[NA-Discuss] Voting None of the Above Re: …

Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond ocl at gih.com
Thu Jul 19 17:50:40 UTC 2012


On 19/07/2012 17:02, John R. Levine wrote :
>>> With a $0 budget.  Get real.
>
>> That's incorrect. It is not a $0 budget.
>
> You're right, it's a $0 budget for the RALO members.
>
> The ALAC is valuable to ICANN to provide the impression that it is
> less captured by contracted parties than it is.  If ICANN thinks it's
> in its interest to have more organizations join the NARALO, ICANN
> should spend its money to recruit them, which to a modest extent it does.
>
> It is definitely not the job of the existing members to spend our time
> and money to go find more suckers^Whighly engaged organizations.
>

I knew we were in agreement somewhere and this is a point which the ALAC
Finance & Budget sub-committee has been vocal about for a long time. The
RALO requests, until a couple of years ago, were met with a resounding
*no* from staff -- or simply ignored altogether.

This year's requests were met with a more positive reply. Please be so
kind to read through the Appendix of this year's operating plan & budget
found on:
http://www.icann.org/en/about/financials/adopted-opplan-budget-fy13-24jun12-en.pdf

Now I agree that if you look at RALO (ALAC) requests, not all of them
were financed. And some of the refusals appear surreal: for example,
ICANN Studienkreis is not funded because it is a non-ICANN event. Last
year, other requests were financed. And yes, the sums in play seem to be
minimal compared to the overall ICANN budget. So there is much
improvement required. I have faith that things *will* improve. But we
also need to work together on our side to make sure funding does not get
squandered and funding produces the results we want to achieve. "Spend
carefully" has been the "modus operandi" so far.

I have full confidence that if the new CEO, Fadi Chehade is serious
about following-up with his announcement that ICANN should do more for
the community and for ITS community, we will see an improvement next
year. The current sum of applicant fees in ICANN accounts is one thing.
The proceeds from any auction will be another thing and we have to
campaign hard that the primary benefactors of this windfall be the
community because it is the community that builds and sustains the
multi-stakeholder model that ICANN is built from and that, indeed the
Internet is built from.
No community = no multi-stakeholder model = no Internet (as we know it).

Kind regards,

Olivier



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