Roberto,
Thanks for catching my inaccuracy. I did not mean at all that ICANN was making the policy, but that it is rather the Board, not IANA, who has to approve the policy done by the RIRs. I thought, though, that the later sentence was explaining better (see below). I agree that the best way to influence the policy is to go where the policy is made (the RIRs) rather than where it undergoes formal approval (the Board). This is, IMHO, not very different than to say that to influence a GNSO PGP you go to the GNSO WGs.
Your later words did make things more clear. But I wanted to make it absolutely clear to the broader community just what ICANN's role really is. In many conversations I've had (not with ALAC per se, but in general) many people have rather naive views of how addressing policy works, and to what degree ICANN has the ability to influence it. The delegation of policy to the RIRs is similar in concept to what the GNSO does, except that the board approves GNSO recommendations. The ICANN board is completely uninvolved in RIR policy. The only time ICANN gets involved is with "global policies" as previously defined. The vast majority of PDPs that take place at the RIR level are not of this type. Indeed, even PDP within one RIR mostly stays completely within one RIR. For example, there is no notion of one RIR vetoing the results of a PDP in another region. In the 2.5 years I've been on the board, only 3 or 4 global policies have reached the board. Thomas