Darlene, I share you deep concern with the worrisome role the excom seems to have taken on for itself. I have spoken about this in the past - be it at the cairo open meetings, as well as at the recent igf in india. I will raise the concern to us govt officials I am meeting this afternoon To say that alac does not speak up, is not the issue. Some of us are. However the vast majority do not seem to echo the concerns. The idea of naralo creating some distance and being more independat (suceeding, etc) is one that I would support if our values of transparency, openness and bottom up engagement are not shared Robert On 12/15/08, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca> wrote:
Evan, I write this reply as:
- an ALAC member; - a member of current Ex-Com; - someone who normally abhors the concept of an Ex-Com; - the person who made the motion to formalize the de facto Ex-Com and make it more representative of the regions, but at the same time give it NO non-urgent powers.
First, I read the words slightly differently (but I didn't write them, so I am interpreting just as you were). What I thought meant (albeit not crystal clear) was that if the new Board members are not elected by the ALAC, then the ALAC should also have a Liaison to the Board, and that person would be the Chair or one of the Ex-Com to ensure good communications between the Board and the ALAC. I have two comments on this. Given that if the ALAC were given the privilege of a Liaison in addition to Board members, the ASO, ccNSO and GNSO would likely have to be given the same privileges, I don't think the chances are really high of this happening. If it were, I would find it hard to imagine (given the way the GNSO re-org has played out), that the Board would designate how this Liaison position would be filled. Rather it would go to the ALAC to decide.
By its definition, the Ex-Com cannot take powers on of its own accord. If it does and the rest of the ALAC does not call it on this, then the problem is even more serious that just being dysfunctional. Now I am not naive. I have sat on Beards where the Chair or the Ex-Com or the President have far surpassed their legal roles and have not been called on it. So it can and does happen. Luckily, there are a few people around (and I count myself in the list) who both privately and publicly will take actions to remedy the situation.
I agree 100% with you that we need to fix the root problem of lack of timely participation. And that will likely require us more carefully describing what the ALAC member responsibilities are in terms sufficiently clear that the people being appointed to the positions know what they are getting into ahead of time - a situation that I don't think exists today.
Alan
At 15/12/2008 11:47 AM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
I continue to be bothered by the subtle yet steadily increasing role of the ALAC Executive Committee. I note that this recommendation -- which I honestly don't recall being sent past the RALOs for comment -- suggests that the ALAC ExecComm (rather than the whole ALAC) be given the authority to appoint a Board Liaision.
We were once told that the ExecComm was only needed for issues of unexpected urgency. Now we see that the ExecComm wants to -- in recommendations it has itself written -- be given consideration to have the power to make appointments and decisions on predictable timelines.
If ALAC is dysfunctional -- which it most certainly is to me -- then that needs to be confronted directly. I had fears that the ExecComm was created to avoid the messiness of fixing the whole ALAC, under the pretence of necessary expediency. I now find these fears being realized.
Perhaps ALAC should take a page from the Summit, in which participants are surveyed (and taking the survey is mandatory) regarding their subject preferences, then _required_ to actively participate in working groups. Those who don't do this are denied travel support and ultimately the ability to be complete participants.
If only the same zeal used to demand participation from Summit delegates was applied to ALAC itself, then the ExecComm would not need to exist. Or maybe that is not the goal for some. It is noteworthy that, despite many months of member performance reports in our hands, ALAC has not begun to exercise section 11 of its charter (the recall provisions) even once. I have already found myself as a RALO chair having to take performance issues of our ALAC reps into our own hands, having exhausted my patience with ALAC's ability (or interest) to fix itself in this regard.
The Board liaison is the only reference to the ExecComm in this document. Its presence, while arguably minor, points to a disturbing -- if very slow and maybe not deliberate -- mind-set to give the ExecComm powers that might be seen to be poorly executed should they be "entrusted" to the whole ALAC. This trend should be stopped and if possible reversed. We may have to acknowledge that a very few people shoulder the load of the whole group, but we need to address this by increasing participation by all rather than entrenching a special position for the inner core.
It is clear that the very existence of the ExecComm indicates a failure of ALAC effectiveness; it seems ironic to point this out in discussion of a document related to the ALAC review.
- Evan
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