At its August 28th meeting, the Board approved a number of aspects of GNSO restructuring. Included in its resolution was the following: "The Board requests that existing constituencies confirm their status with the Board during the intervening time period, and requires constituencies to formally confirm their status every 3 years to ensure that they continue to meet the requirements of Article X, Section 5, subsection 3 of the ICANN Bylaws. This will be an opportunity for existing constituencies to demonstrate compliance with the principles of representativeness, openness, transparency and fairness set forth in the ICANN Bylaws." This reaffirms and in fact strengthens the Board's oversight of GNSO Constituencies and is in line with a request we made to the Board through our Liaison. However, it is troubling that the statements are solely in reference to principles of representativeness, openness, transparency and fairness of Constituencies, and not of Stakeholder Groups once they are defined in the Bylaws. I volunteered to draft a statement to the Board commenting on this and I propose the following statement to be sent to the Board at least one week prior to their meeting of September 30. I furthermore suggest the following time line for approval: - Comments received by Friday, Sept. 12, 1200 UTC - Revised statement issued and vote called by no later than Monday, Sept. 15, 2008 Alan =============================== The ALAC notes with pleasure that at its meeting of August 28, 2008, the Board clarified and reaffirmed the requirement that Constituencies within the restructured GNSO meet and continue to meet principles of representativeness, openness, transparency and fairness. Given that within the restructured GNSO, a principal entity will be the Stakeholders Group, and that it is at this level that Council seats will be allocated amongst its Constituencies, it is critical that the mechanism for such allocation be completely transparent. Accordingly, the ALAC recommends that when the Bylaws are amended to include references to Stakeholder Groups, that they too are obliged to adhere to similar principles of representativeness, openness, transparency and fairness.