Regional Budget Liaison(s)

Regional Comments on the Strategic Plan Related to the FY12 Budget
(The text below is provided to assist the development of RALO FY12 Budget requests.)

Regional Comments/Submissions to the FY12 Budget

AFRALO

Tijani Ben Jemaa

Healthy Internet eco-system 
AFRALO agrees that continued internationalisation of ICANN is crucial to maintaining a single, global interoperable Internet and a single Internet zone file used globally.

AFRALO 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 provide translation of all  ICANN documents, and simultaneous interpretation in all meetings (face to face or remote). This interpretation is urgently needed for the fellowship program which is now restricted to the English speakers only.  

AFRALO highly appreciates the commitment to provide Internet governance education to an expanding group of international participants and to promote programs that enhance global participation. The AFRALO ALSes really need this kind of education, coupled with more training on ICANN related issues at local, national, sub-regional and regional levels to reach an effective participation in ICANN policy development process.
 
ICANN participation in 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. Such 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 ICANN constituencies rather than the ICANN staff and/or Board.

Activity 1: atlarge:Capacity Building and outreach for the AFRALO ALSes
Description: See "Capacity Building and Outreach_2011.doc" attached
Strategic Plan impact:
Consumer choice, competition and innovation
Staff Work:
- Global outreach
- ICANN regional footprint        
                                                   
A Healthy Internet Eco-System
Community work:
- Increased multi-stakeholder participation
Strategic project:
-Retain & support existing community while attracting new & diverse community members    

Start Date: 23 October 2011
Duration: 5 days

Activity 2: atlarge:AFRALO thematic Workshop in the IGF 2011 (see also atlarge:IGF Workshop description)
Stategic plan impact:
A Healthy Internet Eco-System
Community work:
- Contributing to international fora
Strategic project:
- Enhanced cooperation in Internet Governance
Staff work:
- Wider international engagement 
Start Date: 4th quarter of 2011
Duration: 4 days

Activity 3: atlarge:How to mobilize the support of local actors in the new gTLD (submitted by Baudouin Schombe)
Description: mobilize national actors registrars, technical community, policy makers on issues of new gTLDs in organizing:
-an information-media;
-two workshops-upgrade
Strategic Plan Impact:
Clarifying the content of the new gTLD guide applicants to assess the ability of the financial participation of local communities.
Start Date: 6 February 2012
Duration: media campaign: 1 month
Workshop 1: Relevance and timeliness of new gTLDs : 3 days
Workshop 2: applicant guide for new gTLDs: 3 days

APRALO

Cheryl Langdon-Orr (TBC)

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.
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.

Activity 1: atlarge:APRALO General Assembly
Description: Face-to-face 'AGM' funding for 1 rep per ALS

Activity 2: atlarge:Outreach to Regional Internet community events
Description: Regional IGFs and AP* events

Activity 3: atlarge:Support for Outreach and Policy Work
Description: Provide materials and promotional support for APRALO outreach and policy work

EURALO

Wolf Ludwig

Comment submitted by Wolf Ludwig:
EURALO repeatedly discussed and broadly reaffirmed that there must be one F2F GA a year to promote its community development and to encourage its members for active participation in ICANN's policy development. Like the years before, EURALO will submit a proposal to the ICANN budget process to ask for travel funding for the next EURALO meeting (GA) which will be held in conjunction with the ICANN European meeting 2012.

EURALO project proposals for FY 2011-12

1. EURALO GA in 2012
As suggested already in previous FY budgeting, EURALO would like to convene an inclusive General Assembly (GA) with its members as we could do in June 2008 during the ICANN meeting in Paris and in March 2009 in conjunction with the At-Large Summit in Mexico-City. These face-to-face meetings proofed to be essential for the community building, participation and cooperation in our RALO. According to our Bylaws, EURALO has to conduct one GA per year, as we did in September 2010 in Vilnius/Lithuania (in the course of the IGF) and as we are planning at the end of May 2011 in conjunction with the next European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) in Belgrade. It is worth to mention that the EURALO GAs in 2010 and 11 were/are organised by ourselves - with support of At-Large Staff -, participants had/have to assume travel and stay-over costs by themselves what proofs to be rather prohibitive for the majority of our volunteer members/ALSes.

Therefore, we are suggesting ICANN support and to provide our General Assembly in line with the next ICANN meeting in Europe in 2012 (location still to be confirmed). Three years after the Mexico GA (2009) such an inclusive F2F meeting is crucial for any further community building, encouragement and work dynamic at EURALO. Organizing a 2^nd EURALO Showcase (after Brussels in 2010) at this ICANN meeting – including all members this time – could be a major challenge for our community.

The costs involved are travel expenses (inside Europe), stay-over costs besides per diems during the meeting for representatives of 25 ALSes (or around 20 members max. who will make use of our invitation).


2. Regional outreach and EuroDIG 2012
From the very beginning in 2008 EURALO members were part of the planning and organizing team of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG): in October 08 in Strasbourg, September 09 in Geneva, April 10 in Madrid and May 11 in Belgrade. In recent years, EuroDIG became a key event for the European Internet related community including all stakeholders (an approach stipulated by ICANN as well). Over the last years EURALO members contributed and participated “on behalf” of our RALO but in their individual volunteer capacity (investing hours for planning and organizing, travel and stay-over costs). We are convinced that it is in the strategic interest of ICANN to become a key actor, reliable and constant supporter of EuroDIG and its impact on the European Internet debate and governance.

So far, three EURALO members contributed annually in the preparation team of EuroDIG. We do not ask for any compensation of working time involved in the preparation process but for allocation of travel and hotel reimbursements for the EuroDIG meeting presumably in summer 2012 in Sweden (TBC). If we could attract some more EURALO members for active participation in this important European outreach initiative, the related costs wouldn’t exceed 3’500 Euro.

Comment by EURALO: 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.

LACRALO

Sylvia Herlein Leite, Cintra
Sooknanan

A healthy Internet eco-system
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.

LACRALO Strategic Plan Proposals (Google document version)

Background

ICANN’s inclusive multi‐stakeholder model and community‐developed policies facilitate the billions of computers, phones, devices and people connected into one Internet. In line with ICANN’s fiscal year operational plan and budget 2012 and LACRALO makes the following strategic plan proposals for 2012 (with some proposed activities being multi-year running from 2011 to 2014) to promote and accomplish the goals and priorities of the ICANN Strategic Plan (2011to 2014).
Click here to review the Google document with the

Overview of Proposed Activities

Activities 1, 2 and 3 are multi-year activities. In each year one aspect of ICANN’s Four Strategic Focus Areas is dealt with exclusively as follows:

Year: 2011 
Strategic Focus Area: Core operations including IANA     
Reason/Relevance: Renewal of IANA contract (September 2011);  TLD Issues appropriately held with LACTLD meeting
Activities:
LACRALO General Assembly 2011 (activity 1)\\
LACRALO Technology Fest 2011 (activity 2)\\

Year: 2012  
Strategic Focus Area: Consumer choice, Competition & Innovation 
Reason/Relevance: Main Theme for ALSes appropriately held with ICANN No. 43 (LAC)   
Activities:
LACRALO General Assembly 2012 (activity 1)
LACRALO Technology Fest 2012 (activity 2)

Year: 2013  
Strategic Focus Area: A Healthy Internet Eco-system
Reason/Relevance: Main Theme for ALSes appropriately held with ICANN No. 48 (LAC)   
Activities:
LACRALO General Assembly 2013 (activity 1)
LACRALO Technology Fest 2013 (activity 2)

Year: 2014  
Strategic Focus Area: DNS Stability & Security 
Reason/Relevance: Issues appropriately held with LACNIC meeting
Activities:
LACRALO General Assembly 2014 (activity 1)
LACRALO Technology Fest 2014 (activity 2)

Activity 3: In-reach and Out-reach Material

Further, while Activities 1, 2 and 3 are separate they are each critical and respectively representative of LACRALO’s co-ordinated approach to support the strategic focus areas by:* Providing face to face discussion, contact and tacit learning;
- Facilitating virtual collaboration and contribution of projects; and
- Ensuring there is necessary and relevant supporting documentation, essential to ensure end-user understanding
Activity 4 relates to document translation whereby ICANN policy documents, briefing materials, presentations and transcripts are translated into our other regional languages (Spanish, French or Portuguese).

Activity 5 facilitates attendance of LACRALO leadership to LACNIC and LACTLD meetings to increase their cohesion with these regional groups and awareness of LACRALO specific issues.

Activity 6 employs targeted out-reach via conference calls to organisations in LAC countries without ALSes (18 countries) to present information about ICANN, At-Large, LACRALO and encourage them to join At-Large.

Activity 7  is mainstream out-reach with the general public, internet users and public policy makers using media such as Radio Programs, Television shorts or podcasts. Topics will focus on various ICANN, At-Large and LACRALO aspects and content for Public Dissemination. There will be a particular emphasis on Spanish, Portuguese and French content creation.


Final Thoughts
It is LACRALO’s pleasure to work with the ALAC Finance and Budget Sub-Committee; Budget Liaisons; and other Regional leaders to coordinate and refine our strategic plan proposals. While there is limited funding for these proposals, we sincerely wish that they each be evaluated on their merit not only on a per year basis, but (particularly in the case of multi-year activities) on their over-arching goals and outcome.
Wherever possible LACRALO would like to extend and co-ordinate the proposed activities with other RALOs in order to reduce duplication of effort, efficiently utilise funding and crystallise ICANN’s vision of ‘One World. One Internet’. |

NARALO

Gareth Shearman

7. Initiation of policy development in reference languages other than  English.

Activity:atlarge:End-user Outreach (Trial) (proposed by Evan Leibovitch)
Description: ICANN/At-Large presence at major Consumer-focused IT conferences

Activity: atlarge:Outreach (proposed by Beau Brendler)
Description: Various proposals for outreach activities in the North American region

Activity: atlarge:Pacific Community Neetworks Association Conference (proposed by Gareth Shearman)
Description: Annual conference of community access providers

Activity: atlarge:Policy Informed by Data (proposed by Eric-Brunner Williams)

Description: Reduce EOT barriers to policy critical data

Activity: atlarge:NARALO General Assembly (proposed by Gareth Shearman)
Description: A physical meeting invoving a representative from each NARALO ALS.