The new ccNSO is developing a statement to submit to WSIS. A cross-constituency group led by Marilyn Cade is developing a statement defending ICANN. This committee does not include the Noncommercial Users Constituency, which has declined to participate, and its pure defense of ICANN has caused ICANN's At Large Advisory Committee leadership to express concerns.

At its Capetown meeting, the Noncommercial Users Constituency tried to identify key issues and priorities for the next year. It was agreed that the most important issue to focus on will be ICANN supervision and accountability. This includes the U.S. Department of Commerce's attempt to cut ICANN loose from its supervision MoU in 2006, but also the WSIS/WGIG processes, which may set up alternative arrangements for legitimizing and supervising ICANN.

U.S. advocacy group Center for Democracy and Technology's Mike Steffen spoke of a "tough love" approach to ICANN, opposing subjection to teaditional closed, intergovernmental powers, offering support for ICANN's relatively open, multi-stakeholder, non-government dominated processes, while maintaining criticism of its flaws and biases.

As an action item, the group agreed to make a submission to the WGIG on process and policy regarding ICANN. This process will be used to develop and publicize a position. The submission will probably be developed jointly with the At Large Advisory Committee.

The joint meeting agreed that with WSIS and WGIG putting pressure on ICANN, now is the time to push for more adequate user representation within ICANN. Even a revival of direct election of Board members was discussed.

It was also agreed that even without structural changes ALAC and NCUC should make efforts to integrate and strengthen the civil society presence in ICANN and to integrate it more with the civil society activity in the WSIS process.

One way to do that would be to strongly commit to having a joint ALAC-NCUC meeting at all future ICANN meetings. The meeting agreed to do this.

Another mechanism would be to create mailing lists focused on broader issues (e.g., privacy, multilingualism) that we could promote among the civil society people involved in WSIS. They could participate in these lists and become more familiar with the issues without having to commit themselves to membership in NCUC or ALAC.