New Draft Text for ALAC Review WG Report

Nov. 4, 2008

      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.*

Izumi AIZU

Jacqueline A. Morris

Sébastien Bachollet

Carlton Samuels

Izumi AIZU

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