Dear Community: As discussed by the ALAC and regional leaders in Sydney, work is progressing on setting up policies to ensure active participation of ALAC members as well as greater clarity regarding the time and other obligations of members, as well as of liaisons from ALAC to other parts of ICANN. This effort is intended to help those who are interested in being candidates for these positions understand what is required, whether as elected members from RALOs or as appointees to the ALAC from the Nominating Committee; it also forms the foundation of how to evaluate the performance of those serving in these positions. There were two decisions that came out of the Sydney meeting: 1. At-Large needs a comprehensive Position Description for these positions before a policy on how to enforce it can be drawn up. 2. ALAC should continue work on this as a committee-of-the-whole (that is, the entire ALAC). At the request of the Chair, ICANN staff were asked to draft an initial Position Description ("PD"). It was reviewed at the ExCom meeting of 28 July 2009, (following some significant discussion on various lists). Three changes were made: 1. A change was made to ensure that the PD was aligned with the recommendations of the ALAC Review Report as accepted by the ICANN Board. 2. A section on recommendation to the Nominating Committee was removed. 3. Sections were numbered to make it easier to comment on particular parts. The revised PD can be found at https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi/index.cgi?draft_alac_pd. The PD has been open for ALAC comments for two weeks. Those made to date may be seen on the page above. We've been asked to ask the community for comments at this time. Please review this document and add comments at the bottom. This is easily done by clicking the 'Comment' button at the top of the page. To make sure that everyone is commenting on the same document, PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE THE PD ITSELF, even if you have editing rights. If you agree with someone else's comments, do feel free to say so. If you disagree with any of the original text or someone else's comments, you are also invited to note your disagreement.. Please note that this document is the Draft Position Description, not the policy on how it will be enforced, as that is being drafted as a separate process. We will be providing a translation of the draft PD shortly. This will be announced as soon as it is available. -- Regards, *ICANN At-Large Staff* Nick Ashton-Hart, Heidi Ullrich, Matthias Langenegger, Gisella Gruber-White staff@atlarge.icann.org