[NA-Discuss] ALAC Review Draft is published

[Evan Leibovitch]

Bret Fausett wrote:
> I know that in the year I served on the Nominating Committee, we tried  
> very hard to use the Nominating Committee appointments to supplement  
> the skills of the various groups for which we had responsibility  
> (Board, GNSO, ccNSO, ALAC). We thought about what those groups needed,  
> received input from the groups themselves about what was needed,  
> considered input from the entire community about what was needed, and  
> then found and appointed people to fill what we believed were the most  
> important needs. In my year, this meant bringing some new faces to the  
> ICANN Board. We especially looked for people with financial  
> backgrounds, for the Board finance and audit committees. We wanted  
> someone from China on the Board. It also meant appointing an older,  
> more experienced face to the GNSO, which was having difficulties at  
> the time, and which we thought could benefit from the experience of a  
> former Board member. It meant bringing people with past experience in  
> organization building and recruiting to the new and developing ALAC.
>   
Thank you very much for this perspective, Bret. It certainly indicates
that the process has some positives. However I still can't say that I
see that benefit outweighing the negatives.

To me, the main negative is the entrusting of a fairly small group, who
are themselves selected on criteria that injects bias, to make judgement
calls on what various bodies "need". Perhaps the broader community might
have indicated different priorities and different needs.

Certainly, since I have been involved in ICANN I have never _once_ been
consulted, as an individual or as part of a group, on any issues related
to work of the NomComm -- even from the person that this region's ALAC
reps chose to represent our interests (a person, I might add, who is not
even an at-Large but an employee of a registrar). So the consultative
quality may have been part of what you personally added to the role but
is certainly not a requirement.

The NomComm, like the people it selects, are accountable to nothing but
an abstract notion of what is "good for ICANN". I personally believe
that this very notion _must_ be subject to definition and interpretation
by the grassroots, the consumers of the Internet, so to speak. Keeping
it within a group that is by nature elitist and unaccountable will
likely ensure that the grassroots will have no influence in its work.
And I can easily see a suitation in which the NomComm might see ALAC as
being too rebellious and thus stack the NomComm appointees with people
chosen because of their perceived capacity to put out the fire, so to
speak. Perhaps that sentiment -- and its effect on the NomComm choices
of ALAC reps -- already reflects such a perception.

And the ALAC review draft seems intent on maintaining that status quo --
in fact regressing, by advocating the increase in the proportion of
NomComms in ALAC.

- Evan