[NA-Discuss] Individuals and Organizations

[Bret Fausett]

Since the topic has come up on the list once or twice over the last few 
days, I thought I might share some history about the creation of the 
ALAC as an "Organization of Organizations composed of Individuals." 
That's not a structure that one might choose if starting from scratch, 
and since it's not at all obvious why it came to be, I thought I'd share 
my recollection of events. Some of you know this background information 
already, but it may be of interest to those who are new to the ALAC and 
the RALOs.

Once upon a time, back in 1998 when ICANN was created, ICANN was 
supposed to have 19 members of its Board of Directors. 9 would be 
elected by "Supporting Organizations" (3 from each of the domain name 
community, the IP address community, and the technical/standards 
community). 9 "At Large Directors" also would be elected by individual 
Internet users from around the world. And, finally, ICANN's President 
would have a seat on the Board. The group that incorporated ICANN seeded 
it with 9 "Initial" Directors, intending that they oversee the formation 
of the organization and step down when new Directors were elected to 
replace them.

Within the first year of ICANN's existence, the three "supporting 
organizations" each elected their three Directors, bringing the total on 
ICANN's Board to 19, but the initial Directors stayed on until the new 
"At Large" Directors could be elected to replace them. But ICANN wasn't 
quite sure how to elect these 9 "At Large" Directors, so it tasked 
various advisory committees to study the issue. In early 2000, after 
close to two years of debate and study, the ICANN Board decided to hold 
global online elections. Given the uncertainties of the process and the 
fear of election fraud or gaming, the ICANN Board decided not to put 
half of its seats up for grabs in one election. Rather than electing 9 
"At Large" Directors, it decided to elect only 5. In the summer of 2000, 
over 76,000 people signed up to vote in ICANN's online elections. After 
a few weeks of campaigning, five new Directors were elected in online 
elections overseen by the Carter Center. (You can see the archives here: 
http://members.icann.org/).

Following the election, the ICANN Board tasked a blue ribbon committee, 
chaired by former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt, to review the 
elections and determine what worked, what failed, and make 
recommendations for going forward. Some of the issues that the committee 
considered were "who is an individual internet user?", "how do you 
authenticate individual internet users for voting purposes?", and "how 
do you record votes in a secure manner not susceptible to fraud?" At the 
end of this study, the Bildt Committee issues a comprehensive set of 
recommendations about how to conduct online elections for ICANN Board 
seats. (See, http://atlargestudy.org/)

Rejecting the advice of both the Bildt Committee and other groups that 
had examined the same issue (http://www.naisproject.org/), the ICANN 
Board decided that figuring out how to conduct online elections was far 
outside ICANN's mandate, and the subject was distracting it from doing 
the real work that it needed to do. Accordingly, it decided that the 
terms of the "At Large Directors" would end and that it would move to a 
Nominating Committee approach to elect the balance of its Directors.

Many of the people who had studied online elections and campaigned for 
an At Large presence, however, were not content to allow the Board to 
end At Large participation altogether. The efforts of people like Esther 
Dyson, Roberto Gaetano, Vittorio Bertola, Wendy Seltzer, Andy 
Mueller-Maguhn, Izumi Aizu, Adam Peake, and Jeannette Hoffman convinced 
the Board that it needed to retain an At Large presence.

What the Board agreed to do was sidestep the troublesome issues of "who 
is an individual Internet user" and "how do you authenticate 
individuals" by substituting existing organizations in the place of 
individuals. The logic was that organizations that existed for purposes 
other than ICANN presumably would have verified their members, through 
membership fees, fund-raising contributions, physical presence or some 
other means. ICANN would borrow and build upon the efforts of legitimate 
organizations to build its At Large membership.

This was the original thinking behind the idea that At Large Structures 
be organizations where individuals predominate; it's basically a fudge 
for authentication and verification of individuals.

          Bret