[NA-Discuss] The problem with ALAC Statements

[Evan Leibovitch]

Thompson, Darlene wrote:
> Well, you had me agreeing with most everything you said right up until that last paragraph.  Maybe there is something we can do that would be a little less drastic?
>   
IMO the ALAC is still poisoned by having one-third of its VOTING members
not be responsible to the community. You don't see one third of other
constituencies having ICANN NomComm appointees parachuted in. This
silliness is compounded by the fact that these appointees, in turn, get
one third of the vote to select ALAC' NomComm members.

The problem is certainly not with the individuals -- folks like Alan and
Vanda have been absolutely critical to the recent maturing of ALAC --
but they belong in roles of senior advisors rather than leadership. The
issue is not one of individual skill as much as it is the importing of
ICANN bureaucratic culture into At-Large. We require a very different,
community-centric cultural model -- one that so far has been totally
foreign within ICANN. That requires a bottom-up approach that can only
work if ALAC is 100% responsible to its community.

The ICANN-bred elitism of ALAC is fading, though at an unacceptably
glacial speed. At one point Robert was serving as the consciousness of
ALAC to keep its policy discussions as open as possible, but for
whatever reasons he's gone quiet lately. There was absolutely no excuse
for the most recent GNSO-related discussions to happen on the ALAC
internal list, which is why I started the thread here at na-discuss. And
I'm told that other RALOs were able to discuss the recent joint
statement because their RALO reps engaged them sooner. Given that some
of the RALO reps on the joint statement were not RALO appointees and
thus not responsible to their regions, I fault ALAC and support staff
for not making accommodations to allow all regions to be equally engaged.

I do not at all share Danny's eagerness to cede from the global at-large
infrastructure. It merely makes us look like whiners and impedes the
general advancement of At-Large policy. We need to work from within.

My anger -- and the statement I drafted on top of Danny's -- were in
response to a lack of time to respond, and were done as a last resort
given a time frame of hours. But Beau's reply, in opposition to our
opposition, :-) made all the sense in the world. I've asked Nick and
Cheryl to extend the comment period by one week, giving us time to
engage rather than oppose. In future we need to push ALAC -- and ensure
that _it_ pushes as appropriate -- for the appropriate comment periods
and mechanisms necessary to engage the community culture. This is
doable, but it requires the continuation of an ongoing -- and sometimes
painful -- thought-shift at the ALAC level.

I would really appreciate if some NARALO members step forward to help
figure out how to bring our concerns into the existing ALAC documents,
even if the result indicates a diversity of views rather than a single
consensus. Frankly, now that I've heard Alan's position I think we're
not really far apart in views -- let's see how much common ground we
really do have and how much our input can improve the ALAC position
rather than undermine it.

(At very least, I like the GNSO move to change its NomComm people from
voting reps to non-voting advisors -- a step we should all be advocating
with the ALAC reviewers, IMO.)

That's it for now. My head hurts.

- Evan