On 24 July 2018, the ALAC unanimously voted to re-appoint Yrjö Länsipuro to serve as the ALAC Liaison to the GAC between the end of the 2018 AGM to the end of the 2019 AGM.
Yrjö Länsipuro was re-appointed by the ALAC to serve as the ALAC Liaison to the GAC between the end of the 2017 AGM to the end of the 2018 AGM.
On 24 June 2016, the ALAC appointed Yrjö Länsipuro to serve as the ALAC Liaison to the GAC for the interim period until the end of ICANN57. Yrjö is the first ALAC Liaison to the GAC.
Yrjö was previously a GAC member representing Finland, and a member of the ICANN President's Strategy Committee and has been active in At-Large since 2009.
GAC Liaison's Report on ALAC-GAC Meeting at Virtual ICANN69
A joint session of the GAC and ALAC/At-Large took place at the Virtual ICANN69 on October 21, 2020, with EPDP, SubPro and DNS Abuse on the agenda for comparing notes and planning further cooperation.
EPDP
Alan Greenberg noted that EPDP is now at an interesting point, as GNSO has adopted all recommendations from EPDP Phase 2, including some not supported by a consensus. It is now up to the Board to decide what to do, but it is the responsibility of the GAC and the ALAC, as the two main advisory committees, to think carefully what kind of advice they give to the board. When the EPDP WG reconvenes for Phase 2 A, the two groups have to put forward proposals on different treatment of legal and natural persons and on anonymized e-mail addresses.
Hadia El-Miniawi added the issue of accuracy, the ability of the SSAD to evolve, and financial aspects to the joint concerns of ALAC and GAC.
Chris Lewis-Evans assured that GAC representatives look forward to working together with ALAC on proposing a way forward for the whole EPDP.
Manal Ismail concluded the discussion suggesting a call between topic leads after ICANN69 to agree on concrete steps forward or even to start jointly working on material to feed into the Phase 2A tracks.
Taking note of the suggestion, Yrjö Länsipuro took organizing the call as an AI.
SubPro
As promised at the ALAC-GAC intersessional meeting (21 October 2020 ), Justine Chew presented a comparative analysis of comments on following topics from different stakeholders in the SubPro PC process:
- 1)Registry commitments and enforceability
- 2)DNS abuse mitigation
- 3)Application support and communications (outreach)
- 4)Community applications + CPE
- 5)Auctions & private resolution of contention sets
- 6)Closed generics aka “exclusive generics”[1]
On 1), Justine noted the GAC had comment that we should be looking at Category 2 safeguards for TLDs in highly regulated sectors. She also drew attention to the Board’s concern about the enforceability of both PICs and RVCs in light of ICANN Bylaws which exclude judgment on contents from ICANN’s mission. On 2), Justine noted that GAC expects swift action from GNSO Council in triggering holistic efforts on abuse mitigation. On 3), ALAC still had concerns over some of the draft final recommendations, including source of funds, details of auction bid credit, prevention of gaming (eg., in connection with an application denied support and then transferred into a standard one), and metrics. On 4), Justine noted that the GAC and the ALAC are saying similar things in their comments. ALAC has pushed for major reforms in the CEP process, eg., for including more grassroots participation in the evaluation panels or their access to expertise in community matters, and for avoiding the bias toward economic communities. On 5), ALAC is proposing a ban on private auctions so that auctions proceeds would benefit the global internet community. And finally, on 6), allowing closed generics, if at all, only if they served some sort of public interest.
From the GAC side, a recognition of Justine’s tremendous effort and expertise was expressed, as well as of the inter-sessional collaboration with the ALAC, which the GAC looks forward to continuing. Luisa Paez, GAC Vice-Chair, noted that at the GAC session with the Board the day before, the GAC had raised two items of importance to the ALAC, namely implementing CCT Review recommendations, with a particular focus on DNS Abuse, and the question of enforceability of public interest commitments.[2] She concluded that there is a lot of commonality in terms of the ALAC and GAC views, and that the GAC is looking forward to engaging further with the ALAC.
Jorge Cancio, GAC Vice-Chair, endorsed Luisa’s thanks to Justine and ALAC, and her view on the commonalities of ALAC and GAC positions. He drew attention to the evolution of the GAC thinking on SubPro from a compilation of the views of about 20 individual GAC members in April-May[3] to the consensus input to the draft SubPro report in September.[4] During ICANN69, the GAC discussed both internally and raised with SubPro WG co-chairs the question of what role the GAC would play in the new predictability framework. Jorge noted that the PDP WG should be aware of the synergy and alignment between the comments from the GAC and ALAC, which both, at the end of the process, have the possibility of issuing advice to the Board. He expressed the hope that their comments are well considered in the WG, so that interventions at the end can be minimized.
Manal held out the possibility of an intersessional call between SubPro topic leads, if they think it would be needed, to agree on how to align our next steps together might be.
Combating DNS Abuse
Lastly, an AOB item at the suggestion of the ALAC side was raised on the possible cooperation on grassroots capacity building on combating DNS Abuse. As Jonathan Zuck, ALAC Vice-Chair explained, ALAC is committed to a two-pronged approach to combating DNS Abuse, by pursuing improvements to relevant policies of ICANN, and by launching a campaign to educate individual internet users about how to protect themselves from harms like phishing scams and others based on DNS Abuse. Looking for cooperation with GAC on the matter, At-Large brings to the table a fairly deep network of its regional/local structures that enables us to reach out in a significant way. What At-Large looks for from governments are educational resources of the type of videos produced by FTC/US that Laureen Kapin of the PSWG had pointed out. ALAC is now in a resource identification phase, finding out what kind of resources in what languages are available.
Manal thought the initiative was a relevant and timely one, noting that the need of capacity building on combating DNA Abuse has been mentioned in previous GAC communiqués, and echoing Jonathan’s call to GAC members for sharing any relevant materials.
Maureen Hilyard, the ALAC Chair, noted the important place of capacity building in the At-Large plans next year and thanked the GAC in advance for its help for this effort.
Conclusion
At the conclusion of the meeting, Manal reminded her GAC colleagues that since Ana Neves, the representative of Portugal, left the GAC, there has not been a GAC Liaison to the ALAC, as a counterpart to the ALAC Liaison to the GAC, and she was now seeking volunteers for that task.
Lastly, Alan took the floor commenting the evolution of the GAC over the last 14 years he had been involved with ICANN: “I am just amazed and pleased at how involved the GAC now is in the actual work of ICANN and helping (it) to go forward in the right ways, as opposed to almost, in the past, sitting back and critiquing things but not actively being involved, and just how dynamic the GAC is right now compared to a dozen years ago. So my hat’s off to you, if I was wearing a hat”.
[1] Slide deck at:
[2] Transcript of GAC meeting with the Board 20 October: https://69.schedule.icann.org/meetings/dAhtqomcMqjTox2iS#/?limit=10&sortByFields[0]=isPinned&sortByFields[1]=lastActivityAt&sortByOrders[0]=-1&sortByOrders[1]=-1&uid=a6ijir8iemBHYWRru
[3] https://gac.icann.org/working-group/GAC%20Compilation%20of%20Individual%20Input%20on%20Draft%20Recommendations%20of%20GNSO%20SubPro%20PDP%20WG%20on%20New%20gTLDs.pdf
[4] https://gac.icann.org/statement/public/GAC%20Subpro%20Final%20Report%20Collective%20Comment%20-%20FINAL.pdf
GAC Liaison’s Report 28 July, 2020
Dialogue between At-Large and the GAC continued in the spring and summer of 2020 in spite of COVIC-19 restraints and actually developed new, issue-focused forms of cooperation on key topics of interest to both. On 20 May, 2020, an important GAC Leadership delegation participated in a CPWG singleissue call on registry commitments and the role of GAC advice and GAC early warnings, where the topic leads from both AC’s presented the current stage of their deliberations on the topic.
Transcript of the call is available at https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=134514430&preview=/13451 4430/136120452/atlarge-cpwg-role-gac-advice-20may20-en.doc.
Due to time constraints, an ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN68 was replaced by an ALAC-GAC Leadership call, attended by the leads of relevant topics, during the week preceding ICANN68, on 17 June 2020.
On the agenda were Subsequent Procedures, EPDP and DNS Abuse, with a view to developing mutually supporting positions on issues of common end user – government interests. On SubPro, Justine gave a comprehensive presentation of At-Large views on how to make applicant support and community application processes more effective and meaningful; on issues related to GAC category one safeguards; on some geonames issues, and on the CCT recommendations to be implemented before the next round. The presentation included a number of concrete questions to the GAC about their stand on the issues. The GAC Chair thanked Justine for a thorough and excellent presentation and promised the GAC would try to digest the information shared and to respond to it. On the prerequisites to the next round, she noted that at recommendations related to DNS Abuse were prioritized by the GAC to be dealt with prior to any new rounds, as stated in its Montreal communiqué. Summary of the Justine’s presentation and requested input from the GAC: https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=137920578&preview=/13792 0578/138969933/2020-06-17%20ALAC-GAC%20Leadership%20Call%20- %20SubPro%20Summary.pdf
Under the agenda item on DNS abuse, Joanna and GAC Chair Manal shared information about relevant sessions planned by both AC’s at ICANN68.
On EPDP, Alan Greenberg noted that At-Large and the GAC are pretty well in lockstep on issues that are important for both – natural vs. legal, accuracy, e-mail, the evolution mechanism, and GAC Chair Manal confirmed that the GAC shares At-Large’s concern on many, if not all EPDP issues.
Transcript of the 17 June call is available at https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=137920578&preview=/13792 0578/140248486/atlarge-alac-gac-leadership-17jun20-en.doc.
In addition, on 9 July 2020, a call of the Public Safety Working Group (PSWG) of the GAC with the participation of interested At-Large members at the initiative of the former, originally scheduled for the Cancún meeting and postponed a couple of times, finally took place. Its agenda covered Access to gTLD registration data (effectiveness of current interim arrangements, including EPDP Phase 1 implementation) and DNS Abuse (implementation of CCT and RDS-WHOIS2 recommendations and enforceability of Public Interest Commitments PIC’s). Due to its “informal” nature, it was not recorded so that a transcript is not available.
XXX
The threat of COVID-19 is not over, and nobody knows when full-scale physical meetings of ICANN can be resumed. So far, it has been possible to develop cooperation on issues of interest to both At-Large and the GAC by remote means. If constraints continue, it will be more and more important to keep up a meaningful, results-oriented dialogue on key topics of interest to both AC’s, lest the dialogue turns into a formality. GAC itself will be challenged by the absence of face-to-face meetings, which until now have been necessary for adopting GAC Consensus advice. On the other hand, the pandemic has provided an important lesson to both At-Large and the GAC. Unashamedly quoting myself from the COVID-19/end users session of ICANN68: At our meetings with the GAC, we used to point out that citizens and internet end users are same people. With pandemic lessons learned, we can now say that during an emergency, people can continue to play their full role as citizens because they are internet end users, and good at that. In an emergency like this, resiliency of the fabric of the entire society depends on the Internet. I think – I hope – that the lesson has not been lost on governments or on any other stakeholders. This is a good starting point for cooperation, also on local/national level, something that has been suggested at our joint meetings.
Yrjö Länsipuro
GAC Liaison’s Report on ICANN 67 Virtual Community Forum
Like other ICANN constituencies, the GAC managed to adapt smoothly to the virtual format of ICANN67, gathering a number of online participants (61 Members, 6 Observers) comparable to face-to-face meetings in recent years, conducting its core business and drafting a communiqué, however without any formal Consensus Advice, which would have required a face-to-face meeting. The focus of the meeting was clearly on the issue of Subsequent rounds of new gTLD’s, which was dealt with both at GAC meetings proper and at its sessions with the Board, the SubPro PDP WG and the ALAC/At Large. In addition, GAC capacity building sessions were devoted to this topic in their entirety. This emphasis is understandable in view of the rapid turnout of national representatives to the GAC. There are not so many left from the days of the lively discussions 2008-2012, when the GAC played an important role in shaping the modalities of the 2012 round, as it itself was transformed by the process into an operative component of the new gTLD-generating
mechanism. Recent capacity building efforts seem to have borne fruit, and the GAC is now coming up to speed on this issue, something of great importance also for ALAC/At-Large (see below).
The other two topics mentioned in the communiqué as “issues of importance to the GAC” were Acquisition of PIR (.org) and Domain name registration directory service and data protection (EPDP).
Unlike a normal face-to-face meeting, where the GAC (or its WGs) may have a dozen bilateral meetings with other ICANN bodies, the online GAC at ICANN67 had to cut down on dialogue sessions, including an informal meeting that its Public Safety Working Group wanted to have with interested ALAC/At-Large participants on DNS Abuse. However, as its only bilateral meeting with another SO/AC at “virtual Cancun”, the GAC met with ALAC/At-Large, as it had at every ICANN meeting since the summer 2016.
ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN67, Wednesday March 11
When a planned face-to-face meeting had to turned into an online one at a couple weeks’ notice, just the absolutely necessary could fit in. In keeping with this constraint, the joint ALAC-GAC meeting focused on just the two issues high on the agenda of both - SubPro and EPDP – and on the search of possible common ground within them.
SubPro
On the SubPro, intersessional dialogue between the GAC SubPro Focus Group with ALAC/At-Large was suggested by the GAC side already at ICANN64 (Marrakech, June 2019). However, the GAC group had first to focus on capacity building activities. The first intersessional meeting on the topic was held in February 2020, as an “appendix” to the GAC/ALAC leadership call, with Luisa Paez, the Chair of the GAC Focus Group, and Justine Chew, the Chair of the ALAC/At-Large Small Team on SubPro, as the main speakers. Both sides also exchanged the draft score cards on various aspects of SubPro.
At the joint meeting at ICANN67, Justine Chew presented a chart showing the ALAC/At-Large high level process of producing scorecards which ultimately will form its position, with cooperation with the GAC built in.
She then presented the list of SubPro topics of interest to ALAC/At-Large and asked for the GAC perspective and inputs on them and whether consensus has been reached within the GAC on them.
Replying to Justine, GAC Chair Manal Ismael said GAC had prioritized five SubPro topics, namely 1)closed generics TLDs, 2) public interest commitments, 3) GAC early warnings and GAC advice, 4) applicant support program and underserved regions, and 5) community-based applications.
Jorge Cancio added that GAC discussions have gone to the substance on public interest commitment, GAC early warnings, applicant support programs and closed generics. The work of finding possible new consensus positions on the specifics of the of the recommendations being elaborated by the PDP working group will take place intersessionally. GAC is basing its discussions on consensus positions dating back the GAC principles on new gTLDs dating back to 2007 so that it is not starting from scratch.
Luisa Paez noted that GAC has still a lot of internal work to do intersessionally, but that it is encouraging that ALAC has a dedicated group looking at their priorities, and that there is an alignment on a few items. GAG is open to have further intersessional calls with ALAC and noted that it is helpful to get a sense again of where the ALAC is moving, and those exchanges will help also to build the GAC capacity as well.
EPDP
Hadia El-Miniawi presented possible EPDP topics that might be of mutual interest for both the ALAC and the GAC:
Commenting on Hadia’s presentation, Giorgios Tselentsis said that the ALAC and the GAC, in his view, have a quite good collaboration in the EPDP. He not only agreed that the points presented by Hadia were of mutual interest, but also, on most of them, the GAC and the ALAC are practically aligned. This was also confirmed by Alan Greenberg and Laureen Kapin in their comments.
The transcript of the meeting can be found at https://67.schedule.icann.org/meetings/1152550
Yrjö Länsipuro
ALAC Liaison to the GAC
ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN66, Montreal, 5 November, 2019
Continuing a practice that started at ICANN56 (Helsinki, June 2016), the ALAC/At-Large and the GAC had a joint meeting at ICANN66 in Montreal 5 November, 2019.
The agenda covered topics of joint interest that have been discussed at many previous meetings: capacity building, EPDP and SubPro. Willingness to move forward from “comparing notes” to more concrete cooperation could be sensed from both sides.
Under AOB, a suggestion was made to develop contacts and cooperation between At Large elements and relevant governmental entities, represented on the GAC, also on country level.
Capacity building
Joanna Kulesza, Co-chair ALAC Capacity Building Working Group confirmed the readiness to cooperate with the GAC on capacity building by having At-Large members participate in the capacity building pre-events of the GAC in Cancun and Kuala Lumpur. Details will be worked on intersessionally.
There is interest in the GAC to learn about the capacity building, practices and working methods of At-Large. Joanna replied to the question by GAC Vice-Chair Luisa Paez by pointing to ICANN Learn, to online resources developed by At-Large and to the At Large Policy Platform that is under development. She also welcomed the Information Transparency Initiative that will make information about ICANN better organized and more accessible.
EPDP
Hadia El-Miniawi, one of the two ALAC representatives in the EPDP, presented an overview of points of common interest between the ALAC and the GAC with regard to the expedited process for gTLD registration data: first and foremost, complying with GDPR and other relevant data protection laws; having a standardized system for access/disclosure automation; accuracy of registration data; and distinction between natural and legal persons. On the last point, a study is going to be launched, something that arose from EPDP meeting in Montreal.
(Reference is also made to the joint GAC – ALAC statement on Phase I of the EPDP at ICANN64, Kobe, 13 March 2019, and subsequent discussions on a follow-up to it concerning Phase II)
SubPro
Justine Chew, the ALAC Liaison for SubPro, listed SubPro issues that are important to At-Large and that ALAC has commented on in the process, such as global public interest, safeguards including verified TLD’s and registration restrictions for highly regulated sectors, CCT review recommendations, closed generics, new appeals mechanism, applicant support, community priority evaluation and possible enabling of change requests. She confirmed that ALAC is open to working with the GAC in a way that GAC is comfortable with to see if there is common ground on some of these topics or topics that the GAC wants to put forward.
Replying to Justine, Jorge Cancio (Switzerland) noted that already at the previous ICANN meeting (ICANN65, Marrakech, June 2019) the GAC and ALAC had more or less agreed to try to find synergies between the ALAC and GAC SubPro groups. He hoped this can still be done, and pointed out that at least some in the GAC had called for some urgency in tackling the issues that are crystallizing in the PDP working group. He said he hoped that the GAC could share with ALAC its scorecard of SubPro issues which covers 95% of the issues that Justine listed. “So it would be a shame if we didn’t work together on this because our resources, yours and ours, are very limited”, he said,
Luisa Paez, the Chair of the GAC Focus Group on Subsequent Rounds of New TLD’s, agreed that the GAC and the ALAC have a lot of synergies, and that an intersessional call between the GAC Focal Group and ALAC will be planned. She also welcomed sharing the scorecard or parts of it, after it has been updated and reviewed by GAC members.
Contacts and cooperation “on the ground”
Under AOB, Ricardo Holmquist (ALAC-LAC) suggested preparing a joint GAC-ALAC statement encouraging At Large elements and relevant governmental entities to talk to each other at country level. This would facilitate capacity building, help developing policies related to ICANN and building a better internet in our countries, he said.
Next steps
Moving on to next steps, Ana Neves, the GAC Liaison to ALAC, noted the difficulties of getting the policy dialogue going between bodies that represent governments, on one hand, and consumers and users, on the other. Nevertheless, she insisted on a more active and energized partnership to get the most out of it.
Yrjö Länsipuro, the ALAC Liaison to the GAC, said he realized the ALAC and GAC are “very different animals” but they nevertheless represent the same people whom the GAC calls citizens and ALAC calls individual end users of the Internet. He also thanked Luisa in inviting At Large participation in the GAC Focus Group.
Concluding the meeting, both Chairs, Manal Ismail and Maureen Hillyard, agreed that the GAC and the ALAC should get intersessional cooperation up and running, looking forward to having active engagement between now and the next ICANN meeting in Cancun.
+++
Two other events with ALAC-GAC engagement at ICANN66 need to be noted:
1) At the joint ALAC-GAC-NPOC Communications and Capacity Building Session (2 November), Bob Hoggarth, Vice President, Policy Development & GAC Relations, explained the special capacity building needs of the GAC, taking into account the high turnover rate of GAC representatives that 178 governments send to meetings. Over 12 months, the committee has seen 99 new participants, and 62 have departed.
2) Joanna Kulesza and Yrjö Länsipuro participated at the session of the GAC Human Rights and International Law working group (6 November) which discussed the new draft template for human rights impact assessments.
Joint ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN65, Marrakech
June 26, 2019
There was a joint ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN65 on Wednesday, June 26. Due to scheduling constraints, only 30 minutes had been reserved for it, so the agenda was limited to three topics only.
- EPDP
As a follow-up to the ALAC-GAC joint statement[1] on EPDP, issued at ICANN64 in Kobe, Hadia Elminawi reviewed developments on issues of common concern for both ALAC and GAC, including the distinction between natural and legal persons, accuracy of the data in relation to the purposes they are collected for, and the necessity of including the field for technical contact. In the joint statement, the two bodies had also called for exploring the need of having an ICANN purpose that addresses related DNS research requirements pertaining to the security and stability of the internet. Hadia noted that this Purpose 2 had not been adopted by the Board, so that it needs to be rephrased so the it reflects ICANN’s public interest role.
From the GAC side, Ashley Heineman (US) observed that GAC and ALAC seem to be aligned on many issues pertaining to the EPDP. On Purpose 2, we still need to wait for there to be some sort of Board – GNSO Council consultation, but perhaps leading up to that and afterward, GAC and ALAC can regroup together and maybe chart a path forward on how best to handle that particular purpose.
- Cooperation on capacity building
Joanna Kulesza reported from the joint small group meeting on Monday on how to facilitate especially newcomers to both ALAC and GAC in adapting in the complex ICANN environment. The objective is to have joint capacity building events both at and between ICANN meetings. In addition, all At-Large capacity building events and online resources are open and GAC members are welcome to use them. In the ensuing discussion, Kavouss Arasteh (Iran) expressed support for this cooperation and suggested leveraging also resources of other international organizations.
- Intersessional dialogue on policy matters
GAC Liaison to the ALAC Ana Neves (Portugal) presented the idea of expanding the intersessional cooperation of the two bodies to policy matters, in particular to discussing the possible new gTLD round. She proposed a small joint group of 4-5 people from each side to start the work. Jorge Cancio (Switzerland) suggested that instead of setting up a joint group, a newly constituted GAC focal group on new gTLD’s could be used for the purpose. The Chair of that group, Luisa Paez (Canada) confirmed that GAC is open for a dialogue with ALAC on new gTLD, something she sees as important. The focus group is going to discuss the modalities after the summer holiday period and come back with its invitation. (On our side, we should identify a few people who would like to participate in this dialogue.)
At the conclusion of the meeting, the ALAC Chair Maureen Hilyard welcomed the willingness of the GAC for a policy dialogue, noting that we have a lot of commonalities and that ALAC is very willing to participate in discussions with GAC, on terms they find appropriate, and that GAC members are always welcome to the capacity building sessions organized by ALAC. The GAC Chair Manal Ismail agreed that multiple working groups would not be needed and that the GAC focus group will invite ALAC colleagues to join.
[1] https://atlarge.icann.org/advice_statements/13255
June 2018
The GAC appointed Ana Neves as the first GAC Liaison to the ALAC during ICANN 62.
ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN 62; annotated agenda
23 August, 2016
On 19 August, 2016, there was a call where the Chairs of the GAC and the ALAC, Thomas Schneider and Alan Greenberg, together with the interim ALAC liaison to the GAC, Yrjö Länsipuro, and staff of both advisory committee, discussed the rationale and objectives of the newly created ALAC-GAC Liaison post.
It was agreed that the purpose is to keep the ALAC and the GAC – the two bodies of ICANN community that share a concern for public interest – mutually informed on a general level about what they are doing and planning to do, and to explore issues where the two committees could find enough common ground for cooperation. In the short run, expectations are modest, and the main objective is to build solid foundations for cooperation, whenever there's a need for it.
A call with participation from both sides will be held in September to discuss issues of mutual interest. The ALAC Liaison volunteered to present the first draft for the agenda of the call, and welcomes ALAC input to it.
Yrjö Länsipuro
