[ALAC] Final ALAC statement on Draft Process for Recognition of New GNSO Constituencies
Alan Greenberg
alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca
Mon Feb 28 06:11:39 UTC 2011
Thanks to Marc for his thoughtful and useful
additions, most of which have been incorporated
into the document. And thanks to Jean-Jacques for
his suggestion which I have changed a bit but also incorporated.
Here in text as well as PDF.
============
ALAC Comment on the Draft Process for Recognition
of New GNSO Constituencies dated 10 January 2011
The ALAC fully supports the intent of the draft
process, specifically to give the Stakeholder
Group the prime responsibility for reviewing and
approving new Constituencies, while preserving
the Board's right to act counter to the
Stakeholder Group advice if it feels that this serves ICANN's greater needs.
However, the ALAC is concerned that the process
proposed is overly cumbersome, inefficient, and
will discourage participation. The first and
third criteria for the new process (in part) specified:
1. Optimize the considerable time and effort
required to form, organize, and propose a new
GNSO Constituency by prescribing a streamlined sequence of steps
.
3. Manage the entire process to a flexible, but specific and limited timeframe
It is unclear how the process can be streamlined
without removing its important checks and
balances, but it is clear that as described, the
process will take far longer than is necessary or is acceptable.
As proposed, in a best-case scenario, it will
take at least 9-10 months from initial
application to final recognition. This presumes
that the Stakeholder Group acts expeditiously and
that the Board considers the application at its
first regularly scheduled meeting. If the Board
addresses the issue at a subsequent meeting (as
allowed in the process) for both the Applicant
and Candidate Phase, the recognition time will be
almost 1.5 years. Should reconsideration be
required, the worst case scenario grows to over 2.5 years.
Few potential Constituencies are likely to have
the fortitude to withstand such delay. Moreover,
the investment in participating in several years
of ICANN meetings would be considerable.
A significant part of this elongated procedure is
attributed to the long gap between the specified
"regularly scheduled Board meetings", which
according to current schedules are held only
during ICANN meetings. If ICANN were to have only
2 meetings per year as has been suggested at
times, the approval process would be elongated even more.
The ALAC recommends that the Board treat this as
requiring more urgent attention and that the
procedure specify that the Board will review
Constituency recognition issues within two
meetings, whether Regular or Special. Moreover,
as is the case with a number of other Board
consideration issues, the norm should be to
address Constituency recognition issues at its
next meeting. The process already includes
provisions if a decision within two meetings is not possible.
Lastly, at present only the Commercial and
Non-Commercial Stakeholder Groups recognize the
concept of Constituency. Both the Registry and
Registrar Stakeholder Groups do not have such a
concept. Presumably therefore, this draft process
only applies to groups wishing to form
Constituencies within the Commercial and
Non-Commercial Stakeholder Groups and not within
the contracted party Stakeholder Groups. The
document should state this explicitly and
unambiguously to ensure that expectations of
potential applicants are set appropriately.
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