[ALAC] Further Information about At-Large Travel

[Thompson, Darlene]

Both Evan and Dharma's comments are right on the money, as far as I'm concerned.
 
D

________________________________

From: alac-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org on behalf of Carlton Samuels
Sent: Thu 8/14/2008 12:03 PM
To: 'Evan Leibovitch'; 'Nick Ashton-Hart'
Cc: 'ALAC Working List'
Subject: Re: [ALAC] Further Information about At-Large Travel



For the record and speaking only for myself, Evan is pithily correct in his
assessment.

Carlton

-----Original Message-----
From: alac-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org
[mailto:alac-bounces at atlarge-lists.icann.org] On Behalf Of Evan Leibovitch
Sent: Thursday, August 14, 2008 03:24 AM
To: Nick Ashton-Hart
Cc: ALAC Working List
Subject: Re: [ALAC] Further Information about At-Large Travel

Nick Ashton-Hart wrote:
> For At-Large travel in FY 2009, in addition to funding the At-Large
Summit, ICANN will be funding the 15 members of the ALAC to attend the Cairo
meeting and the meeting being held in the Asia-Pacific region (location TBA)
in June 2009.
>  
Will the RALO secretariats, chairs and ALAC liaisons also be attending?

> The funding for the 15 members will be on the same basis as has been the
case for recent At-Large travel to ICANN meetings:
>
> * Hotel
> * Per-Diem
> * Airfare
>
> Of course, all the RALOs will be meeting during this fiscal year as a part
of the Summit, and of course ALAC members will attend the Summit as well.
>  
This is all stating the obvious. It also conveniently ignores that fact
that in calendar 2009 there will be no F2F meeting for either NARALO or
LACRALO since there is no ICANN meeting held in the Americas this year.
The possibility of having regional meetings was put on hold because of
the possibility that the Summit would happen this year.

> The result is that overall, At-Large travel is considerably increased for
this FY over that provided for previous years.
"Considerably"? By your own estimate, the increase would be a MAXIMUM of
28% over the previous year.

And then the FY2010 amount would be far, far lower ... dramatically
lower than the FY2008 amount. So there would be a short term spike
followed by a long-term reduction. Future years will be funded far less
than present and previous ones.

Repeating the obvious point (that the Summit creates a one-time surge in
travel cost) cannot obfuscate the fact that the new travel policy is
designed to outlast the Summit and is a long-term cutback. The presence
of a Summit does not magically diminish the value and importance of
having Chairs, Secretariats and Liaisons funded for regular meetings,
nor does it justify halving the funding of elected ALAC member
attendance. And at a time when RALO outreach is desperately needed (how
many ALSs have joined in the past year?), that resource (ie, regional
F2F meetings) is being cut too.

>  To compare it in terms of the number of attendees, see below:
>
> FY 2008: 35 At-Large attendees funded per ICANN meeting = 105 persons
total
> FY 2009: 15 At-Large attendees at 2 meetings plus up to approximately 105
attendees at one meeting = up to 135 attendees
>  

Since you insist on belabouring this point, why stop at 2009? Let's
examine at what the policy will do the following year (and every year
subsequent):

FY 2010: 10 At-Large attendees (5 NomComms + 50% of the rest of ALAC)
funded per meeting = 30 persons total
FY 2011: 10 At-Large attendees (5 NomComms + 50% of the rest of ALAC)
funded per meeting = 30 persons total
... and so on...

So... we go from 105, to 135, to 30, and set to remain at 30 for
subsequent years. That means that after a one-year spike, At-Large
suffers a long-term reduction of travel funding of 72%. The "horror
excesses" of the Summit are more than recouped the very next year thanks
to these cuts.

> Please let me know if you have questions.
>  

- How can anyone supposedly supporting the activities of At-Large defend
a 72% resource reduction at this crucial stage in its evolution?

- Why is the one-time Summit (some spike -- a _maximum_ 28% over 2008)
brought up as justification for such long-term resource slashing?

- Can we keep the status quo if we cancel the Summit? (If that is the
main reason for the long term cut then perhaps we should reconsider the
penalty that the Summit would exact on At-Large's long-term effectiveness.)

(And if the answer to the above is "no", then for heaven's sake stop
linking the Summit to the long-term cutback.)

- Evan


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