Dear all, on the basis of the inputs we received from some of our members until the narrow deadline of last weekend, Olivier compiled an excellent statement on behalf of EURALO -- what will be reflected in the ALAC statement now. Below please find the text of the EURALO input. Best, Wolf __________ Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond wrote Mon, 10 Jan 2011 02:33:
EURALO Comments (drafted from input by a several EURALO ALSes)
On the Process
This year has seen a new calendar for the development, presentation and feedback process of the ICANN Strategic Plan. With the introduction of IDNs, ICANN has truly demonstrated its efforts towards local communities. At Large also needs to reflect sensitivity towards its local communities, especially since it draws among the capabilities and capacity of a volunteer base. The new published planning phase diagram shows comment periods in November 2010, February 2011 and May 2011. Nonetheless, the current Draft ICANN Strategic Plan was published at the end of November, opening a comment period spanning the month of December 2010 and the early part of January 2011. The enabling environment required to obtain quality input from communities worldwide must be times in regards when a volunteer community can be mobilised. Thanks to busy religious and festive calendars giving rise to holiday periods for a significant percentage of the world's population, the months of December, January, July and August are not such times. On the other hand, Spring is good; Autumn is good. The calendar for comments as important as those towards the ICANN Strategic Plan would therefore need to be studied further and amended appropriately in order to have full community feedback.
On the Contents of the Draft Strategic Plan 2011-2014
EURALO fully support the initiatives described in the ICANN Strategic Plan for 2011-2014. It is the view of several ALSes that the document contains a good deal of stable material which has improved year on year, and this year's version continues in the same direction. This is appreciated by ALSes.
Rather than commenting on all four Strategic Focus Areas, EURALO has this year focussed on the "Healthy Internet Ecosystem".
Of prime importance in this section, is the issue of accountability and transparency, including public participation. Whilst this section is well furnished with key focus points, a vacuum exists through the lack of mention of the eventual role of At Large in public participation and accountability. This has not been raised either in the ATRT Report. At Large would welcome working with ICANN to define this together in time for it to be included in future Strategic Plans.
Empowerment of local communities is essential for capacity building. At Large, with its structure of Regional At Large Organisations (RALOs) and local ALSes plays a key role in this regional empowerment and this appears to have not been pinpointed in the current plan. Indeed, there is no mention of "outreach", nor "inreach" of communities; no plan on how to reach those communities.
A first step to outreach is the fellowship programme as well as the provision of on-line workshops and material to educate community leaders and participants about ICANN. This is a key brick in the building of stable international relationships and an efficient bottom-up decision process.
We therefore re-iterate At Large's plan of reaching out to communities worldwide so as to have One ALS per country. Currently At Large has 130 ALSes worldwide in more than 80 countries around the world. This unique resource needs to grow to cover every country in the world. That said, this unique resource also needs to be sustained. We are working hard to define better or more suitable ways of public participation and one of the tools used to keep ALSes, the grassroots of the whole ICANN eco-system, empowered, is the regular staging of Localised General Assemblies (GAs), as well as At Large Summits. General Assemblies are important for local capacity building. So far, they have been organised ad-hoc with little or no budget in conjunction with an ICANN meeting taking place in the region. Some RALOs have organised their GA with no budget whatsoever outside the realm of ICANN and physical participation has been low because volunteers already offering their time for free cannot be asked to pay costs except when taken care of by other means. The ICANN At Large Review specified the need for one local General Assembly per year per region and this should therefore be reflected in the ICANN Strategic plan as part of a healthy Internet eco-system.
The At Large Summit taking place in Mexico City in 2009 was widely acknowledged by all, to have been a key factor in the capacity building of At Large leading to the ability of the ALAC to produce quality output to the standard expected by the ICANN Board. Whilst it was a textbook demonstration of ALS empowerment, it also demonstrated how communities worldwide can focus their attention on key challenging subjects and find solutions together by consensus. This synergy needs to be repeated as part of At Large in-reach. Its purpose goes further than a merely social issue of having ALSes meet with each other and with ALAC leadership. Rather, this formidable force of hundreds of "Starfish" can unleash powerful strategic benefits if its key subject focus were aligned with ICANN's Strategic planning. We therefore recommend that an At Large Summit become institutionalised as part of ICANN's natural processes ideally every 3 years, with an interval no larger than 4 years to keep grass-roots interest high. The subjects on which the ALSes would work on would be a mix of ICANN-defined strategic subjects as well as grass-roots-defined issues, whether local or international. It is anticipated that the results from such regular Summits would more than adequately support the "One World. Internet" vision, competently build stakeholder diversity, considerably improve accountability and transparency, expand international engagement and build trust in ICANN's stewardship by thinking Locally whilst acting Globally.
EURALO / January 2011.
comunica-ch phone +41 79 204 83 87 Skype: Wolf-Ludwig www.comunica-ch.net Digitale Allmend http://blog.allmend.ch - EURALO - ICANN's Regional At-Large Organisation http://euralo.org