[At-Large] [BMSPC-2020] Board seat 15 selection

Dave Kissoondoyal dave at igf-mu.org
Sun Nov 17 13:47:24 UTC 2019


Many thanks to Wolfgang for the background story thereby leading us to history 

Thanks and kind regards 

Dave Kissoondoyal 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Nov 17, 2019, at 3:45 PM, Wolfgang Kleinwächter <wolfgang at kleinwaechter.info> wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi, 
> 
> here is the full background story: 
> 
> 1. The original bylaws (1998) did reserve 9 voting seats for an undefined "At Large Membership". 9 other voting seats were reserved for three SOs (DNSO, ASO, PSO). Ine seat for the CEO. There was a "placeholder" in the bylaws because nobody knew, what "At Large" is. An "Membership Advisory Committee" (MAC) was formed in Singapore during the 1st ICANN meeting in February 1999 (with the Berkman Center/Jonathan Zittrain as the academic back up). The MAC had a meeting during the 2nd ICANN in Berlin, July 1999. It concluded to identify the At Large voting directors via elections in the year 2000. The whole project was seen as a pilot project for "cyberdemocracy" and a bigger role of civil society on Internet policy making. The elections were described as an "experiment". They were organized with the help of a "Membership Implementation Task Force" (MITF). As a first step, the plan was to elect five directors from the five ICANN regions. The election was an exciting but also irritating experience. It worked and the community (around 200 000 voters) elected five directors which took their seat at the 2000 Annual Meeting in LA.
> 
> 2. The elections produced a lot of questions. To answer those questions, ICANN etsbalished an "At Large Study Group" (ALG), chaired by the former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt. The recommendations of the Bildt-Committee were presented at the ICANN meeting in Montevideo, September 2001. The main receommendation was to allow only "domainname holder" to participate in the election to avoid a misuse and to have a higher level of "representation" by stakeholders. Nevertheless, the Bildt-Proposal produced a wave of criticism by civil society. Such an approach would have excluded, inter alia, students, which have an e-Mail address but no domain name. The domain name is owned by the university which woulkd have only one vote in the new proposed system. The comparison was made to the election system in the middle ages where only "landowners" had a right to vote. The decision was postponed to the LA Annual Meeting in November 2001. The day after the At Large discussion on Montevideo two planes crashed into the twin towers in NYC. 
> 
> 3. 9/11 changed the political environment for the development of ICANN. ICANN was not seen anymore as a project for "cyberdemocracy" but as a question for "cybersecurity". US senators came to the ICANN meeting in LA and aksed tough questions how it can be avoided that a "terrorist" get elected into the ICANN Board of Directors. LA 2001 became the starting point of the first ICANN reform process.
> 
> 4. The ICANN reform process was completed within less than two years. It included a restructuring of ICANN. The DNSO was subdivided into the GNSO and the CNSO. The PSO was abolished and transformed into  "technical liason group". The elections of Voting At Large directors were abolished. Instaed of election a "selection" process was introduced through a new "Nomimation Committee" (NomCom). The NomCom got the right to "select" 8 voting directors in a process, strechted over three years (3:3:2). At Large was transfered into an "At Large Advisory Committee" (ALAC) with one non-voting liaison in the board. New structures with "recognized ALSs" and "RALOs", which had to sign a MoU with ICANN, were created. To compensate At Large for the loss of the nine voting directors, they got five seats in the NomCom. It was intended, that the NomCom will select directors which represent users/civil society. 
> 
> 5. After the reform was fixed into the new bylaws a lot of big supporters of the At Large, Election and Cyberdemocracy concept distanced themselves more or less from ICANN. Supporters of the new ALAC did not really represent anymore the big civil society NGOs. ALAC became something like a "Champions League without Champions". A nunber of civil society organisation moved within ICANN to the Non-Commercial User Organisation (NCUC), a constituency iwthin the GNSO. However, the RALOs were formed, the number of ALSs were growing and over the years, ALAC returned to became again a more recognized player in the ICANN family. The call for ALAC voting directors came back and culminated into the call for holding an "At Large Summit" (ATLAS). ATLAS 1 took place 2008 in Mexico. One sub-committee produced a resolution which called for two voting seats for ALAC. The Board recognized the legitimacy of such a call, however, the compromise was to change the non-voting ALAC liaison in the Board into a Voting Director, elected by the ALAC itself. 
> 
> 6. This is the situation which stands until now. In my eyes, ATLAS III (recently in Montreal) was a missed opportunity to have a more strategic oriented discussion about the role and future of At Large (user, civil society) in ICANN as a whole. This was also a missed opportunity to ask for a second voting seat in the Board. However, it was good to see that NCUC and ALAC entered into a more constructive and forward looking dialogue which ould lead to a stronger voice of the user/civil society stakeholder group within the empowered community. 
> 
> 7.  With the IANA transition and the emergence of the "empowered community" we have reached a new situation. However, this is not the end of the story. In my eyes there is a need for something like a Work Stream 3 (WS3) which looks deeper into the existing structure of ICANN and how it matches the needs of the 2020s or whether a structural reform is needed to adjust it to the new challenges in a post-IANA transition period.  With other words, ATLAS IV (2024?) could re-introduce the call for a 2nd AT Large voting director. 
> Best wishes 
> 
> Wolfgang 
> 
> 
>   
>> Kaili Kan <kankaili at gmail.com> hat am 17. November 2019 um 06:06 geschrieben: 
>> 
>> As I understand, it was decided at the beginning that ALAC would have two seats, but then was reduced to one seat for some reason.
>> 
>> Kaili
>> 
>> On Sun, Nov 17, 2019 at 4:16 AM Alan Greenberg < alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca> wrote: 
>> Other ACs have a Liaison. But At-Large is thr only part of ICANN that appoints full voting Board Members and has only one. 
>> 
>> Alan 
>> -- 
>> Sent from my mobile. Please excuse brevity and typos. 
>> 
>> On November 16, 2019 2:57:36 PM EST, Johan Helsingius < julf at julf.com> wrote:
>> On 16-11-19 18:22, Kaili Kan wrote:
>> Hopefully, sometime in the future At-Large would get its second seat on 
>> the Board. 
>> 
>> Do other ACs have more than one seat?
>> 
>>  Julf
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