[ALAC] Final ALAC statement on Draft Process for Recognition of New GNSO Constituencies

[Alan Greenberg]

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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