NPOC Colleagues,
This is my candidate statement for the
position of Chair of
the NPOC Policy Committee.
Please
remember to
vote, whether you vote for me or not. Please feel free to
contact me with any
Internet ecosystem concerns you and your organization may
have. These issues
have been central to my work for decades, and will continue to
be central whether
I chair the NPOC policy committee, or not.
First some background on the context: The
initial drive to
create NPOC was driven primarily by the domain name operational
concerns of
large global not-for-profit organizations such as the Red Cross
and the
International Olympic Committee. Within ICANN NPOC is part of
the
Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group (NCSG), in turn is part of
ICANN’s Generic
Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). This structure has focused
largely on the
policy issues agenda set by ICANN. In the past year that agenda
greatly
expanded as a result of the US Government decision to transition
oversight of
the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to a
multistakeholder setting,
as well as the need to make ICANN more transparent and
accountable.
Much of the not-for-profit and civil
society (NPOC)
constituency has only a low level of interest in the internal
work agenda of
ICANN. Most other ICANN constituencies are in one sense or
another providers of Internet
related services, or have a mission (e.g. Internet privacy,
security and human
rights) central to the Internet itself. Much of the NPOC
constituency consists
of organizations whose mission deals with development, health,
poverty, gender,
kids, the elderly, the environment, governance, etc. and not the
Internet per. se..
They see the Internet as a space with opportunities for, and
threats to, what
they do.
Building on this context, my past year as
Policy Committee
chair has been to go beyond developing NPOC input into ICANN’s
policy agenda. It
includes asking what NPOC can do for the Internet ecosystem
concerns that will
impact on the ability of NGOs and Civil Society organizations to
pursue their own
work. Rather than just asking “What can your organization do
for/in NPOC?”, I
am asking “What can/should NPOC do for your organization?”
With this focus I have been sending “food
for thought” early
warning postings to the old and new npoc-discuss lists about
Internet
operational issues on the horizon. I support and work with the
Pathfinder
initiative that has similar goals. One area is the risks of
organizational dependence on
free social media when there are storm clouds around the terms
of access and
terms of use on the horizon. Another is that Internet-based
operational challenges
are increasingly below ICANN and at the national level. One growing issue is: What is
NPOC’s role in
feeding policy discussion at that level?
Please remember to vote, whether you vote
for me or not.
Please feel free to contact me with any Internet ecosystem
concerns you and
your organization may have. These issues have been central to my
work for
decades, and will continue to be central whether I chair the
NPOC policy
committee, or not.
Sam Lanfranco