FINAL VERSION TO BE SUBMITTED IF RATIFIED
The final version to be submitted, if the draft is ratified, will be placed here by upon completion of the vote.
FINAL DRAFT VERSION TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ALAC
The final draft version to be voted upon by the ALAC will be placed here before the vote is to begin.
Two statements will be presented, one on comments on the FY18 Plan and Budge submitted as the ALAC Statement, and a second one requesting additional ICANN meeting travel slots submitted as the ALAC Chair Statement.
The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) thank the ICANN Chief Financial Officer and his team for the improvements in clarity made in the 2018 Fiscal Year (FY18) Operating Plan and Budget.
The ALAC are satisfied with the inclusion of the ALAC and Regional At-Large Organization (RALO) Development Sessions and the Cross Regional Outreach Pilot Program (CROPP) in the ICANN core budget. We are also satisfied with the inclusion of the Captioning Pilot Project in the ICANN core budget. The use of captioning needs to be expanded due to the increasing ICANN activities that have the participation of people from diverse linguistic backgrounds and accessibility levels.
The ALAC support the request made by the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) to extend the budget for the Work Stream 2 in FY18 to help the CCWG complete its mandate. However, the ALAC request that the CCWG carefully monitors its progress to ensure that no further extension is required.
We are disappointed that the Document Development Pilot Project (DDPP) is not included in the FY18 budget. The DDPP was a clear success for a large part of the ICANN community and deserves further funding in FY18. We also believe that it should be expanded to help train community members in the development of policy advice statements.
The ALAC notice that the cost of the Root Zone Maintainer Agreement (RZMA) increased by 33.33% compared to the figure in FY17. The increase may be due to the FY18 figure representing the cost of a full calendar year, whereas the FY17 figure only represented the cost of nine month. However, in the FY18 figure, the monthly cost exceeds $25,000 USD and this is not explained or specified.
In the planned capital projects for FY18 (page 16), $300,000 USD is allocated to the ICANN and At-Large website platforms enhancement. Upon investigation with ICANN staff, we now understand that this is a consolidation of other current expenses and is for a small support team to support the "Ruby on Rails" web development tool that is used for the main ICANN website and part of the At-Large website. We suggest that such expense not be labeled as if it were an expense requested by or for the benefit of a particular part of ICANN when it is only an internal IT decision to rationalize expenses.
Alan Greenberg is submitting the following comment and request as Chair of the ALAC and on behalf of the ALAC.
The ALAC has met with the GAC for many years, and have always talked about more substantive collaboration and the possibility of exchanging Liaisons. However until recently, such collaboration has not actually occurred. The ALAC and GAC are now more effective in addressing issues of joint concern (such as potential harms from specific sensitive gTLDs). Current GAC leadership was very supportive of establishing an ALAC Liaison to the GAC, ensuring a regular bi-directional flow of information and ensuring that both groups are aware of each other’s “hot issues”. As of June 2016, this liaison has now been put in place (roughly equivalent to a similar GNSO Liaison to the GAC). To ensure that the Liaison can fulfill his/her mandate, it is essential that the Liaison can attend all ICANN meetings and participate in GAC activities.
Currently the ALAC has travel support for its Liaisons to the GNSO and ccNSO. Fortunately at the moment, the Liaison to the ccNSO also has travel funding as an ALAC member, so we have been able to “reallocate” the ccNSO Liaison travel slot to the GAC Liaison. However such a fortuitous “spare” travel slot cannot be guaranteed and is not expected to be available for much longer.
The ALAC requests one additional ICANN meeting travel slot (airfare, hotel and per diem) to for its Liaison to the GAC.
The ongoing At-Large Review has identified the need to those At-Large workers who are active participants in At-Large and other ICANN policy activities to attend ICANN meetings. Having such active workers attend ICANN meetings will not only enhance At-Large discussions at its meetings, but will benefit the other ICANN activities they are involved in as well The ALAC strongly supports such an initiative. The Review Final Report has not yet been delivered (it is due within several days), but it is expected that the proposed method to fund such travel will not be implementable (based on extensive ALAC and At-Large review of the proposed methodology).
The ALAC requests that additional travel support slots to ICANN meetings be allocated to At-Large active contributors. The ALAC would establish criteria to be met and ALAC Leadership would ensure that such support is only provided if other sources of funding are not available. This request is very comparable to the FY18 GNSO request (FY18-22) for four Working Group Chairs which has just been approved.
Unlike participants in other parts of ICANN, At-Large participants are volunteers in the true sense of the word. Virtually none of these contributors are employed in activities related to ICANN or the domain name industry. None are paid to attend ICANN meetings. Many have to take unpaid time off from work or use vacations to attend meetings.
The ALAC further notes that its travel funding has been close to uniform since mid-2009 (the last meeting of FY09). At that point At-Large was funded for its 15 ALAC members plus two regional leaders per Regional At-Large Organization (RALO) for a total of 25 travel slots. In FY14, it was increased to 27 to cover the liaisons to the GNSO and ccNSO if they were not otherwise funded. During this same FY10-FY16 period, the number of funded GNSO travel slots has gone from 23 to 49 for ICANN56. Since the GNSO did not tend to use all of its travel slots in the early years, the average funded number of GNSO travellers per meeting has increased from 17 in FY10 to slightly under 48 in FY16.
The ALAC requests as a pilot program for FY18, five additional travel slots per ICANN meeting, to be allocated to demonstrable active contributors.
FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED
The first draft submitted will be placed here before the call for comments begins.
FY18 Operating Plan and Budget
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ALAC Comment
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The At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) would like to thank the ICANN CFO and his team for the improvement made in the FY18 operating plan and budget in terms of clarity.
The ALAC notes with satisfaction the integration of the ALAC/RALO Development session and the CROPP pilot Program into the ICANN core budget. We are also satisfied by the inclusion into the core Budget of the he Captioning project that will need in our opinion to be expanded as the activities expand.
The At-Large advisory Committee supports the request made by the CCWG Accountability to extend the budget for the Work Stream 2 Subgroups support to FY18 to permit the completion of most of those sub-groups work.
We regret to notice that the Document Development Pilot Project (DDPP) is not in the FY18 budget anymore. The DDPP was a clear success for a large part of the ICANN community and deserves further funding in FY18. We even believe that it should be expanded to include training in the development of policy advice statements.
The ALAC notices that the Root Zone Maintainer (RZM) agreement cost increased by 33,33%. Is it because the contract period for FY17 was only 9 months while for FY18, it is for the full year?
In the Planned capital projects for FY18 (Page 16), it is mentioned that $ 300,000 are allocated to the ICANN & At-Large website platforms enhancement. We strongly believe that this information should be further detailed to separate the cost of the At-Large website platform enhancement fro the ICANN’s one for more clarity and transparence.
