[lac-discuss-en] LACRALO (lack of ) participation issues

[Jacqueline A. Morris]

I sent the below quoted email to the LAC discuss list quite a while ago. 
Unfortunately, I haven't yet seen any improvement in this situation, as 
not a single post has yet been made to the list on any of the 
substantive policy issues that I listed.
However, there has been some discussion on the ALAC min participation 
procedures.
*
*I do also note that I haven't heard much about LACRALO minimum 
participation - that to me would be a great question for discussion 
leading off of the ALAC participation discussion:

    * How little participation should LACRALO allow before applying
      internal sanctions (i.e. Before it reaches the stage where ALAC
      will de-certify an ALS)? that is - what are the LACRALO minimum
      participation requirements? Note that the ALAC min participation
      requirements are online at
      http://www.atlarge.icann.org/en/framework.htm#minimumcriteria -
      and they are few enough!
    * Should there be ANY minimum participation requirements?
    * If an ALS rep is not participating, what can LACRALO do to
      indicate to the ALS that their rep is risking their ALS
      certification and maybe strongly suggest that the person be changed?

It's been 2 years. There are some ALSes that seem to have dropped off 
the face of the earth since Sao Paulo - I haven't heard, seen, got any 
indication of their existence since. I am sure that the same holds for 
other regions.
So
More questions for discussion:

    * Would it be better to have fewer active ALSes than a long list of
      inactive ones?
    * How does this affect outreach efforts - should At Large change
      outreach in any way to get ALSes that are more likely to
      participate, and along these lines, how about a study to determine
      the characteristics of organisations that have participated
      successfully and work on ways to either:
          o Approach and recruit more groups like the "successful" ones
          o Create processes to get all ALS applicants to a "successful
            participation" mode - maybe a "training wheels" programme or
            a mentoring organisation model...

But considering the last session on the Mid‐point Consultation Report of 
the Board Governance Committee ALAC Review Working Group on ALAC 
Improvements - the participation of the ALSes is a major issue in the 
success or failure of the ALAC model, it is urgent and vital that this 
be considered at the RALO level.

ICANN is an organisation that is setting policy right now. LACRALO is 
not providing input into those policies. The whole point, and the ONLY 
point, of being an ALS is to provide input into those policy processes. 
If LACRALO doesn't do this, then all the work that I did trying to set 
it up (along with Sebastian, Erick, Jacob and Pablo) would have been wasted.

Now, I admit that there has been a great deal of comment and discussion 
on reasons for lack of participation in the past, mostly centering 
around the lack of translations into Spanish and Portuguese. Another 
problem is education on the issues.
However, with regard to the education issues, I would say that they are 
at least partially resolved, at least from the ICANN side, as there are 
the briefings (in multiple languages and archived) on most of these 
issues, and questions can be asked on the discussion list for 
clarification, explanation, etc. I doubt that the more knowledgeable 
members of the list (or ICANN staff) would refuse to assist in 
explaining the more technical or obscure points (or even the more basic 
points) IF ASKED.

With regard to the language issues, even though translations and 
interpretation are high on ICANN's agenda, there have been a lot of 
requests from staff for assistance from the community re quick and dirty 
translations and so on. However, there have been few public responses to 
this - there have been some community translations done on issues that 
are particularly interesting (based on the number of posts) to the list, 
but it's not many.

I would also add that there was an invitation from ICANN staff (Doug and 
Denise) to the community to engage in a discussion about participation, 
what people think they need, what resources are required. That 
invitation was translated into French and Spanish. It hasn't yet been 
responded to.

The LACRALO has been in place since 2006 - so as the oldest RALO, it's a 
bit disingenuous to keep saying - we are learning, we are new, we are 
now starting... should the first RALO not be leading?

Jacqueline A. Morris


Jacqueline A. Morris wrote:
> It's interesting.
> LACRALO hasn't had any discussion on the list about any of the issues 
> put to the ALAC for comments, such as
> Fast Flux
> RAA Amendments
> Registrar transfer activities and redemption grace period
> GNSO Improvements
> IDN Fast track for ccTLDs
> IPv6
> Domain name front running
> Geographic regions
> DNSSEC and the DNS poisoning patch
>
> But we did have a lot of discussion about the travel cutbacks and the 
> election.
> What does that say about LACRALO's interest and priorities?
>
> Jacqueline
>
>>
>
>