| | At Large Membership and Civil Society Participation in ICANN |
|
| |
|
|
|
 Working Paper: An interface for the At Large
posted by tbyfield on Monday July 22 2002, @02:08AM
alexander writes "Yet another Working Paper, but this time not from ICANN's Evolution and
Reform Committee:
Working Paper 1 on the At Large Advisory Committee.
For those who got lost in the AL*C acronyms: ALAC is the organization whose creation the
ICANN Board has voted to "consider" in Bucharest. So what is this about?"
|
|
 |
|
Now that the Blueprint is approved and endorsed, the users have to think about their place in
the ICANN structure. There may of course be users who don't want a place in that structure and
have good reasons for this. It's obviously up to the user and his/her organization to decide
whether there is more good to be done inside or outside (or perhaps both). But if ICANN
decides to implement the Blueprint document and if you want to have place for users to provide
input and oversight, I believe you need an At Large interface.
Instead of trying to get ICANN to build a huge one-size-fits-all organization, this Working
Paper (obviously drawing upon the NAIS and
ALSC work) proposes that new and existing user
organizations from all five At Large region join forces in an At Large Council. This
group is not under ICANN's supervision (neither directly nor financially), it uses the
user organization's own capacities.
The At Large Advisory Committee consequently becomes the interface between the user
organizations and the ICANN structure. The members of the Committee are elected by the
user organizations (see the WP1 for details). The ALAC sends delegates to the Nominating
Committee, liaisons to the Board, fills seats in the GNSO Council -- both ALAC and user
organizations help outreach efforts and work on ICANN issues. Again: The Working Paper itself
has more details, so it's best to read that one first.
I already sense some questions coming up in the discussion:
Where is the guarantee that user interests will always prevail? That guarantee will
be hard to get (and I'm certainly not the one who could give it). Instead, I propose a
structure which can lead to strong, professional and well-organized user participation.
Why shouldn't ICANN fund the whole At Large effort? If ICANN funds not only the ALAC
(which it should, since it is part of the ICANN structure), but also completely funds
the At Large Council, it's easy for ICANN to let things come to an end. Self-funding, even
though it's not as easy, is also a way of self-control.
Is this a ploy to kill icannatlarge.com? No. icannatlarge.com is a user organization
which definitely should join the At Large Council. But I would become a bit nervous if the
fate of the whole At Large effort rested on a single user organization!
So I have to join an existing organization to have a say? No. If you believe that
there is absolutely no user organization in the world which shares your ideals,
you are free to create a new one. However, there is a lower limit for organizations of 25
members before that group can join the At Large Council (both for sustainability reasons
and to guard against pseudo-organizations).
Have you given up on direct online At Large elections? It's not me, it's the majority
of the current ICANN Board which has decided not to pursue this avenue. But I think it would
be a bad idea to just leave ICANN alone to do what it wants while waiting for the Board to
change its mind! Users need to have a voice and meaningful ways of participating; that's
why building structures is important.
I'm really looking forward to comments and suggestions!
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
[ Don't have an account yet? Please create one. It's not required, but as a registered user you can customize the site, post comments with your name, and accumulate reputation points ("karma") that will make your comments more visible. ]
|
|
| | |
|
|
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
|
Privacy Policy: We will not knowingly give out your personal data -- other than identifying your postings in the way you direct by setting your configuration options -- without a court order. All logos and trademarks in this site are property of their
respective owner. The comments are property of their posters, all the rest © 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 by ICANNWatch.Org. This web site was made with Slashcode, a web portal system written in perl. Slashcode is Free Software released under the GNU/GPL license.
You can syndicate our headlines in .rdf, .rss, or .xml. Domain registration services donated by DomainRegistry.com
|
