Dear Sir At our last General Assembly (GA) at the beginning of March 09 in Mexico-City we had a briefing on the Draft Operational Plan and Budget and a discussion among our member ALSes. On behalf of EURALO, I would like to submit the following Statement which was handed over to the ALAC Board liaison earlier already but unfortunately not directed to you. Best regards, Wolf Ludwig Chair of EURALO ==== The European Regional At-Large Organization is astonished by the reading of the "Proposed Framework for FY10 Operating Plan and Budget". We note with perplexity that neither the At-Large constituency nor the ALAC is ever mentioned once in the entire body of the document; even in the nine pages of Appendix A, which lists ICANN's operating plan items up to the details of "Coordinate and manage Board website hosting" and "Facilitate payment of Director expenses", the ALAC and the At-Large appear only four times, of which three are actions aimed at "improving their performance" (whatever that means) among that of other bodies. For example, of the 16 action items that constitute section 7 "Constituency support", ten regard support for registries and registrars; two regard the GNSO; one regards the GAC; the remaining three are generic points that include all SOs and ACs. Apparently, no specific effort is planned by ICANN to support the At Large or user constituencies. Moreover, section 9 "Global engagement and increased international participation" describes a huge work programme that only focuses on involving more registries, more registrars and more governments throughout the world; several detailed action items are designed to involve new governments in the GAC. It is unbelievable that no mention is made of the need to increase the participation of the public, either through the At Large or through public participation channels in general. From this plan, it looks like ICANN's operating plan is to promote a business fair or trade cartel for registries and registrars, while pleading with governments not to disrupt the plan, and while ignoring anyone else. We think that global engagement and international participation are a vital part of ICANN's credibility and legitimacy, but definitely not in the sense that ICANN implies with this document. Thus we urge the ICANN Board to check out the corporation's priorities and ensure that appropriate attention, means and budget are allocated to promoting and supporting participation by the global public. ==== comunica-ch phone +41 79 204 83 87 Skype: Wolf-Ludwig www.comunica-ch.net Digitale Allemd http://blog.allmend.ch - EURALO https://st.icann.org/euralo/index.cgi?euralo_icann_at_large_europe