The summary minutes were prepared by the Staff in the first instance.
At-Large Participants: C Langdon-Orr, J Morris, F Seye Sylla, A Greenberg, H Diakite, B Brendler, I Aizu, W Kleinwaechter, A Muehlberg, V Scarteini, E Leibovitch, S, Bachollet, R Buerra, R Vasnick
GNSO Participants: Avri Doria (Chair GNSO council),Chuck Gomes, Edmon Chung, Greg Ruth, J. Scott Evans, Jeff Neuman, Jon Bing, Jordi Iparraguirre, Kristina Rosette, Marilyn Cade, Michael Conner, Mike Rodenbaugh, Olga Cavalli, Philip Corwin, Philip Sheppard, Tim Ruiz, Tony Holmes, Ute Decker
Staff: F Teboul, M Langenegger, N Ashton-Hart, G de St Gery, R Hoggarth, L Gaster
Public Comment Period Length:
A Greenberg said that the public comment period was too short.
P Shepard, who represents the Business constituency in the GNSO council, added that the comment period was a very narrow window to comment on a policy issue.
C Gomez from the GNSO council noted that the By-laws needed to be changed if necessary.
A Doria, the chair of the GNSO council, pointed out that there was no staff that could follow up and inform the participants on ongoing processes.
J Morris noted that the translated documents did not come out before a week before the end of the comment period. There is no way non-English speakers can make comments.
One of the representatives of the GNSO council said that his organization translated some of the documents themselves and dedicated some of their own staff to follow-up on the issue.
S Bachollet noted that if there were no comprehensible documents in English, it was impossible to have good translations in other languages.
C Langdon Orr noted that DNS was only a small issue within her ALS, ISOC AU and that they did not have staff to dedicate to this issue.
S Evans from the GNSO council encouraged the discussant to talk to P Levins of ICANN and give him input as he was working on the meeting working-plan.
I Aizu noted that in the Asia-Pacific region, there are so many languages that they had given up on translations. They therefore depend on simple language documents.
P Korman noted that in the United States Government, the comment periods were either 60 or 90 days. He added that 30 days was very challenging. For a lot of ICANN issues, the papers are not distributed until a week before the start of the meeting.
A Doria reminded the discussant that is was often impossible to have different deadlines.
K Rosette said that she disagreed. She noted that there were organisations where you have to submit final documents six month in advance. She added that the workload was unreasonable for volunteers.
P Shepard, representative of the Business constituency within the GNSO council said that it was possible to plan the agenda ahead. He noted that the members of the GNSO council had a mindset were they seemed to believe that if they did not get a policy process done at a physical meeting the issue would be decided by other bodies, such as the Board.
C Gomez noted that for more complex policy issues there were often three comment periods. He reminded the discussants that the Internet was a very dynamic area and that they might miss an issue if the policy development process was too slow.
C Langdon-Orr said that the process should not be longer but better planned and sequenced.
Improving Communications
M Cade suggested connecting Businesses in developing countries with counterpart in At-large and encouraged interested parties to contact her.
O Cavalli offered to help her with this project in Latin America.
J Scott noted that he worked for a trade organisation and that he could help reach out to some of the developing countries. He encouraged the participants to send him a list.
R Guerra noted that in terms of outreach events, there might be an opportunity of cooperation between the ALAC and the GNSO and other structures. He offered to volunteer for an informal committee.
F Seye Sylla said that the fundamental issue of lacking input from the developing world can snot only be addressed by improved communication. The real problem was the lack of resources within the developing world. Often, the policy process is already under way and the developing world can only comment on policy processes, which are already going in a direction. The defeatist attitude you often find within the developing world steers from a situation where you feel you cannot really influence the process. She said she would be happy to take up M Cade’s offer and help her coordinating developing world initiatives.
GNSO Improvements: Alternative proposal on GNSO structure:
A Greenberg said that the ALAC should not necessarily vote in the GNSO since it was an advisory committee. However, individual Internet users should be more involved in the policy process and be able to actively vote.
P Shepard noted that if individual users were not in the policy process, the exercise did not have sense in his opinion.
B Brendler asked the members of the GNSO council for their opinion on this issue.
C Gomez noted that he supported the participation of users with voting rights but that the real problem was representation of individual users. He added that there seemed to have been improvements in the last years in this regards.
A Greenberg said that it would be difficult to represent users with no interest.
J Neumann said that ALAC was not the only constituency with a representation problem but that this was also true for other constituencies.
S Evans noted that individual users have only been well organised in the last two years. The fact that the users are now doing outreach at physical ICANN meeting is an example of how much progress this constituency has made. The leadership of At-Large have been doing a tremendous effort and should be congratulated.
E Leibovitch asked the GNSO council members if, considering the improvement of At-Large, it would be possible to consider that the GNSO supported the planned At-Large Summit.
S Bachollet noted that At-large is planning a Summit for ALSes in Cairo and there will be an outreach session later this week.
A Doria thanked the ALAC for this meeting.
C Langdon-Orr thanked the GNSO council members for attending this meeting.
