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Note: This document was originally issued for At-Large comments on January 11, 2010, and was revised on February 4, 2010 to adjust the milestones in light of recent activity and to make a number of non-substantive editing corrections and changes.
Executive Summary
Introduction and Milestones
Section 1 --Term of Appointment
Section 2 --Director Qualifications
Section 3 --Creation of List of Candidates
Section 4 --Electorate
Section 5 --Voting Process
Appendix 1 - Documentation of Prior Actions
Appendix 2 - Announcement and Minutes of ICANN Board Resolution 27th August 2009
Glossary
Notes
Related web pages and links:
ABS White Paper_FINAL_11012011_EN.pdf
ABS White Paper_FR_final.pdf
ABS White Paper_ES_final_08012010-RevisedContent_FINAL-ES.pdf
Members of the White Paper drafting team
- Sébastien Bachollet
- Alan Greenberg
- Dave Kissoondoyal
- Cheryl Langdon-Orr
- Evan Leibovitch
- Carlton Samuels
Comments:
Comments will be accepted in the six UN languages.
A lot of work has gone into this document but I could not get through even the executive summary which is impenetrable due to an exceptionally deep sprinkling of acronyms. It is obvious that there is a hardening of the veins of who is involved at ICANN and where these terms are presumably obvious.
Some are clearly new even to the authors as they do get explained in the text. But the bulk are left to the Glossary (which is excellent). But a Glossary is a poor excuse for an over exuberance of new building of stuffing in ICANN over recent years whose purposes is not clear nor unambiguous.
One important role At LARGE should have is to keep policies over unique Internet resources accessible to users. This means pruning the profusion of committees, structures, boards and complexity of interactions and politics between them across ICANN by demanding that only entities that have a clear unambiguous and practical role following the Internet model are continued and all such activities have a limited lifespan.
I am very worried by the way users are increasingly isolated by the growing over complexity in structure, language and difficulty to judge relevance and usefulness. How are users who have deep stake in the ultimate outcomes at ICANN to get meaningfully involved when they can spend only a small amount of time and resource on keeping 'au fait'?
At Large must focus on keeping ICANN down to size and can start doing this on itself.
Christian
(Submitted to the At-Large Worldwide list on 12 January 2010)_
contributed by marilyn.vernon@icann.org on 2010-01-15 00:46:13 GMT
Dear Christian:
As chair of participation and engagement in ICANN WG, I want to say that we will have very present your words when we will have a next meeting in Nairobi.
You are true, is so complicated and difficult for AT large community understand the million acronyms in this matter, and this make impossible to read any document and obviously, to participate after with some useful comments .
thank's for your contribution
Carlos Dionisio Aguirre
(Submitted to the At-Large Worldwide list on 12 January 2010)
contributed by marilyn.vernon@icann.org on 2010-01-15 00:51:28 GMT
Hello Christian,
Your message is heard loud and clear (by me at least).
In my (relatively short) time working within ICANN as a volunteer I have
found its processes to be extremely complex to navigate. At times, ICANN
presents the facade of a purely technical body, or a trade association, or
an international treaty organization, or bits and pieces of all three. This
fact has produced in ICANN an extremely unusual corporate culture that takes
considerable effort to penetrate. And given the various competing interests
of governments, business users, sellers of Internet services, community
groups, would-be registries, domainers and others, it's unlikely that the
structure is easily simplified. One need go no further than the attempted
re-organization of the non-commercial constituencies within the powerful
GNSO to see how – even within the end-user community – change is difficult
and simplification doubly so.
Half the trick is knowing what needs to be dismantled. Indeed most of the
committees within ICANN have fixed mandates and dissolve after their work is
done; however for each one that has completed its task, another one rises up
to address a new issue. Part of the purpose of At-Large (ie, the formally
defined infrastructure) is to try to offer a gateway between the complexity
of ICANN and the simplicity required by the global community of Internet
users.
The ALAC (and overall At-Large infrastructure) recently went through a
formal review that involved third-party consultants, members of the ICANN
board and a global public consultation process. The report and
recommendations of that Review are, in part, why we are here – because it
is that review that recommended that At-Large be able to appoint directors
to the ICANN board. (That report is referenced in the Background section of
the White Paper, which provides a link to it.)
In other words, At-Large has already (and very recently) been involved in
an extensive process of evaluation by itself and the rest of ICANN. Given
that we are fairly stressed for human resources (and most of those are
volunteers with day jobs), it has been a choice by most of us to spend our
energies observing and trying to affect ICANN policy that effects end-users.
I personally believe that having ICANN do the Right Thing (from the public
point of view) is more important than the size of the organization. But
you're welcome to disagree, and to get involved to advocate the change you
want to see.
As with any group of volunteers, At-Large is driven by the efforts of people
who do the work, (in our case, guided by the ALSs and regional participants
that get involved). Talk is cheap. If you're interested in streamlining
ICANN and At-Large, you are invited to get involved and help to do that.
- Evan
(Submitted to the NA-Disucss and At-Large Worldwide mailing list on 12 January 2010)
contributed by marilyn.vernon@icann.org on 2010-01-15 00:55:30 GMT
Evan
Firstly my comment Is not a criticism of those who wrote the AT large board documents but rather an observation that even somebody like myself who was involved in the pre and post ICANN era taking a look at recent developments is having a hard time working out what is going on and why.
Your note increases the concern.
ICANN is NOT a trade association. ICANN is NOT technical body. ICANN is NOT an international treaty organisation.
ICANN is chartered to co-ordinate the management of a few of the Internet's unique resources.
Above all ICANN does not own any of these resources. So it operates through rough consensus of the community at hand.
When ICANN was mooted the primary concern was to maintain the user as the centre of Internet evolution because this promotes innovation through continuity of what was and remains regarded as the highly successful bottom up Internet model.
Anything that detracts from that vision is a distraction. If the user interest is to be kept at the forefront of ICANN's concerns then it is vitally important that ICANN remains accessible and addressable by people who do not have full time jobs voluntary or paid, involved in or around ICANN.
best regards
Christian _
(Submitted to the At-Large Worldwide mailing list on 13 January 2010)_
contributed by marilyn.vernon@icann.org on 2010-01-15 00:58:24 GMT
The biggest flaw in the proposed process comes from the way it restricts the nomination process. The ALAC-proposed process does not allow any individual internet user to run for the Board. Indeed, it doesn't even let any individual member of the At Large community run for the board. Instead, it creates a committee of 11 people who decides for the electorate who can run. That committee sits behind closed doors and comes up with a list - perhaps as small as 2 or 3 names.
As if that weren't bad enough, the electorate for this representative of the over 1 billion individual internet users consists of 20 people: the At Large Advisory Committee itself, and the Chairs of the Regional At Large Organizations.
So: a tiny group of ALAC insiders controls both who is nominated, and who is the electorate. The public at large, the individual internet user, has absolutely no channel into this process. This is a recipe for ensuring that only people well-known and well-liked by the insiders who already comprise ALAC will ever have a chance to get on the Board.
Why can't every member of an ALS have a vote? Why can't anyone in the world who is an Internet user be eligible to run? Why shouldn't those who want to be on the Board be required to build real support for themselves among the entire At Large community, rather than the small group of 5 or 6 full-timers who dominate the ALAC?
Milton Mueller, NCSG Executive Committee
contributed by guest@socialtext.net on 2010-01-23 02:32:35 GMT
Milton, you are advocating what is essentially a return to the 2000-style At Large elections (with all regions compressed into one).
That is a fine target, but it does not seem to be what the Board approved. The Board specifically said that the Board member should come from the "At-Large Community". The "At-Large Community" is a defined term in the ICANN Bylaws and specifically refers to the ALAC, RALOs and ALSs.
It is perhaps unfortunate that in 2002 when the Board took explicit action to eliminate the "At Large" Directors on the Board at at the same time, to create the "At-Large Community" (see the transition from the February 2002 Bylaws - http://www.icann.org/en/general/archive-bylaws/bylaws-12feb02.htm to the December 2002 Bylaws - http://www.icann.org/en/general/archive-bylaws/bylaws-15dec02.htm) they kept essentially the same descriptive name "At Large" - "At-Large Community". Perhaps if the name had been sufficiently different, the two vary different concepts would not regularly be confused.
We don't know who will be selected as the At-Large Board Member. Perhaps it will be an "ALAC insider". Perhaps not. I always find the term somewhat curious, as I was accused of being such an insider within a few months of appointment to the ALAC.
The group that will do the nomination, the 11 "ALAC insiders" will (if the recommendation is followed) include ONE person selected by the ALAC. The rest will be selected by the RALOs and it is up to them to what extent these people are "insiders". Each RALO is completely free to choose whoever they want using whatever method they choose.
In the recommendation (a recommendation which was not originally supported by a number of ALAC members, but was unanimously chosen by the five RALOs and their ALSs) of the 20 electors, 15 of them come from RALOs and their votes may be controlled by the RALOs if they chose. That may be very far from ALAC insiders controlling the vote.
contributed by alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca on 2010-01-27 00:47:56 GMT
(ENGLISH)This is a matter that had a long discussion in LACRALO, particularly in our Last Teleconference. I want to copy here the english transcript of that Teleconference where we can find LACRALO´s position in every single aspect of the White Book. In general, our region agreed with the Reccomendations, but with some particular proposals https://st.icann.org/lacralo/index.cgi?transcription_21_january_2010_lacralo_en
(SPANISH) Este es un tema que ha tenido larga discusión en LACRALO y particularmente en nuestra última teleconferencia. Copio aquí la transcripción en Español de la misma https://st.icann.org/lacralo/index.cgi?transcription_21_january_2010_lacralo_2009_es
La posición de LACRALO coincide a grandes razgos con las recomendaciones vertidas en el Libro Blanco, pero con algunas particularidades.
contributed by investigaciones@densi.com.ar on 2010-01-27 12:03:27 GMT
