[At-Large] Heidi in the ICANN Executive team

[Evan Leibovitch]

On 16 September 2012 13:10, Avri Doria <avri at acm.org> wrote:


> There is a reciprocal effect to Heidi being on the executive team.  Yes,
> she will have the direct access to the CEO and other executive leaders and
> will be able to represent the interests of the At-Large and ALAC more
> directly.  That reciprocal is that the executive team will have greater
> ability to govern the activities of the At-Large and ALAC.  This could be a
> good thing.  But then again, we really do not know how this executive team
> will behave.
>

Hi Avri,

It could be easily argued that the executive team within ICANN has always
had the ability to secretly govern the workings of At-Large, most notably
through the arbitrary manipulation of budget requests and allocations.

Until now all At-Large related budget issues -- from lapel pins to outreach
activities to a possible second Summit -- have been decided in the most
opaque and arbitrary of manners. (I still have a reasonably fresh memory of
when it seemed that we had to beg for appropriate travel funding for
At-Large leadership to each meeting. And I was personally witness to senior
staff private attempts to kill the original Summit while publicly claiming
to support it).

Any increase in awareness and communications can only be good; there
certainly can't be a decrease in transparency from what we have had so far
on budget issues.

Is there anything specific you have in mind when referring to senior staff
"governing the activities" of At-Large?

- Evan