Hi Folks, Evan asked us to send Paris meeting retrospectives, so here's mine (to NA and ALAC): The Paris meeting was officially scheduled Mon-Thurs, with GNSO Council meetings beginning Saturday and Board workshop Sunday. This was a day shorter than previous meetings, and I found the truncation materially cut into the time to meet for hallway conversation and move among constituencies, which is, to my mind, the most valuable part of the face-to-face In addition, I was in board meetings for much of the time and so unable to attend much of the ALAC meeting. Topic areas: new gTLDs, including IDN Fast Track GNSO reform ALAC review Summit/travel policy The meeting saw important, but over-hyped progress on new gTLDs. The Board approved the GNSO's complex procedure, complete with the grounds for objection on "morality" and "lack of community support" grounds to which ALAC has voiced its objection. I thank NA members, among others, for their work in drafting a statement I could reference in my comments about the flaws in this policy. Whatever happens, this will hardly be "the greatest expansion of the Internet in 40 years," as an early version of the ICANN PR crowed. There is also movement on the IDN-CC fast-track. The Board held off voting on the GNSO restructuring, giving constituencies and liaised groups a 30-day deadline to reach consensus on alternatives. I hope we'll get reports from Alan on the status of these discussions The consultants gave their report on the ALAC Review. Many of us disagreed with their fact-gathering, analysis, and conclusions! I hope we'll put those into constructive suggestions to the Board ALAC Review Working Group. The Board resolved to support the ALAC summit, remarking at the same time that ALAC's overall funding levels were being reviewed in the new travel policy. If we have comments on travel policy and funding, we need to make those heard. Thanks, and comments welcome! --Wendy -- Wendy Seltzer -- wendy@seltzer.org Visiting Professor, American University Washington College of Law Fellow, Berkman Center for Internet & Society http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/seltzer.html http://www.chillingeffects.org/ https://www.torproject.org/
Hi, Do you know if ICANN or ALAC keep statistics on funding travels, including number of ALAC participants per meeting. How many ALAC were in Paris, and how many with travel/accomodation support (and the same in former places)? Distribution of attendees and distribution of cost? Stats over time? How many attendees are expected to attend the summit with ICANN support? How many new faces? Kind regards, Elisabeth Porteneuve -- ----- Original Message ----- From: "Wendy Seltzer" <wendy@seltzer.com> To: "NA Discuss" <na-discuss@atlarge-lists.icann.org>; "At-Large writ small" <alac@atlarge-lists.icann.org> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2008 8:28 PM Subject: [At-Large] Post-Paris Review ...
The Board resolved to support the ALAC summit, remarking at the same time that ALAC's overall funding levels were being reviewed in the new travel policy. If we have comments on travel policy and funding, we need to make those heard.
Thanks, and comments welcome! --Wendy
Elisabeth Porteneuve ha scritto:
Hi,
Do you know if ICANN or ALAC keep statistics on funding travels, including number of ALAC participants per meeting. How many ALAC were in Paris, and how many with travel/accomodation support (and the same in former places)? Distribution of attendees and distribution of cost? Stats over time? How many attendees are expected to attend the summit with ICANN support? How many new faces?
In fact, it's never been possible to get public information on travel funding by ICANN to any kind of ICANN-funded attendees. Perhaps the Board could consider passing a motion to publish the names of funded people and the amount of funding for each of them, and release this information through the website - after all, it's a form of funding for the public good, and I find it fair that it is transparently reported to the community. -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Perhaps the Board could consider passing a motion to publish the names of funded people and the amount of funding for each of them, and release this information through the website
This is a great idea. It would also be useful to know which organization they are affiliated with (i.e. ALAC, NomComm, GNSO, etc.) in order to better understand which parts of ICANN are "spending" and which are benefiting from travel support.
Ross and all, A good idea yes. A political football, also yes. Ross Rader wrote:
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Perhaps the Board could consider passing a motion to publish the names of funded people and the amount of funding for each of them, and release this information through the website
This is a great idea. It would also be useful to know which organization they are affiliated with (i.e. ALAC, NomComm, GNSO, etc.) in order to better understand which parts of ICANN are "spending" and which are benefiting from travel support.
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827
This is a great idea. It would also be useful to know which organization they are affiliated with (i.e. ALAC, NomComm, GNSO, etc.) in order to better understand which parts of ICANN are "spending" and which are benefiting from travel support.
I entirely agree that would be useful. The process of negotiating travel costs while I was on the ALAC was a chronic pain, and I got the impression that part of the problem was that there were rules that while unwritten were known to the staff about who qualified for what level of support. It's perfectly reasonable to give some people more support than others, e.g., a board member from Africa is likely to need more support than a random committee member from Europe, but it'd be nice if they were up front about it. R's, John
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Elisabeth Porteneuve ha scritto:
Do you know if ICANN or ALAC keep statistics on funding travels, including number of ALAC participants per meeting. How many ALAC were in Paris, and how many with travel/accomodation support (and the same in former places)? In fact, it's never been possible to get public information on travel funding by ICANN to any kind of ICANN-funded attendees. It is true that ICANN makes the information difficult to attain -- indeed, any request for details on how much money is allocated to At-Large generally results in evasion and obfuscation. However, it should not be difficult for ALAC itself (and/or ALAC support staff) to provide a "roll call" of who attended, from the registration information. This is helpful, not only for funding reasons, but also to help At-Large be aware of who exactly is representing their interests at each meeting.
(It is also interesting to match the list of registrations against meeting attendance...) There should be no reason to hide the basic attendance information. Indeed, info on those who pre-registered is already online (http://par.icann.org/attendees/). For costs, I would personally prefer aggregate amounts -- "ALAC sent the following people and it cost a total of $Y in travel expense". For much the same reason that ICANN does not break out staff salaries from its public budgets, I do not think it is helpful for the to world have access to dissect which individuals' flights cost the most. - Evan
In general, I agree with Vittorio's suggestion. In detail, however, there can be some "cultural" and maybe "organizational" problems in the diverse world of five regions/continents and many cultures where AtLarge members are based. Some cultures are not accustomed to be exposed in financial details on individual basis. If ICANN community wants to know how much ALAC is spending, then aggregation should be sufficient. But if we/they want to know who received how much exactly, then there is a danger, or concern, that these figures might be used as a measure to evaluate the performance of each. I am not saying this will happen in definitive way, but I think there is a room for speculation and that is not that much helpful for us to work together. # I can self-declare how much fund I received so far from ICANN, but it may take 5 hours or more to do that for all of my travels to ICANN meeting to date ;-) izumi 2008/7/16 Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org>:
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Elisabeth Porteneuve ha scritto:
Do you know if ICANN or ALAC keep statistics on funding travels, including number of ALAC participants per meeting. How many ALAC were in Paris, and how many with travel/accomodation support (and the same in former places)? In fact, it's never been possible to get public information on travel funding by ICANN to any kind of ICANN-funded attendees. It is true that ICANN makes the information difficult to attain -- indeed, any request for details on how much money is allocated to At-Large generally results in evasion and obfuscation. However, it should not be difficult for ALAC itself (and/or ALAC support staff) to provide a "roll call" of who attended, from the registration information. This is helpful, not only for funding reasons, but also to help At-Large be aware of who exactly is representing their interests at each meeting.
(It is also interesting to match the list of registrations against meeting attendance...)
There should be no reason to hide the basic attendance information. Indeed, info on those who pre-registered is already online (http://par.icann.org/attendees/).
For costs, I would personally prefer aggregate amounts -- "ALAC sent the following people and it cost a total of $Y in travel expense". For much the same reason that ICANN does not break out staff salaries from its public budgets, I do not think it is helpful for the to world have access to dissect which individuals' flights cost the most.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
--
Izumi Aizu <<
Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita Kumon Center, Tama University, Tokyo Japan * * * * * << Writing the Future of the History >> www.anr.org
Izumi and all, Indeed and agreed! But didn't I already make this point? I believe so. In any event transparency and accountability should take precedent, don't you think? Different regions "Cultural" or "Organizational" differences should be far down the list of concerns or considerations in comparison with transparency and accountability. Frankly I don't believe ICANN should be using it's largess for travel expenses for anyone other than direct ICANN employees if it is indeed a California 501 (c3) corporation. Either this, or it should provide travel expenses for any and all whom cannot otherwise afford travel to ICANN meetings and/or "Retreats". I fully recognize that the ALAC has been unable to provide it's own funding model, or unwilling to do so. But that is not a good excuse for asking ICANN for those funds needed for traveling to various ICANN events/meetings/retreats. Izumi AIZU wrote:
In general, I agree with Vittorio's suggestion. In detail, however, there can be some "cultural" and maybe "organizational" problems in the diverse world of five regions/continents and many cultures where AtLarge members are based.
Some cultures are not accustomed to be exposed in financial details on individual basis. If ICANN community wants to know how much ALAC is spending, then aggregation should be sufficient.
But if we/they want to know who received how much exactly, then there is a danger, or concern, that these figures might be used as a measure to evaluate the performance of each. I am not saying this will happen in definitive way, but I think there is a room for speculation and that is not that much helpful for us to work together.
# I can self-declare how much fund I received so far from ICANN, but it may take 5 hours or more to do that for all of my travels to ICANN meeting to date ;-)
izumi
2008/7/16 Evan Leibovitch <evan@telly.org>:
Vittorio Bertola wrote:
Elisabeth Porteneuve ha scritto:
Do you know if ICANN or ALAC keep statistics on funding travels, including number of ALAC participants per meeting. How many ALAC were in Paris, and how many with travel/accomodation support (and the same in former places)? In fact, it's never been possible to get public information on travel funding by ICANN to any kind of ICANN-funded attendees. It is true that ICANN makes the information difficult to attain -- indeed, any request for details on how much money is allocated to At-Large generally results in evasion and obfuscation. However, it should not be difficult for ALAC itself (and/or ALAC support staff) to provide a "roll call" of who attended, from the registration information. This is helpful, not only for funding reasons, but also to help At-Large be aware of who exactly is representing their interests at each meeting.
(It is also interesting to match the list of registrations against meeting attendance...)
There should be no reason to hide the basic attendance information. Indeed, info on those who pre-registered is already online (http://par.icann.org/attendees/).
For costs, I would personally prefer aggregate amounts -- "ALAC sent the following people and it cost a total of $Y in travel expense". For much the same reason that ICANN does not break out staff salaries from its public budgets, I do not think it is helpful for the to world have access to dissect which individuals' flights cost the most.
- Evan
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
--
Izumi Aizu <<
Institute for HyperNetwork Society, Oita Kumon Center, Tama University, Tokyo Japan * * * * * << Writing the Future of the History >> www.anr.org
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827
Izumi AIZU wrote:
Some cultures are not accustomed to be exposed in financial details on individual basis. If ICANN community wants to know how much ALAC is spending, then aggregation should be sufficient.
I think it is more important to know who is receiving funding than how much. In general, I think it is appropriate that if any individual accepts funding that they also accept the strings attached to it - i.e. that details regarding the funding will be made public. Anyone uncomfortable with that can choose not to accept the funding. Keep in mind that I'm not worried about the use of travel funds to support ALAC members. I'm much more concerned about the use of travel funds by professional lobbyists and lawyers and consultants looking for clients - as has become so popular within the GNSO. I raise this as an issue here because it is a terrible use of registration funds. /r
Ross and all, I agree! And glad to read you Ross, saying so. I am sure than that you will not be needing or requesting any travel funds EVER, right? Ross Rader wrote:
Izumi AIZU wrote:
Some cultures are not accustomed to be exposed in financial details on individual basis. If ICANN community wants to know how much ALAC is spending, then aggregation should be sufficient.
I think it is more important to know who is receiving funding than how much. In general, I think it is appropriate that if any individual accepts funding that they also accept the strings attached to it - i.e. that details regarding the funding will be made public. Anyone uncomfortable with that can choose not to accept the funding.
Keep in mind that I'm not worried about the use of travel funds to support ALAC members. I'm much more concerned about the use of travel funds by professional lobbyists and lawyers and consultants looking for clients - as has become so popular within the GNSO. I raise this as an issue here because it is a terrible use of registration funds.
/r
_______________________________________________ ALAC mailing list ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/alac_atlarge-lists.icann.org
At-Large Official Site: http://atlarge.icann.org
Regards, Spokesman for INEGroup LLA. - (Over 281k members/stakeholders strong!) "Obedience of the law is the greatest freedom" - Abraham Lincoln "Credit should go with the performance of duty and not with what is very often the accident of glory" - Theodore Roosevelt "If the probability be called P; the injury, L; and the burden, B; liability depends upon whether B is less than L multiplied by P: i.e., whether B is less than PL." United States v. Carroll Towing (159 F.2d 169 [2d Cir. 1947] =============================================================== Updated 1/26/04 CSO/DIR. Internet Network Eng. SR. Eng. Network data security IDNS. div. of Information Network Eng. INEG. INC. ABA member in good standing member ID 01257402 E-Mail jwkckid1@ix.netcom.com My Phone: 214-244-4827
Ross Rader wrote:
I think it is more important to know who is receiving funding than how much. In general, I think it is appropriate that if any individual accepts funding that they also accept the strings attached to it - i.e. that details regarding the funding will be made public. Anyone uncomfortable with that can choose not to accept the funding. That's certainly fair.
Keep in mind that I'm not worried about the use of travel funds to support ALAC members. I'm much more concerned about the use of travel funds by professional lobbyists and lawyers and consultants looking for clients - as has become so popular within the GNSO. This is what bothers me about the unexplained push for "equity" in the new travel regime. ALAC and NCUC are amongst the only organized participants in ICANN that are neither governments nor financial interests. As such ALAC and NCUC members cannot themselves justify travel based on business expense. The same holds true of NomComm appointees, who are chosen to represent the "greater good" and as such also have neither the financial interest nor the cost justification for travelling to attend.
The apparent staff obsession to fund constituencies that don't need the subsidy, at the expense of those who do, is what I consider worrisome. Why do I say this is a staff drive? There's been absolutely no consultation with the affected parties in advance -- certainly nobody asked our RALO or my ALS, and we're directly impacted. Also, as our Board Liaison reported in the NARALO conference call, there was absolutely no Board debate on the last-minute change that removed the ALAC exemption from the new travel policy. The entire process smells of having been manipulated in a most un-transparent way. And if staff isn't manipulating this process, who is? Who else could? My personal suggestion at this time -- and one that was endorsed at the NARALO conference call -- was to consider making this horrible exclusion of public particpation part of a submission to the President's public consultations on Improving Institutional Confidence (part of the JPA process) http://www.icann.org/public_comment/#iic-consultation http://www.icann.org/en/jpa/iic/index.htm The modification of the travel policy, in such a way as to badly -- possibly critically -- reduce the public voice within ICANN while funding business interests, should certainly be of interest to the US DOC as well as ICANN's Board. So should the completely untransparent manner in which all of this came about. The effect of such actions to undermine public confidence can (and should) be easily understood and documented. Anyone interested in assisting with the task of drafting such a statement, before the first-draft deadline of the end of this month, is invited to contact me. - Evan
Evan Leibovitch wrote:
The apparent staff obsession to fund constituencies that don't need the subsidy, at the expense of those who do, is what I consider worrisome.
I don't see this as a staff push. My slightly uninvolved view is that this emanates mostly from the GNSO Council where constituency interests contend that their work is so important that they absolutely must have travel funding. Perhaps Alan could shed some better light on the issue, as I've not been directly involved in the Council for the better part of a year. /ross
Ross Rader wrote:
The apparent staff obsession to fund constituencies that don't need the subsidy, at the expense of those who do, is what I consider worrisome.
I don't see this as a staff push. My slightly uninvolved view is that this emanates mostly from the GNSO Council where constituency interests contend that their work is so important that they absolutely must have travel funding. My comment is based as much on the way it was done as the source of the push for it.
The GNSO did not itself have the ability to remove the ALAC exemption from the policy at the Board vote. - Evan
Ross Rader ha scritto:
Evan Leibovitch wrote:
The apparent staff obsession to fund constituencies that don't need the subsidy, at the expense of those who do, is what I consider worrisome.
I don't see this as a staff push. My slightly uninvolved view is that this emanates mostly from the GNSO Council where constituency interests contend that their work is so important that they absolutely must have travel funding. Perhaps Alan could shed some better light on the issue, as I've not been directly involved in the Council for the better part of a year.
I think that it is reasonable to conceive travel funding, attached to specific unpaid positions, as a reward for the commitment an individual puts into them. I think that this should not be incompatible with other personal interests being pursued at ICANN meetings, as long as the position is not directly connected to them. E.g. if I run a registrar and serve on the GNSO Council, I should not be funded - my employer should pay. But if I run a registrar and serve on the SSAC, then I should be funded (and that might make my employer more likely to let me serve in the position). There might be people accepting the voluntary positions to get funding and then come to meetings and look out for future business opportunities, but I don't see that as an issue as long as the deal between ICANN (the community) and the individual is fair, i.e. you do your work well and impartially in your unpaid position as long as you stay there. I am personally much more concerned by people getting funded and then spending most of their time sightseeing or shopping. No idea about how it's going now, but there were quite a few in past years, up to the point that specific participation thresholds were developed to be able to get rid of them. -- vb. Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu <-------- --------> finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/ <--------
participants (8)
-
Elisabeth Porteneuve -
Evan Leibovitch -
Izumi AIZU -
Jeffrey A. Williams -
John Levine -
Ross Rader -
Vittorio Bertola -
Wendy Seltzer