[At-Large] My comment on ALAC Review TOR

[Izumi AIZU]

I have sent the following comment for the ALAC Review TOR, now on the
ICANN web, but with PDF, so here is inline text version.

best,

izumi

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Comment on Proposed ToR for ALAC Review

April 29, 2007

Izumi Aizu,
An ALAC Member from Asia/Australia/Pacific region

I think the proposed ToR is generally well structured and covers most
of the important elements for the comprehensive review of AtLarge
structure of ICANN. Thank you very much for the excellent preparatory
work for this very important matter at ICANN. However, I think there
are several points which need additional questions and analysis as
follows.

On PART I
I assume that the external review should cover the entire relevance of
the subject body, thus the TOR should be more explicit to address the
appropriateness of the current overall ALAC framework as a whole.

The Question 15 covers some aspect of organizational positioning of
ALAC, in the context of Civil Society participation at ICANN. However,
it suggests only one specific option but not others in an explicit
manner. I think there are several ways worth to consider for making
ICANN as a more effective multi-stakeholder organization. Therefore, I
propose to add more specific options to be questions/analyzed such as:

a) Should we give Board seats to the representatives of AtLarge?
b) Should we form a new Supporting Organization, such as User SO?
or
c) Should we make AtLarge as one of the constituencies in the
(reformed) GNSO, but separate from Non Commercial Users?


PART II

Structure
On Question 15, as Vittorio already pointed out, it is rather
misleading. I like to suggest the following alternative:
What have been the significant factors that affected the RALO
formation process? Are there distinct and different factors for each
region which affected the RALO formation process, or are they faced
with similar challenges?

Another point to be added is the relationship of ALAC with other parts
of ICANN. I propose the following questions to be added:
How does ALAC interact with other constituencies of ICANN? Are they
effective in achieving the ALAC's goal of providing advices from
individual Internet users? Are there regular channel of communication
in addition to the Liaisons to the Board, GNSO and CCNSO? Are there
any

Composition
The TOR does not ask the question of the appropriateness of the
current methodology of ALAC member selection or election process
explicitly, that is ten members selected by RALO (Board for the
interim period), and five by NomCom. I like to propose to add the
following questions:

Is the current ALAC member selection methodology appropriate, or is
there any need to change that, ie public election should be used for
all 15 members? Is the number of member, 15, appropriate, or too small
or too large?
and
Assuming that the NomCom selection will continue, is the current
balance of selecting ALAC members, five by NomCom and ten by RALO the
best way to achieve ALAC's goal, or are there any other ways worth to
consider and implement?"


Internal Procedures

Volunteer nature and Staff Support
Given the nature of ALAC to represent individual users, unlike some
constituencies of ICANN, ALAC members are mostly pure volunteers that
means that their day-to-day work/business do not have direct
involvement with Internet's core resource management such as Domain
Name registration business or IP address allocation. This had
significant impact on the way and effectiveness of ALAC work. The
workloads of ALAC members have been quite high, yet it was often
difficult to cope with the expected level work. That naturally
requires good amount of support from the staff.

Question 35 On ICANN support is rather too simple. More specific and
detailed analysis of support from ICANN to ALAC, in terms of
financial, institutional and staff support should are needed.  I
propose to add the following question:

What kind of additional measures are needed in terms of financial,
institutional and staff support in addition to the exiting ones if
any?

Outreach
First, "Outreach" sounds like an one-way activity from ICANN to
outside world (in my non-native English), but the important part is
"Communication" between Internet users and ICANN through ALS/RALO/ALAC
structure and functions in a two way manner.

In this regard, languages play important role. The working language of
ICANN has been English, but several regions have other language as
significantly important common Linga Franca, ie French in some parts
of Africa, Arabic for the Middle East and Spanish for Latin America
and Caribbean region. Thus several RALOs need to use these languages
in addition to English. Here, I propose the following question to be
added:

How are the linguistically and culturally diverse regional situations
reflected in the operation of ALAC and ICANN? Are there any areas that
require changes or improvements such as add some non-English language
to be used by ICANN/ALAC?

END
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Note: The above comment is entirely personal and does not reflect any
position of the organizations I am affiliated with.