A mysterious item has appeared on the Board meeting page in the agenda for the 6 March 2009 Board meeting in Mexico City: "Approval of Ombudsman". I suspect this means that ICANN has finally noticed from my recent comments on the abolition of the Reconsideration Committee that they have never appointed an Ombudsman, and have thus been in violation of their Bylaws. I don't know why they have finally noticed or decided to act: http://forum.icann.org/lists/recon-bylaws-revision/msg00001.html There is no formal proposal yet posted for the appointment of an Ombudsman. In any event, the (illegal) "incumbent" is clearly disqualified: http://hasbrouck.org/blog/archives/001196.html It's apparently now time for the community, or would-be candidates themselves, to put forward nominations for the position of ICANN Ombudsman -- if you can figure out the correct point of contact for such nominations. It would seem that the choice of Ombudsman would be especially important to individual Internet users, and thus to ALS's and ALAC. I pointed out the failure to have a properly appointed Ombudsman in 2007: http://gnso.icann.org/mailing-lists/archives/ga/msg06893.html I have more comments on this at ICANNwatch: http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/24/0023205 ---------------- Edward Hasbrouck <edward@hasbrouck.org> <http://hasbrouck.org> +1-415-824-0214