Cheryl, Hi, Could you give some background to this letter. What, apparently, did Wendy say and when? How did you hear about it, was there not time to discuss with Wendy and At Large first before writing to Peter and the board? Perhaps the matter was discussed on the last ALAC call, but I was not able to attend, and I think it would be helpful to inform the community of all relevant information. Wendy, any comment? Thanks, Adam
To: Peter Dengate-Thrush
Peter,
You should by now have received the official notification by the Staff of ALAC¹s strong support for the proposed GNSO Consumer Constituency; the ALAC voted by consensus to endorse the proposal.
In this connection, I have the unhappy duty to inform you that it has come to our attention that the ALAC Board Liaison made statements in connection with the Board discussion about the proposed consumer constituency that were directly contrary to the view of the At-Large Community. It appears that she also made statements about other constituency proposals, many of which we have taken no settled view upon (CityTLD, IDNgTLD).
If she did not make it clear that the ALAC and At-Large strongly support the Consumer Constituency proposal, she should have. Any adverse comments or questions that she raised were entirely personal in nature.
To be frank, ALAC Liaisons to any part of ICANN have no business making personal statements without making clear that is all that they are; if Wendy failed to do in this case then she was acting inappropriately. All ALAC Liaisons are very clearly instructed to make it clear when they are making statements on behalf of At-Large, and when they are making personal statements. Our Liaisons (all of them) also don¹t have any business making personal statements that they know are directly contrary to the formally stated positions of the community that they represent without making the conflict-of-interest situation crystal clear.
For the avoidance of doubt, any statement made to the Board by the ALAC Board Liaison which is not clearly stated as ³on behalf of At-Large², is automatically a personal view only. I encourage you and/or your colleagues on the Board to enquire of me, or the Vice-Chairs and Rapporteur of the ALAC if you have any question about the nature of any statement made by our liaison.
There is no possibility that Wendy could not have known of the support of the At-Large for the Consumer Constituency. At-Large has sought to recruit consumer organisations into the community for years now, and several internationally known consumer representatives and organisations are long-term At-Large Community members and leaders. In addition, leaders of the international consumer movement in At-Large are parties to the Constituency proposal as you know, and others in At-Large are working hard to recruit more consumer groups to join the constituency should the Board approve it.
On a positive note, in preparation for the appointment of a Board Liaison for the upcoming year, At-Large began some months ago considerably upgrading the process by which the ALAC Board Liaison is chosen, and fleshed-out in considerable detail the obligations and requirements for eligibility for this important position. We ask for a statement from all candidates that they are able to meet the obligations, as part of our nominations process, and we recognise that there is nothing (so far) in our planned processes where we do anything resembling due diligence or even try to evaluate/judge how well the candidates meet the eligibility requirements (many of which are subjective in any case); We will shortly be apprising you of these via our At-Large Staff.
Based on this experience this may need considerable review in the future but with the planned advent of voting At-Large elected Board Members I suspect the point becomes somewhat moot, but it is something to be considered as we flesh out that electoral process in the future.
We believe these measures considerably increase the transparency and accountability of those who speak in our community¹s name, and that unfortunate incidents such as the one that causes me to write to you today will be very effectively prevented. Moreover, I think you will find that the new processes and requirements are a considerable step forward in the development of processes that could be used by the At-Large Community to select voting Directors in the happy circumstance that the Board decides to approve At-Large appointing one or more Directors, as we believe that it should.
Finally, please do forward this note on to the full Board, in advance of or at, this month's ICANN Board Meeting and discussions.
(Digitally signed in the PDF copy attached to this transmission)
Cheryl Langdon-Orr (CLO)
*ALAC Chair 2007-2009*
*26**th** August, 2009*
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