All,
 
thank you all for the friendly and very productive meeting in LA. It was sad to loose our old ALAC members: to all of you many thanks. It was great to get know all new ALAC members and I hope, this was an encouraging start for all of you.
 
I think it was very positive, that in our last meeting on thursday we agreed on abolishing the secretariat-list and have a joint ALAC and Secretariat list. As well, that we decided, that if chairs/secretariats of the RALOs take part in ICANN meeting, we will always have joint ALAC-Secretariats meetings.
 
I would like to thank Dough Brent and Denise Michel for joining us on our thursday meeting. It is very helpful, that we now have a general procedure in place for planning our project/budget planning:
 
- Chair sends out to all regional lists a request for planning their regional projects and handing in budget applications for the planning of the current fiscal year 2007/2008 as well as 2008/2009. Applications have to include a clear definition of the projects, its missions and what should be accomplished.

Budget Committee puts proposals together. ALAC (in coop with RALO nominees), based on the proposals of its Budget Sub-Committee, plans a prioritised proposed budget / funds requirement forecast, for a given period, based upon RALOs and ALAC members input.

2. ICANN/the ICANN community decides on funds availability and proposes a match of funds (modified, full or partial) to each prioritised proposal (and if certain project proposals are not accepted as being either of merit OR able to be funded, ICANN gets in touch with ALAC before denial and explains its reservations, so that the Sub Committee can act to find a consensus for the budget plan).

3. We care about transparency: at least ALAC and RALO nominees should always have access to an online forum where all the budget expanses - planned and already realized. Budget Committee receives every single extra request (workshops etc. of RALOs and ALAC as well as individual demands of ALAC and RALO members (such as travel costs to meetings other than ICANN meetings) for reason of transparency and to give recommendation to staff (larger projects in consultation with ALAC).

 

Dough informed us, that next year the operating plan and budget plan will be set up at the same time (february?) and will then be discussed by the community.

Though the fiscal year begins july first, ALAC has to hand in its planning (based on inputs by the At-Large, RALOs and the ALAC itself) beginning January next year. And immediately to come up with the planning for the current fiscal year.

For an event as big as an users summit in Paris next year, we were told that we would have to come up with especially convincing arguments. As always: the amount of money needed has to be weighed with the importance and possible impact of the respective project. 

 

As we have one place free on the budget committee (former member was Jaqueline), I would like to nominate Vanda for our budget committee, who already showed a lot of interest in the budget planning and told me that she would accept the nomination.

 

There is a lot to do, we will work on it together.

I hope everyone has a safe trip home.

All the best to all of you

Annette