[At-Large] [ALAC] ExecComm Mission Creep (was Re: [NA-Discuss] ALAC Mid-point consultation report - Personal comments)

[Evan Leibovitch]

Danny Younger wrote:
> Evan is referring to this sentence in point #2 of the ALAC response to the Mid-Term Consultation:
>
> "Please note mechanisms of this process would need careful consideration and further discussed, but could take the form of either one of the two Board Seats being initially made by the ALAC per se or perhaps more preferably an ALAC to Board Liaison role being maintained where the Liaison is the ALAC Chair or nominee of the ALAC Executive."
>   
If anyone is looking for the document, the one I used for reference is at
http://forum.icann.org/lists/alac-mid-consult/pdfn1TpttS4Dm.pdf

And, by the way, I inadvertently misspoke when I said, "The Board
liaison is the only reference to the ExecComm in this document". The
term "ExCom" is used twice within (though this colloquialism is not
defined) -- as the document's author and in one other context, arguably
more damaging than the first one I found.

On the bottom of page three (point #6) is this:

    "... we would recommend that the specific ways on how to allocate
    the budget for ALAC activities be remanded to negotiations between
    the ALAC Chair (or Excom as we now have one that is Regionally
    balanced) and ICANN staff."

Budget negotiations? Does ALAC not already have a subgroup already
defined for this important purpose (see
https://st.icann.org/alac/index.cgi?finance_and_budget_committee)? Under
what possible mandate should ALAC be recommending budgetary planning --
hardly a matter of spontaneous urgency  -- to be handled by its
Executive Commitee (or the Chair alone for that matter) instead of the
existing body designed expressly for that role?

This example is even clearer than the Board Liaison one (which is indeed
ambiguous as Alan pointed out) in demonstrating a role envisioned by the
ExCom for itself quite different from the one apparently approved for it
by ALAC.

It is necessary to request the entire ALAC to take responsibility for
its creation. Personally I believe that this document illustrates an
*inevitable* tendency for an ExCom to assume -- in the name of
expediency -- power it was not authorized to take. As such, it may be
justification for immediate dissolution of the Executive Committee. The
goal of ALAC should be to reduce the amount of panic reactions it
encounters, rather than to search for more-efficient, more-expedient
ways to deal with an increasing frequency of panics.

- Evan