[ALAC] Rules of Procedure - Draft for discussion at 26 March ALAC meeting

[Avri Doria]

Hi,

Except for the fact that I think we need both the info and the vote, not just one,  I agree with much of what you wrote about communications, though I think stuff should go out from ALAC and from ICANN itself to all ALSes directly as well as using the fragile, single person - single point of failure, link of the ALS representative.

The interest in informing oneself, however, involves feeling you have a stake and a voice as well as the information.

I see a vote as a necessary catalyst to make this work.  And as long as it is denied until later, or until they deserve it, or until the hens come home to roost, we will not achieve the level of participation we need.

avri

---

I have been told that sometimes things I write are hard to understand because i escape into metaphor and expression way too much.  So I am trying to be clear while not stifling myself and am including glossary at the bottom of some of my international email

single pont of failure - a system architecture expression meaning that the system fails is a single elements is not working.  It is a principle that are argues for redundant systems.

hens come home to roost - an expression that means you wait to do something until it causes a real problem.  the tendency of people to wait to fix something until it is too late to fix it.


On 27 Mar 2013, at 15:36, Evan Leibovitch wrote:

> On 27 March 2013 14:33, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:
>>  
>> One of the things I know as an ALS member of 2 ALS, is we see precious little of ICANN.  If I was only an ALS member, I might not know ICANN existed to be interested in. (i would put this in the fact category)
>> 
> You're right in that respect. The interface between ALS and everything else above is currently 100% dependent upon the skill and inclination of each ALS's ICANN rep to operate as a bi-directional conduit. Awareness on issues flows down, opinions and direction flow up.
> 
> That is how it's supposed to work. But it doesn't, and many factors are at play.
> 	• Limited volunteer cycles -- with all there is to ingest and process by ALS reps, how many have the ability, and the comfort level, to explain the issues to others?
> 
> 	• The fact that ALS rep positions may themselves be based on political choices and not who is the best communicator
> 
> 	• Limited staff resources -- so much is being expended in getting *some* kind of At-Large-centric view of ICANN issues that it is by necessarily focused on the top of the pyramid. Once upon a time each region had its own guardian staff member focused on ALS development-- Jacob Malthouse served Canada and the Caribbean -- but that was gone soon after the formal creation of the RALOs.
> 
> Greater suffrage will not fix this and is not a necessary pre-requisite of what is needed. It will lead to uninformed, apathetic voices that will be driven by resume-building rather than the kind of informed bottom-up direction you want. Just look how people get so involved over elections in the current systems in the same way that they DON'T get involved themselves on issues. Either they really trust their reps, or they just can't be bothered to be activist beyond punting the job to someone else. And there is a steady supply of "someone else", though the willingness of would-be leaders to serve once selected is ... erratic. Such is the reality that flies in the face of the theory. I have often argued -- and still believe -- is that an Executive Committee would be absolutely irrelevant if every ALAC member was sharing enough of the workload.
> 
> What the current structure guarantees is at least a regional balance -- that no one region can go on a "membership"-signup spree in order to impose its views on the rest of the world. As it is I am concerned that there are commercial interests, TLD applicants and others in at large who could easily game its processes were decision making just a body count. A one-vote-per-ALS puts that important balance at substantial risk; the political equivalence of the regions is a wise and important component core concept of ICANN AT-Large, and the current Director voting preserves that balance.
> 
> Having said this, Olivier is right that the At-Large infrastructure is mature and self-confident enough that it is ready for (and badly in need of) heightened attention on ALS improvement and empowerment. So where do we start?
> 
> When I first got involved in ICANN -- early enough that the initial requests were made of Nick, Heidi's predecessor -- my personal obsession was for the production of a series of "ICANN Policy Briefs", a set of documents that attempt to explain complex issues in simple language, while adding the At-Large perspective. In the time since, quite a few of these documents have been created and translated. How many ALS reps do you figure ever bother to distribute them amongst their membership, even to provide a bare minimum of understanding of the issues? Sure, many of the briefs are dated, but the core concepts are still relevant (ie, it is necessary to know what WHOIS is before delving into the accountability-versus-privacy debates).
> 
> These documents need a healthy refresh, after which they should be required reading at very least, for each ALS rep and preferably distributed widely within each ALS. Sometimes it's called outreach, sometimes it's called capacity building, sometimes it's called something else. But we can't have an effective At-Large without an informed at-large. And creating an informed end-user community -- not giving everyone a vote -- is what the ICANN bylaws mandate for ALAC.
> 
> My own first two priorities are
> 	• having a better informed At-Large, a pre-requisite to having a better engaged at-large
> 
> 	• advocating harder that each RALO have a way to fully engage individuals who aren't part of ALSs.
> Let's talk about changing voting systems, if necessary, after attacking that.
> 
> - Evan
>