” and renew the (semi-dormant) organization, in a country that still has very low broadband penetration and even lower internet literacy, and where citizens’ engagement with policy advocacy is near null.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for some failures on my side. I had been asked by Avri Doria to join the GNSO Standing Committee on Improvements Implementation (SCI, working to improve the GNSO operating procedures), which I saw as a great opportunity to learn the nitty-gritty of the policy work. However, for work-related problems I incurred in, I have failed to do so over the last year and a half. My work situation has now radically changed, since I have obtained some very competitive funding to set up a research team working for the coming five years on the politics of massive data collection and big data (incidentally, the team includes a couple of NCUC members). I expect to be able to dedicate more time and energies to serve the non-commercial interests within ICANN.

I am aware the learning curve will be steep, but I also know I can count on the experience and willingness to share of the colleagues who preceded me on Council. After two years on the NCUC EC, I would be honored to serve the non-commercial interests on the GNSO Council, should the members support my candidacy.

You can find out more about me on my website: stefaniamilan.net

* Conflicts of interest and availability*

I am now aware of any conflicts of interest that would prevent me from serving on the GNSO Council. I am generally responsive to emails and calls. From September onwards and for the coming five years, I will dedicate most of my time to research, with the flexibility that such a research position allows. I expect to be able to travel and attend calls.

Name: Amr Elsadr

Gender: Male

Region of residence: Egypt, Africa

Employment: Grad student

I am submitting this statement as part of the candidacy requirements of the NCSG elections of our stakeholder group’s representatives on the GNSO council. I have had the privilege to serve the NCSG in this capacity over the past two years (one council term), and would very much be honoured to  continue to serve our members for another term.

I am originally a medical school graduate from Egypt, but had been working full-time since completing my internship in telemedicine solutions for healthcare providers and patients. Around 2007, I also began doing pro bono work with a group of like-minded volunteers. The aim of this group was to develop a first-hand understanding of young people’s use of the Internet in Egypt, and to raise awareness on management of their online personal information. In 2011, I worked with a number of people in Egypt from civil society, government and business to launch the first organization in Egypt focused on Internet and telecom policy. It was also the first NGO in Egypt to have a multistakeholder membership structure in its bylaws, which was a novelty in itself at the time. This org is also now the Internet Society chapter of Egypt. I served on the board of directors of this NGO for a year, before resigning to leave to Norway to continue studies in my field of telemedicine and e-health. I have been back in Egypt for a few weeks, and will be done with my studies in the near future (after submitting my final thesis).

I have been a member of the NCSG/NCUC since 2010. I joined my first GNSO working group in 2012, and have repetitively participated in more and more of them since, as well as one implementation review team (teams set up to work with ICANN staff on implementing gTLD policies developed by the GNSO). Over the past two years, I have been a member of the GNSO Council, representing non-commercial interests as best I could. My approach to Council work has always been to manage the GNSO in a way that allows for non-commercial interests to be taken into account at every opportunity (consistent with the GNSO operating procedures and working group guidelines). I have always endeavoured to ensure that our views and concerns are adequately expressed and taken account of. I believe my modest efforts on the Council have been effective towards that end.

On the GNSO Council, I have actively participated on the GAC/GNSO consultative group working to create processes that should encourage the GAC to become involved in GNSO working groups and engage with the GNSO community in policy development at an early stage, as opposed to limiting GAC input to late stages of the PDP in the form of GAC Advice to the ICANN board. I have also worked hard to reconcile the process by which the Expert Working Group (EWG) on next generation gTLD registration data services (aka WHOIS) with the regular GNSO policy development process. This was a complicated issue, as the EWG work was produced via an ad hoc process, and there were attempts to have the GNSO adopt the EWG’s work without the benefit of all of the numerous public comment periods that the GNSO policy development process allows. This is an important policy issue, and now, we do actually have an open public comment period on a preliminary issues report for this PDP (https://www.icann.org/public-comments/rds-prelim-issue-2015-07-13-en). Additionally, I have served as a council liaison to more than one GNSO working group, and one implementation review team.

Apart from my time on the Council and GNSO working groups, I have also been an NCUC representative to the GNSO Standing Committee on Improvements Implementation (SCI) for a couple of years now. This committee is chartered by the GNSO Council to review and improve the GNSO operating procedures and working group guidelines. Working on this committee for this time has also been helpful to my role on the Council, in that it assisted greatly in my developing a keen understanding of the guidelines that govern the GNSO, and making sure that all due process in Council work is appropriately taken account of.

I would also like to take this opportunity to admit some of what I perceive to by shortcomings on my part over the past two years. When I was first elected to represent the NCSG on the GNSO Council, I had promised myself that I would do what I can to always keep the NCSG membership as informed as possible regarding what is actually going on. I believe, to a great extent, I have not done a very good job at this. This is, to me, an obvious task in which I need to improve my personal performance. I have regularly attended the monthly NCSG policy calls, and do what I can to brief our members on the calls on what is on each one of the GNSO Council meeting agendas. Still…, there are far more members who do not participate in these calls than those who do. And although some GNSO and gTLD policy issues make it to the NCSG-DISCUSS list, quite a few of them are discussed on the NCSG Policy Committee (PC) list. Although the PC list is publicly archived, there are issues I should probably flag, especially that I have also been serving as the NCSG Policy Committee chair for the past year.

Conflict of Interest and Availability:

I have no conflict of interest that I am aware of to serve for another term. If this changes over the course of the next two years, I will be sure to inform the NCSG of this. I have put in a significant number of hours per week over the past two years on GNSO Council business on behalf of the NCSG, and see no reason why I cannot commit to continuing this for another term. Again…, if my circumstances in this regard change at any time, I will inform the NCSG.

IMHO, it makes sense to me that the NCSG have at least one councillor who has a sound understanding of the GNSO operating procedures. After all, the GNSO council is meant to manage the processes these procedures govern. It also makes some sense to me that the NCSG have a councillor who follows gTLD policy development very closely, and works to mitigate the risks of the GAC and ICANN board overreaching to replace the GNSO as the place to develop gTLD policies that affect both ICANN contracted parties and registrants. With everything the NCSG is involved in regarding the CWG on the IANA stewardship transition, the CCWG on ICANN accountability, and the cross community working party on human rights, it makes sense to me that we have at least one GNSO councillor who is keeping a watchful eye on gTLD policy issues, whether those are happening within or outside of the GNSO. With at least two very significant new PDPs starting in the next few months (post EWG-PDP as well as a PDP for yet another round of new gTLD applications), we will certainly need someone who is paying as much attention to those issues on the Council, as we do have others paying attention to the multiple cross-community projects. Those are the reasons why I believe I would make a good councillor for another term, and they are pretty much the reasons I want to run for a second term. If the NCSG membership will find it desirable to have me for another two years, I would be honoured to continue to serve, and to attempt to improve in my performance of that service.

Thanks.

Amr