ALAC Participants: C Langdon-Orr, S Bachollet, I Aizu, A Peake, A Greenberg, C Aguirre, R Guerra, F Seye Sylla, P Vande Walle, V Scartezini, H Diakite, J Ovidio Salgueiro, M El Bashir, B Brendler, A Peake
Liaisons: W Seltzer,
Guests: E Leibovitch (NARALO), C Samuels (LACRALO), C Jackson and A Linton (Westlake Consulting)
President’s Strategy Committee: M Cade, Y Lanispuro, P Dandjinou
ALAC Review WG: T Narten, T Drakes, JJ Subrenat
Staff: N Ashton-Hart, M Langenegger
The Chair opened the session by reminding the participants of ALAC’s role: 1) facilitate outreach, 2) extend ALSes into area that were not covered yet, 3) come up with real policy feedbacks and information in a timely manner. She said that for that and at the same time meet the strategic planning and accounting requirements, there needed to be a thorough ALAC discussion because clearly some of the review recommendations were not manageable. She briefly asked the participant’s whether they were particular issues on the mid-point review from the ALAC review WG they wished to discuss.
The suggestion from the ALAC Review WG to have 2 seats on the Board was being discussed. Different views were held on the subject. It was mentioned that there would be a considerable amount of additional work in case the proposal was accepted by the ICANN Board.
The ALAC Review WG then joined the discussion
W Seltzer remarked that the time was inappropriate to discuss about boarding seats as there were other constituencies reviewing processes which results would also have an incidence on the final ICANN Board composition.
S Bachollet commented that he would like to known the big picture of the final ICANN Board composition since it had an incidence on the possible ALAC voting weight in it.
A Izumi said that the two board members should be brought into the ICANN Board at the same time and urged for effectively campaigning.
A Peake reflected on the GAC representation at the Board and said that their by-laws were effective as the ICANN Board had to provide a justification when rejecting their proposals. The GAC seemed to be a more powerful organ and other ways than Board voting seats should be explored.
A Greenberg stressed the availability of time issue for people that should liaise and vote. Education and engagement are also important points to discuss.
The ALAC review WG arrived and briefly introduced themselves.
C Aguirre commented on the multistake holder model stressing its importance in order not to leave out some people and the need to improve it.
A Izumi noted the WG wanted the ALAC advice to be more formally recognized and thought that voting seats were in line with that. He stressed the need not to be too region-centric.
The Chair stressed the need to move forward into the discussion and reflect on how to make the whole At Large structure more effective.
Each of the ALAC Review WG guests introduced themselves (39:37). They said that their intentions had been to express their preferences and they were now waiting from the community feedbacks on them. They encouraged the members to address each recommendation.
C Samuel asked about the ALAC influence on the Board.
T Narten replied that influence was more powerful when exercised at an earlier stage, before it went to ICANN Board. The ICANN Board gets involved at the end stage of a discussion.
R Guerra said that the voting seats were an important point but apart from that, focusing on education was also important and clarification with regards to the claim that ALAC is different from the other constituencies that also claim to represent the users.
A Greenberg felt concerned about the selection process for the two ICANN board seats. That could lead to a complete disconnect if they were selected by other parts of the community with a possible vested interest.
F Seye Sylla noted that the African members wished that the NomCom elect more African ALAC members because they did not have suitable participants with the proper time availability.
T Drakes said that she wanted more participation from the regions and the suggestion of having Board seats was part of that idea. She thanked for the translation efforts regarding the document.
I Aizu noted that the current ALAC three-layer structure was hindering the flow of information and lacked flexibility. He said that not all the issues needed to go to the ALS level.
JJ Subrenat stressed that the voting seat issue was a central element and ALAC should work on its working mechanism. He stressed the need for ALAC to develop strategical and operational plans. It should reflect of its ‘user’s voice’ expression.
W Seltzer said that her personal opinion was that one should be hesitant with recommendations 10 and 11 as this might reduce the importance of users in the ICANN system.
C Aguirre stressed the importance of having the documents translated. With regards to participation, he noted that some members had deal with regional particularities such as power shortages.
P Vande Walle noted that comments are accepted in the public forum until November 12th.
T Drake thanked the participants for their active involvement and the participants interrupted the session for their coffee-break.
Tape 2
After the break, S Bachollet, in absence of C Langdon-Orr presided the meeting and introduced the RSSAC review members.
Colin Jackson and Andy Linton gave a short presentation on the independent Review of the Root Servers System Advisory Committee (recording 2 - 2:42 – 3:56). The main goal of the issue was to measure the effectiveness of their mandate within the evolving needs of the organization and gather feedback from the different constituencies.
They referred to the announcement webpage for the updated TOR:
http://www.icann.org/en/reviews/ssac/ssac-rfp-tor-16sep08.pdf
They said that the overall timeline would be between the CAIRO summit and the end of the calendar year for the inputs, then they would develop a path of issues and present that at the MEXICO summit.
N Ashton-Hart noted that the “slides from the Westlake Consulting presentation”
are linked to the Cairo documents page.
R Guerra shared his participation as a liaison to the SSAC. He went into the historical background of the review (10:05) and the issues to review: outreach component of SSAC, advisory with an educational component. Their specific mandate is not education and some collaboration could take place with ALAC for their points to be listened to. He said that they were a team of closely knit experts, quickly mobilized. They had meetings outside ICANN meetings at IETF. They were going through a transitional phase of leadership change. It was difficult to compare SSAC with ALAC since they only used English as the working language and were backed by a team of fellows. Their constituency was paid to be on the committee and they had the time. ALAC could learn from them that specific cases or incidences back-up could make claims more efficient. Their market survey was done by in-house fellows.
The guests thanked for the participation and the participants and left.
S Bachollet who had the participants organize themselves in three breakout working groups each treating one of the following issues:
- Policy advice development process, where can we fast-track?
- Participation and accountability of ALAC members and liaisons
- Outreach activities and grassroots inputs
The staff commented that there were 3 language versions on the first two topics, produced as a discussion draft. For the third item, there was a web page with a list of the current policy WG and their members. He said that there would be 2 subsequent ALAC sessions to finalize each topic.
C Langdon-Orr resumed her role as Chair of the meeting. She said that the purpose was to think about how to improve the whole At Large structure (RALOs and ALSes too). She opened the floor to the participants to express their views on the forming of a working group that would work outside the sessions on a draft proposal in response to the 22 recommendations.
R Guerra reminded that the ALAC Review WG was waiting for the responses to specific points raised in the report. He gave some suggestions (40:00). Mechanism and strategic planning should be included and the group should meet outside of the sessions.
A Greenberg said the group should make clear when they totally disagree with one of the recommendations.
Some At Large people took the floor:
An African participant asked for ALAC assistance with facilitating the interchange between the ALSes of his region and on a national level in his country.
The ALAC members commented that it was more for the respective RALO’s to provide for that because they were made of these ALSes. They shared the same language within their specific region.
The Chair asked the participants to form a working group that would work together out of sessions during the CAIRO meeting so as to present an early draft by the close of the third session meeting and to within two weeks from then have a draft response for the wider community ; an in-depth analysis and there was some discussion about the formation. (tape 2, 50:00).
The participants formed into their respective breakout working groups and started to work on the 3 topics mentioned earlier. Chair announced that it should be finished by 15:30.
Tape 3
Sebastien Bachollet acted as the Chair and asked the three breakout WG groups to to present their reports to the assembly.
C Samuel reported on participation and accountability (2:10). He said that they concluded that statistics were not overly important to measure meeting attendances but should serve just as a guide. Volume should not be equated to quality. He sets out their amendment to 21.10. The community should try to resolve the matter and if failed, the Chair should discuss with the member and if failure, contact with NomCom or RALO concerned. If the Chair had to encourage a member to resign, if the member did not resign within 14 days, the Chair would notify the body that had appointed them to reconsider immediately the appointment and the message would be copied to the ALAC list.
The second group reported on outreach (8:51/16:00) commenting that possible regional grants to support regional outreach projects should be created. RALOs should be free to decide on their own priorities. They spoke about having small workshops organized regionally.
The staff interrupted the session to inform about a last-minute breaking amendment to the schedule, announcing that 2 PSC members would come at 16:30 for a brief session about how to improve the institution confidence process. P Dandjinou, the ALAC liaison would try to be present.
V Scartezini presented the third breakout group results on fast-track (tape 3 - 18:32). She commented that there needed to be experts from around the globe to advise the community on the issues and to accelerate them. Expert Working Groups should not be constituted just on the principle of mirroring regional divisions. Issues should be sorted out according to the urgency of the input delay.
President's Strategy Committee
The members from the President’s strategy Committee joined the meeting.
M. Cade briefly gave a brief summary of the PSC history
Marylin Cade and Yrjo Lansipuro from the President’s Strategy Committee joined the meeting to discuss the recent developments (tape 3 – 30:43). She explained that the
PSC was established at the ICANN meeting in Wellington and was charged to produce a transition action plan. [http.--www.icann.org-en-jpa-iic-action-plan-revised.htm]
They had public consultation on all continents and a public comment process.
Y Lansipuro added that they were here in order to listen. He said that the PSC has been a top-down process until now but this will be changed now.
E Leibovitch noted that he did not share the definition of public used by the PSC as it reflected mostly commercial interests and felt embarrassed that there was not more participation from At-Large.
M Cade noted that public has different definitions. She added that she was surprised to see only 23 public comments on the PSC but over 200 at the DOC public comment period regarding the JPA.
A Greenberg was surprised that the term “transparent” played such a modest role in the action plan and insisted on the importance for ICANN to be an open organization.
M Cade remembered that the amount of data processed by ICANN was vast and that transparency itself has no value if the Staff did not respect decisions of the community.
I Aizu asked whether she could extend a definition of ‘multi-stakeholder’.
A Peake expressed his concern as to who would hold ICANN together after the Joint Project Agreement and suggested an external structure should be designated. He said that volunteerism was inherently open to capture.
Y Lanispuro replied that he did not share this idea of volunteerism.
C Aguirre asked the PSC members how they want to ensure that operational and financial security is ensured in the light of the current financial crisis.
M Cade noted that it was proposed to create a reserve fund for the running of the Internet and that ICANN needed to give priority to the stability of the Internet in its activities. To that aim, ICANN needed financial safeguards against unforeseen events.
P Dandjinou from the PSC noted that a lot of effort has been put into the definition of the different participants of the multistake-holder model
B Brendler said that users were not adequately represented in the report.
S Bachollet said that care should be taken into getting experts from more regions and countries so as to reduce the risk of capture.
H Xue noted that there was not enough being done with regards to internationalisation and consultations with the respective regions for the events.
E Leibovitch expressed his frustration with the fact that he did not get a response from the PSC after having submitted a report. He wondered if a liaison designated by At-large might be a more useful way to interact with and engage in the PSC and questioned the value of the relationship they had with PSC.
S Bachollet suggested that Pierre should be invited to discuss that issue with the ALAC and consequently improve the channel between the two bodies.
C Langdon-Orr asked the At-large members to come to the PSC public session on Monday and make public comments.
New gTLD Guidebook
It was discussed whether the applicant fee was too high. Diverging opinions were held. With regards to the issue of morality and public comment, I Aizu noted that the current document was better than the document presented in Paris.
There was no more time to discuss the issue further.
The one-day meeting came to its close.