Dear all, We had morning meeting and also another discussion from 3:30 pm to 4:15 pm today, and here follows is the edited version of the current draft. There were some 7 or 8 people, at least for these two meetings and we had, at least, "rough" consensus on most of the texts, if not in details and wordings. I added, using the "Editor's privilege", some phrases to the one displayed in the room. Of course, this is not nowhere near "final". Please express your comments and suggestions to all points. For convenience, I also attach the Word file. Please, if so needed, use the "history tracking" function of the Word to indicate where you suggest changes. And also, please give us the exact wording you like to propose, rather than just pointing out what should be done. *Draft text for ALAC Response to BGC WG Report on ALAC Review* *Nov 4 version* At this time, we would like to provide our comments mainly to the "Key Points for discussion" in Page 4 of the Report as they capture the most important issues. We may further work more on the specifics and details later. First and foremost, we appreciate and commend the high-quality work of the BGC Working Group on ALAC Review. We are not in full agreement of all specifics of the report, but we are pleasantly surprised that the Report showed the deep understanding of the issue, made sensible suggestions and practical proposals that is very valid for us to seriously respond and act on. *1. The ALAC has a continuing purpose in the ICANN structure. This continuing purpose has three key elements: * *o providing advice on policy; o providing input into ICANN operations and structure; o part of ICANN's accountability mechanisms * We have no additional comment on these, but just agree. *Organization* *2. At Large should in principle be given two voting seats on the ICANN Board 3. The ALAC**�\RALO**�\ALS structure should remain in place for now * The ALAC welcomes the recommendation of the BGC that the ALAC be allocated two (2) seats on the ICANN Board. This development is very useful in projecting to the AT-Large community and users in general the value that ICANN places on our engagement in the process and provides a real opportunity to see the views of the community reflected in policy and administration. When the time comes for this recommendation to be implemented, we would wish that the ALAC is reserved the right to determine a selection process for these seats with a right of recall embedded. *Effectiveness and participation* *4. Educating and engaging the ALSs should be an immediate priority; compliance should be a longer term goal.* We agree that there is a good room to improve the participation of ALSs in our RALO and AtLarge activities. Therefore, we request that ALAC should be included and considered in all ICANN outreach and education activities, including, inter alia, regional meetings, mutual collaboration with regional liaisons and fellowship programme. ALAC also believes that engagement and recruitment of ALSs needs to go hand in hand with compliance. It does not serve our purpose to go recruit a bunch of groups that may or may not be legitimate only then later to rule them out. What needs to transpire are a number of actions, activities and events that attract ALSs (and users, for that matter) into ALAC. Paramount among these is to demonstrate that there is an actual purpose to being in ALAC. We have been working very hard to organize the Summit �C a global meeting of all ALSs to come to one place together. We also note that it is very important for us to continue our outreach work to recruit more new ALSs, and also explore ways to setup a mechanism where individuals who have keen interest in ICANN policy areas while she or he may not have strong interest in joining any of the existing ALSs with good reasons. We also hope that ICANN continue to provide sufficient resources for our outreach. *5. ALAC should develop strategic and operational plans (including performance criteria and cost information) as part of ICANN's planning process * We agree that it is of our highest priority to develop Strategic and Operational Plans as suggested in WG Report in a proactive manner. We like to work out the specific details in coming months. We also note and support that in the Independent Review Report, there were two recommendations It needs to be conducted in the loop of policy formation and discussion at the initial phase, not forced to run hither and yon trying to comment on 15 different consultations at once. Most critical to strategic planning is making priorities, and these priorities need to be in concert with the priorities of users. *6. More effort needs to be put into developing accurate cost models for At Large activity * Together with the Recommendation 4 of the Independent Review Report *"ICANN should implement on activity-based costing system",* we support the idea of having cost model based on AtLarge activities. In fact, we advocate more transparency than current budget information on AtLarge activities. We also like to see clear distinction be made between specific AtLarge related costs and general ICANN out reach activity costs which benefits all ICANN constituencies, not specific to AtLarge. We also agree with the comments of BGC WG Report on the Recommendation 5 of the Independent Review Report - while we need sufficient resource support to ALAC activities, we like leave specific ways on how to allocate the budget to the negotiation between ALAC Chair and ICANN staff. *7. ALAC should be encouraged to make its own choice of tools for collaborative work * We agree with this. *8. The public comment period should be kept at 30 days except in special circumstances, in which case ALAC may request an extension to 45 days * With regard to the policy advice work of the ALAC itself, the committee points out that the very nature of the multi-layer, bottom-up process within the At-Large requires more time to elaborate positions. Therefore, we ask for 8-week period as a standard practice and 4 to 6 weeks as a fast-track. The 30 day comment period would be difficult to match as we cannot conduct adequate bottom-up consultations with translation which is critical to reach out our global At-Large Community. Short circuiting a large part of the community is against the very nature of the At-Large. *9. ICANN should strengthen its translation processes.* We cannot agree more. While we appreciate that considerable resources are allocated for the translation of major languages (Spanish, French regularly and Arabic and Chinese occasionally), there are many other people on the globe who's language are not translated and we do not call for more translations per se, but more consideration be made in conducting our business (meetings, email exchange and other communication) for these people.* * *Relationship with other ICANN entities* *10. The ALAC is the appropriate organisational channel for the voice and concerns of the individual Internet user in ICANN processes * *11. Since ALAC is the appropriate channel for the voice and concerns of the individual Internet user, it is inappropriate for other ICANN entities to attempt to claim to represent that individual user voice * The ALAC agrees that it should be the main channel for individual Internet users - from novices to experts, who may or may not be domain name registrants - to participate in the ICANN policy making processes, noting its bottom-up representation process contributes to its legitimacy. * [A definition can be added here or as footnote on Individual Internet users]*** At the same time, the ALAC thinks there is some merit to have Internet users, including individuals, but also academia, domain name registrants and small businesses, acting in their own capacity, to be represented in GNSO. *12. Processes for providing advice on policy should be strengthened both within * *ALAC for the development of policy advice and within SOs for requesting input * *from ALAC on policy issues * Regarding the strengthening of processes for providing advice on policy the ALAC welcomes the suggestion to improve the interactions between SOs and the ALAC. We appreciate the WG report have proposed the following new practice: *The WG therefore recommends that the policy development processes of the GNSO, the ccNSO and the ASO be changed so that At Large input is required as part of the process. In addition to requiring this input, there should be the requirement that this input is acknowledged and taken into consideration. Similar acknowledgement should come from the Board when ALAC presents advice to the Board. This is not to say that whatever advice At Large provides must be followed, but rather that the advice should be considered. If the advice is not followed in the development of the policy, a response should be sent to At Large with an explanation, or an explanation should be provided in the policy document. * We also like to ask the Board to implement a similar mechanism used to respond to the GAC advice. Below is the bylaws on that matter. *Section 2. SPECIFIC ADVISORY COMMITTEES* *j. The advice of the Governmental Advisory Committee on public policy matters shall be duly taken into account, both in the formulation and adoption of policies. In the event that the ICANN Board determines to take an action that is not consistent with the Governmental Advisory Committee advice, it shall so inform the Committee and state the reasons why it decided not to follow that advice. The Governmental Advisory Committee and the ICANN Board will then try, in good faith and in a timely and efficient manner, to find a mutually acceptable solution.*