[Fwd: Travel Support for At-Large FY 2010]
Dear ALAC Members: Below please find a note prepared by the staff in order to help inform discussion in At-Large on how to allocate the travel funds available in this fiscal year. When the ALAC Executive Committee met at the end of the Sydney meeting, Steve and Kevin joined them and a discussion about travel was held; one of the take-aways was that the staff would look at the available pool of funds and see what options could be envisaged that stretched those funds as far as possible to (in particular) ensure that each RALO could hold a General Assembly each year. There will be a pair of teleconferences shortly with Kevin, Steve, the At-Large staff, and any of you and the wider At-Large community who wish to attend in order to discuss travel support for this coming fiscal year; as you will see in the below time is of the essence to come to a decision on who to fund, what for, and how. -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Travel Support for At-Large FY 2010 Date: Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:50:44 +0200 From: Nick Ashton-Hart <nick.ashton-hart@icann.org> To: Cheryl Langdon-Orr <cheryl@hovtek.com.au>, Sébastien Bachollet <sebastien.bachollet@isoc.fr>, Vanda Scartezini UOL <vanda@uol.com.br>, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>, Kevin Wilson <kevin.wilson@icann.org>, Steve Antonoff <steve.antonoff@icann.org>, Denise Michel <denise.michel@icann.org>, Robert Hoggarth <robert.hoggarth@icann.org> CC: At-Large Staff <staff@atlarge.icann.org> Dear Cheryl, Vanda, Alan, and Sebastien: In order to help inform ALAC's discussions about how travel support funds allocated to the At-Large community can be used to support both RALO General Assemblies and ICANN Meeting attendance, Steve, Kevin, Heidi and I have had a few conversations and Kevin and Steve have run the numbers against a couple of scenarios. As you know, currently ICANN’s budget and travel guidelines provide for 15 At-Large members and 10 RALO representatives (two from each RALO) for travel to each of the three ICANN meetings. This support includes air travel, hotel, and per diems. We offer two alternatives to the current arrangement in order to be able to fund a portion of the General Assemblies: Option 1: * Support 15 At-Large members and 5 RALO representatives (one from each RALO) for travel each ICANN meeting (to include the same air, hotel, per diem support as before). * Fund five General Assemblies annually (one for each RALO) under the following terms and conditions: o ICANN would support up to 40% of RALO members not to exceed a total of 10 members for each General Assembly as follows: o Site for the General Assembly decided in consultation with ICANN to ensure that the site chosen is economically viable within available resources, whilst facilitating participation by ALSes. o ICANN would pay for a meeting room at the hotel o ICANN would pay for “remote participation” set up as necessary o Round trip lowest cost economy air fare for supported travelers o Two nights hotel accommodations (to include tax but not incidentals) for supported travelers o Two days of per diem per supported traveler (per diem to be established based on approved location in the same method as per diems are established for ICANN meetings) Option 2: * Support 15 At-Large members and NO RALO members for travel to each ICANN meeting (to include the same air, hotel and per diem as before). * Fund five General Assemblies annually (one for each RALO) under the following terms and conditions: * ICANN would support up to 80% of the RALO members not to exceed a total of 20 members for each General Assembly as follows: o Site for the General Assembly decided in consultation with ICANN to ensure that the site chosen is economically viable within available resources, whilst facilitating participation by ALSes. o ICANN would pay for a meeting room at the hotel o ICANN would pay for “remote participation” set up as necessary o Round trip lowest cost economy air fare for supported travelers o Two nights hotel accommodations (to include tax but not incidentals) for supported travelers o Two days of per diem per supported traveler (per diem to be established based on approved location in the same method as per diems are established for ICANN meetings) It is our understanding that the RALO’s may look to coordinate their General Assemblies with other meetings in their regions to maximize participation and lower costs – while this is perfectly acceptable to ICANN, it would not be required. It is of course possible to think of other options, however, with the Seoul meeting upcoming ICANN needs to have the list of approved travellers imminently, and the choices made about the above necessarily impact that list. At the same time, arranging regional GAs requires advance notice from the time at which a city and date is chosen. For these reasons, we recommend that you choose one of the above options. Some additional points to consider: * Some regions are larger than others, and this impacts on the number of travellers but also the amount of advance preparation time required to arrange meetings. We would suggest therefore that the larger RALOs organise their GAs for later in the fiscal year. * We propose that the Staff work with the Secretariats of the RALOs, and the ALAC Finance Subcommittee, to help establish the list of GA locations and prospective dates ASAP in order to ensure we can allocate meeting organisation resources. We believe that we would need considerable advance notice (8 weeks or more) in order to organise a GA, from the point at which a city and date is decided upon. * To help facilitate this process, ICANN is working on a draft form which would be used for proposing the date, city and country, and other elements of a GA; we will forward this in due course and in the meantime work informally. * The question has been asked about incoming NomCom appointees to ALAC, and whether or not these would be funded to attend the Seoul meeting from the At-Large travel support 'bucket'. The answer is that this is funded separately, and the new appointees will be able to attend the Seoul meeting. * We understand that the terms of five members of ALAC (from those directly elected) expire at the close of the Seoul meeting. The funding for the new appointees to come to Seoul would have to come from At-Large travel funds. If the community chooses to support travel for additional Seoul attendees for those newly-elected members of ALAC whose terms begin at the close of the Seoul meeting as well as those members whose term expires at the close of Seoul, that would negatively impact the proposal above, and we would have to reduce the level of support for regional GAs downwards, probably quite considerably. Please review and of course feel free to discuss all this in the broader At-Large community as you see fit, and let us know as quickly as possible what conclusions you come to. Of course, if there are any questions, let us know and we'll be happy to try and answer them. -- -- Regards, Nick Ashton-Hart Director for At-Large Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Tel: +33 (450) 42 81 83 USA Tel: +1 (310) 301-8637 Fax: : +41 (22) 594-85-44 Mobile: (Switzerland): +41 79 595 5468 email: nick.ashton-hart@icann.org Win IM: ashtonhart@hotmail.com / AIM/iSight: nashtonhart@mac.com / Skype: nashtonhart Online Bio: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashtonhart
At-Large Staff wrote:
Below please find a note prepared by the staff in order to help inform discussion in At-Large on how to allocate the travel funds available in this fiscal year. I have a few comments.
First, I am somewhat distressed by the two options presented, because both come at the expense of some or all RALO participation at ICANN meetings. This puts me, as a RALO chair, in the position of trading off my own participation for those of the ALSs and that is not a very fair choice for me to make.
When the ALAC Executive Committee met at the end of the Sydney meeting, Steve and Kevin joined them and a discussion about travel was held; one of the take-aways was that the staff would look at the available pool of funds and see what options could be envisaged that stretched those funds as far as possible to (in particular) ensure that each RALO could hold a General Assembly each year.
Again, we have the executive committee participating in activities for which it was never intended -- doubly so in this instance because the discussions were MAINLY concerned with internal RALO allocations that indeed did not affect ALAC travel subsidy at all. Has RALO leadership known about such a meeting with those consequences, maybe we would have been asked to attend -- especially since it is within the RALOs themselves that all the tradeoffs are being asked to take place. One more reason to disband the executive committee -- it continues to be oblivious regarding the bounds of its mandate, in this case even more outrageously so than usual. I'm eqully annoyed that staff allowed and encouraged this to happen without the ability of RALO leadership to be involved in tradeoffs that pit them against their own ALSs. In any event, I would like to suggest a third-category option -- one in which GAs are held every two years, staggered so that half the At-Large GA expense occurs each year. Since there are five RALOs, stagger them (for instance) so that the two most-expensive regions have GAs on odd-numbered years and the other three take place in even numbered years. Or use some other formula that tries to balance the expense -- I hope you get the idea. Perhaps this can still allow RALO leaders to fully participate in ICANN meetings while still allowing GAs to happen. - Evan
Evan, you seem to have a rather large misunderstanding about what transpired at this meeting. What was presented in the note from staff was not the result of some clandestine negotiations between ICANN executives and the Executive Committee. What is being presented here is a fait accomplis. It was stated earlier in the ICANN week by Kevin Wilson. At our meeting on Friday afternoon, one of my purposes (I can't speak for Vanda and Cheryl) was to make sure that I had not mis-understood what they had said in the public meeting, since I was so incredulous. We (the ALAC) had, I thought, VERY clearly stated that we wanted and needed RALO leadership at the ICANN meetings *AND* we felt that for many reasons, we needed regional gatherings as well. And we reiterated this previously stated position. Period. The meeting was not held to decide on the fate of RALOs or their budgets. I was a wrap-up to make sure that the results of the weeks's meetings were followed up on and that there were no omissions in the various "to be done" lists. We asked Kevin and Steve to join us to make sure we understood the current travel situation and tried to cover things to improve the Seoul meeting. When it became obvious that I and others had not misunderstood, Cheryl asked that staff document the options open to us at this time and the result of that is the document that you are commenting on. I have said in public (probably to you as well as others) that if this is indeed the situation for this budget year, perhaps it is too late to change it, but we still need to try to fix it in future years. I spend quite a while on Saturday morning talking to Kevin about the budget analysis I did last fall, to try to make sure that he understood that this year's At-Large budget is not a continuation of the status-quo, but a cut. (For the record, I did this as the person who had spent the most time on travel budget issues over the last two years, and not as a ExCom member - my discussions predated my taking on that role.) He said he would go home and root around to understand what happened. I plan to talk to him this week to find out if I was successful. Alan At 30/07/2009 03:10 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
When the ALAC Executive Committee met at the end of the Sydney meeting, Steve and Kevin joined them and a discussion about travel was held; one of the take-aways was that the staff would look at the available pool of funds and see what options could be envisaged that stretched those funds as far as possible to (in particular) ensure that each RALO could hold a General Assembly each year.
Again, we have the executive committee participating in activities for which it was never intended -- doubly so in this instance because the discussions were MAINLY concerned with internal RALO allocations that indeed did not affect ALAC travel subsidy at all. Has RALO leadership known about such a meeting with those consequences, maybe we would have been asked to attend -- especially since it is within the RALOs themselves that all the tradeoffs are being asked to take place.
One more reason to disband the executive committee -- it continues to be oblivious regarding the bounds of its mandate, in this case even more outrageously so than usual. I'm eqully annoyed that staff allowed and encouraged this to happen without the ability of RALO leadership to be involved in tradeoffs that pit them against their own ALSs.
Alan Greenberg wrote:
The meeting was not held to decide on the fate of RALOs or their budgets. I was a wrap-up to make sure that the results of the weeks's meetings were followed up on and that there were no omissions in the various "to be done" lists. We asked Kevin and Steve to join us to make sure we understood the current travel situation and tried to cover things to improve the Seoul meeting.
I have said in public (probably to you as well as others) that if this is indeed the situation for this budget year, perhaps it is too late to change it, but we still need to try to fix it in future years. I spend quite a while on Saturday morning talking to Kevin about the budget analysis I did last fall, to try to make sure that he understood that this year's At-Large budget is not a continuation of the status-quo, but a cut. (For the record, I did this as the person who had spent the most time on travel budget issues over the last two years, and not as a ExCom member - my discussions predated my taking on that role.) He said he would go home and root around to understand what happened. I plan to talk to him this week to find out if I was successful.
Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation -- though I still think it would have helped had there been a wider audience for that session. What do you think about my idea for biennial general assemblies as a way to meet the ICANN budget folks half-way? - Evan
At 30/07/2009 03:55 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Alan Greenberg wrote:
The meeting was not held to decide on the fate of RALOs or their budgets. I was a wrap-up to make sure that the results of the weeks's meetings were followed up on and that there were no omissions in the various "to be done" lists. We asked Kevin and Steve to join us to make sure we understood the current travel situation and tried to cover things to improve the Seoul meeting.
I have said in public (probably to you as well as others) that if this is indeed the situation for this budget year, perhaps it is too late to change it, but we still need to try to fix it in future years. I spend quite a while on Saturday morning talking to Kevin about the budget analysis I did last fall, to try to make sure that he understood that this year's At-Large budget is not a continuation of the status-quo, but a cut. (For the record, I did this as the person who had spent the most time on travel budget issues over the last two years, and not as a ExCom member - my discussions predated my taking on that role.) He said he would go home and root around to understand what happened. I plan to talk to him this week to find out if I was successful.
Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation -- though I still think it would have helped had there been a wider audience for that session.
I don't think there was any intention or action to keep the meeting secret, but do understand that meetings like this have a life of their own and there was not a scripted agenda other than we needed to flesh out the carry-forward items and that Kevin/Steve would drop by sometime. I suspect that if anyone else had shown the slightest interest in attending a meeting starting at about 3 pm on Friday, they would not have been kicked out (but that is just my position).
What do you think about my idea for biennial general assemblies as a way to meet the ICANN budget folks half-way?
I need to read your note over carefully, now that I have released my angst, but it is probably a reasonable position to take IF we can't get the whole pie (and I have not yet given up).
- Evan
Alan is correct - we need to keep trying for the "whole pie" However, I do support Evan's suggestion of staggered GAs. We certainly don't want to lose the option of having both the RALO presidents and secretariats at the ICANN meetings. Although there are exceptions, In any fiscal year there are usually two RALOs where there is no ICANN meeting in their geographic region. Perhaps those regions should be where the GAs are held. I know you can't reflect this in a budget, but I wonder what the chances are of an ICANN meeting where everyone who is eligible is able to attend? Gareth On 30-Jul-09, at 1:16 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
At 30/07/2009 03:55 PM, Evan Leibovitch wrote:
Alan Greenberg wrote:
The meeting was not held to decide on the fate of RALOs or their budgets. I was a wrap-up to make sure that the results of the weeks's meetings were followed up on and that there were no omissions in the various "to be done" lists. We asked Kevin and Steve to join us to make sure we understood the current travel situation and tried to cover things to improve the Seoul meeting.
I have said in public (probably to you as well as others) that if this is indeed the situation for this budget year, perhaps it is too late to change it, but we still need to try to fix it in future years. I spend quite a while on Saturday morning talking to Kevin about the budget analysis I did last fall, to try to make sure that he understood that this year's At-Large budget is not a continuation of the status-quo, but a cut. (For the record, I did this as the person who had spent the most time on travel budget issues over the last two years, and not as a ExCom member - my discussions predated my taking on that role.) He said he would go home and root around to understand what happened. I plan to talk to him this week to find out if I was successful.
Fair enough. Thanks for the explanation -- though I still think it would have helped had there been a wider audience for that session.
I don't think there was any intention or action to keep the meeting secret, but do understand that meetings like this have a life of their own and there was not a scripted agenda other than we needed to flesh out the carry-forward items and that Kevin/Steve would drop by sometime. I suspect that if anyone else had shown the slightest interest in attending a meeting starting at about 3 pm on Friday, they would not have been kicked out (but that is just my position).
What do you think about my idea for biennial general assemblies as a way to meet the ICANN budget folks half-way?
I need to read your note over carefully, now that I have released my angst, but it is probably a reasonable position to take IF we can't get the whole pie (and I have not yet given up).
- Evan
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participants (4)
-
Alan Greenberg -
At-Large Staff -
Evan Leibovitch -
Gareth Shearman