I have sent the following comment for the ALAC Review TOR, now on the ICANN web, but with PDF, so here is inline text version. best, izumi ---------- Comment on Proposed ToR for ALAC Review April 29, 2007 Izumi Aizu, An ALAC Member from Asia/Australia/Pacific region I think the proposed ToR is generally well structured and covers most of the important elements for the comprehensive review of AtLarge structure of ICANN. Thank you very much for the excellent preparatory work for this very important matter at ICANN. However, I think there are several points which need additional questions and analysis as follows. On PART I I assume that the external review should cover the entire relevance of the subject body, thus the TOR should be more explicit to address the appropriateness of the current overall ALAC framework as a whole. The Question 15 covers some aspect of organizational positioning of ALAC, in the context of Civil Society participation at ICANN. However, it suggests only one specific option but not others in an explicit manner. I think there are several ways worth to consider for making ICANN as a more effective multi-stakeholder organization. Therefore, I propose to add more specific options to be questions/analyzed such as: a) Should we give Board seats to the representatives of AtLarge? b) Should we form a new Supporting Organization, such as User SO? or c) Should we make AtLarge as one of the constituencies in the (reformed) GNSO, but separate from Non Commercial Users? PART II Structure On Question 15, as Vittorio already pointed out, it is rather misleading. I like to suggest the following alternative: What have been the significant factors that affected the RALO formation process? Are there distinct and different factors for each region which affected the RALO formation process, or are they faced with similar challenges? Another point to be added is the relationship of ALAC with other parts of ICANN. I propose the following questions to be added: How does ALAC interact with other constituencies of ICANN? Are they effective in achieving the ALAC's goal of providing advices from individual Internet users? Are there regular channel of communication in addition to the Liaisons to the Board, GNSO and CCNSO? Are there any Composition The TOR does not ask the question of the appropriateness of the current methodology of ALAC member selection or election process explicitly, that is ten members selected by RALO (Board for the interim period), and five by NomCom. I like to propose to add the following questions: Is the current ALAC member selection methodology appropriate, or is there any need to change that, ie public election should be used for all 15 members? Is the number of member, 15, appropriate, or too small or too large? and Assuming that the NomCom selection will continue, is the current balance of selecting ALAC members, five by NomCom and ten by RALO the best way to achieve ALAC's goal, or are there any other ways worth to consider and implement?" Internal Procedures Volunteer nature and Staff Support Given the nature of ALAC to represent individual users, unlike some constituencies of ICANN, ALAC members are mostly pure volunteers that means that their day-to-day work/business do not have direct involvement with Internet's core resource management such as Domain Name registration business or IP address allocation. This had significant impact on the way and effectiveness of ALAC work. The workloads of ALAC members have been quite high, yet it was often difficult to cope with the expected level work. That naturally requires good amount of support from the staff. Question 35 On ICANN support is rather too simple. More specific and detailed analysis of support from ICANN to ALAC, in terms of financial, institutional and staff support should are needed. I propose to add the following question: What kind of additional measures are needed in terms of financial, institutional and staff support in addition to the exiting ones if any? Outreach First, "Outreach" sounds like an one-way activity from ICANN to outside world (in my non-native English), but the important part is "Communication" between Internet users and ICANN through ALS/RALO/ALAC structure and functions in a two way manner. In this regard, languages play important role. The working language of ICANN has been English, but several regions have other language as significantly important common Linga Franca, ie French in some parts of Africa, Arabic for the Middle East and Spanish for Latin America and Caribbean region. Thus several RALOs need to use these languages in addition to English. Here, I propose the following question to be added: How are the linguistically and culturally diverse regional situations reflected in the operation of ALAC and ICANN? Are there any areas that require changes or improvements such as add some non-English language to be used by ICANN/ALAC? END --------------------- Note: The above comment is entirely personal and does not reflect any position of the organizations I am affiliated with.