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No.	Recommendation	Recipient	Thematic Group Source	Assignees	Status
28	The ALAC should work with all RALOs and ALSes to map the current expertise and interests in their membership, to identify Subject Matter Experts and facilitate policy communication.	ALAC	TG5	ALAC RALO Chairs

Implementation Details

In fall 2015, each Regional At-Large Organization (RALO) created, distributed, and analyzed a general survey to understand the subject matter expertise and interests of At-Large Structures. The response rate is inconsistent across RALOs.

At present, a centralized ALS information database is being constructed and every ALS will be contacted to check the accuracy of their contact, communication, and membership information. As part of the effort, ALS expertise and interest will be included in the database, and ALSes will be asked to provide that information.

Next Step

At-Large Community leaders will work with ICANN Staff to develop a specific questionnaire regarding ALS expertise and interest to send to each ALS; information gathered will be included in the ALS database.

Action:

24 Nov 2015:

- Heidi Ullrich to contact ICANN staff with regard to professional survey creation and report back to the RALO secretariats with regard to the progress

09 Mar 2016 (secretariat meeting - ICANN55):
- Humberto Carrasco and Siranush Vardanyan to collaborate with Staff and lead the effort developing professional survey for RALOs. A working group, with one representative from each RALO, may need to be formed.

Notes:

All RALOs completed a Professional Expertise Survey (APRALO Survey was a bit different with more questions and analytical results included ). This work was consider a very good start to map the current professional expertise.

AFRALO Result

APRALO Result

EURALO Result

LACRALO Result

NARALO Result

Below is the result analysis from LACRALO Chair and Secretariat

24 Nov 2015:

It is important to prepare a new survey to obtain more detailed information from At-Large members, professional help may be needed.
The survey should not only include ALS representatives but also other members in the ALSes. There is issue of openness of the survey. Some ALSes are tremendously large with lots of members. The survey needs to be more widely distributed with certain cap.
If we open the poll of survey respondents, the results may be complicated, as certain large ALS respondents may skew the results.
Ask ALSes themselves to provide the range of their members' knowledge, skills, and competencies that they can offer ICANN.
Professional survey creation is needed; ICANN may have in-house expertise to create professional surveys. Heidi Ullrich is following up on this action item.

21 Jan 2016 (secretariat meeting)

EURALO is working to form a taskforce to review the past survey and to add further questions for new survey; this taskforce will build the database of EURALO ALS expertise
LACRALO is waiting for the professional help re building the survey, also to learn about the number of members in the ALSes is important (e.g. some ALSes may have tens or hundreds of members)
NARALO had very little participation in the first survey with little impact. Similarly, an IEEE event held an extensive survey but only a handful of people responded. Survey may not yield the desired result as response rate could be low. Alternatively, RALO Chairs and Secretariats probably should contact ALSes directly instead of waiting for responses to surveys.
All RALOs should use the same survey, so it may be better to wait for professional help
APRALO: the idea of calling ALSes does not work in APAC region. The response rate in the previous APAC survey was high, and the result was clear with regard to professional expertise. Since new ALSes have joined, it would be valuable to do a new survey.
The last survey was only asking the ALS representatives, although the target is ALSes (e.g. members). Target audience needs to be defined clearly this time.
Survey that is short and sweet may get better response rate.
To find ways to promote the survey and encourage people to participate (e.g. amazon gift card for filling out the survey) may be needed.
Several ways need to be used to reach out to ALSes, and survey itself can be administered in different ways (e.g. emails, polls, calls) to be effective. The list of questions used in the survey need to be consistent across RALOs. Professional help may be useful in defining the survey questions. Each RALO can decide how to promote and inform the ALSes to take part in the survey

18 Feb 2016 (secretariat meeting)

The EURALO At-Large Structure Engagement Taskforce has been established. It will be looking at ways to engage EURALO At‐Large structures better.

09 Mar 2016 (secretariat meeting - ICANN55)

Heidi Ullrich: There does not appear to be any particular expertise on survey development within staff. There have been some staff resources allocated to a personal survey in terms of staff being able to reach out and call the ALSs and the identified representative of each ALS. And we are hoping to use this Staff resource in the context of the ALS Criteria and Expectations Task Force. It would be great if there is collaboration between the efforts in the Cross RALO Secretariat Group as well as the ALS Criteria Task Force.
Alberto Soto: ALSes should have the flexibility to provide the number of contacts for completing the survey, but we should demand at least a minimum of three contacts from each ALS.
Humberto Carrasco, Siranush Vardanyan, and Heidi Ullrich need to first discuss and agree on the content of the survey. A small working group should be formed for this effort, with at least one representative from each RALO.
The purpose of the survey needs to be clarified and whether all RALOs need to do the survey needs to be discussed, as RALOs differ from each other.
Such survey can be an opportunity to update RALOs' database on ALS primary and secondary contacts. Such survey can also ask questions how RALO leadership can help further engage ALSes and make them more active.
2010 ALS survey can be a good reference. It asks about ALSes' areas of interest, questions related to the At-Large improvements, and a subset of questions that Rudi Vansnick made on some ccTLD issues. After the survey, RALO Secretariats and Chairs did an analysis of each of their RALO’s results and then that was reported back.
To have a database of the actual knowledge that we have within our community – and not only just the ALS representative, but also within the At-Large Structure – would be useful, especially in soliciting specific penholders to draft ALAC Statements in response to public comments. This approach would be much better than sending a flood emails, among which public comment related ones often get lost.
The survey result can potentially feed into ATLAS II Recommendation 26 about the policy management process system improvements, which is a long-term goal. Rec 26 aims to scale up the policy advice development process by creating an automated system, for example, that would send the right information to the right people according to key words, etc.

12 May 2016 (secretariat meeting)

Some RALOs have little interest in the survey (e.g. NARALO), APRALO also conducted similar surveys in the past, hence very little progress in this task.
2 options for moving forward: 1) Humberto can move forward with Staff on the survey; 2) there will be additional staff resource to help catalog ALS information for a centralized database, and this staff resource can reach out to ALSes individually and ask targeted questions regarding their expertise, not only the ALS representatives but other members.
One or two multiple choice questions can be developed to explore ALS expertise. Staff to work with Olivier Crepin-Leblond, Humberto, Siranush to develop the question based on the policy taxonomy and taxonomy of other categories.