ALAC Excom 2012-10-19 - Toronto - Transcript

20121019_ATLARGE_ALAEXECUTIVE_ID738677

Operator:                        Welcome everyone to the Executive Committee Meeting on the 19^th of October, 2012.  Please remember to state your names before you speak and please remember to speak at a reasonable rate for our interpreters.  Olivier?

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you very much, Matt.  And with us today we have— well, first we have a bit more time than we thought because the review of the Toronto action items has already been party done yesterday.  We’ll just have to rubber-stamp them, I guess. 

With us we have David Olive, the Vice President for Policy Development and welcome, David.  And this session, as you know, is a session where we’re a little bit more informal than usual and being able to fire any kinds of questions at ICANN top management.  And you are, therefore, sitting in what we call the skillet.  The grilling session is about to begin.  So David, thank you very much for joining us and perhaps the first thing that we should really find out a little bit is with the changes at ICANN we’ve heard about all week.  If you could just tell us a bit about your responsibilities and how things are likely to progress.  And I leave it then very open and you can continue with any subjects which you would like to bring up.  David, the floor is yours.

David Olive:                   Olivier, thank you very much and thank you for the opportunity to be able to discuss our policy development issues with you and you, of course, are part of the process.  And so I thank you for this time. 

                                    In terms of the management changes which you saw explained to you at the opening session on Monday by Fadi, indeed, he has created a leadership team where the Policy Development Group is part of that team. We were always a central part, I think, the policy-making—the policy development, excuse me, process and facilitation at ICANN, but it’s a recognition of the work of some of the people you see here who are part of that policy development support team and the other activities we do to facilitate the work of the supporting organizations and the advisory committees. 

                                    In addition to that, Fadi expanded the Executive Team to include those people who are running the major elements of our support groups within ICANN and, to that extent, that is, I’m happy to say the reason that Heidi is on that Executive Team because of her role in directing the Policy Development support team for At-Large.  If you notice the list, we have a similar situation of team leaders for the GNSO and others, CCNSO and the like who are on that team because those are the key members of my staff who are working on the day-to-day operations and it’s a recognition of their work by the new CEO of the leadership team.  So I am very pleased that that’s a part of that.  You know they’re hard working and you know that they’re supporting you and that’s another way to make sure that there’s a better cooperation within those executive teams and a sharing of responsibilities as well. 

                                    So that really is the element of that organizational change as described by Fadi.  I am honored to be heading the policy team but I think it’s a recognition of their hard work and I’m happy to accept that on behalf of them and will work hard for the challenges we face going forward.

                                    Just to talk about the Policy Development Team, we support the GNSO and have team members to do that.  Obviously the CCNSO and the advisory groups.  At-Large is one, of course, of the Route Zone Server Advisory Group, the RSSAC and the Security, Stability and Reliability Advisory Committee, the SSAC, the ASO we also support.  And so, to that extent, our team is divided with those various working groups and developments there in support of our policy development process and our mission is to support those groups for those inputs. 

To that extent, we would like to bring to your attention, as I passed around to you, our monthly update.  This is a very good source of keeping informed about the various activities within the SOs and the ACs in particularly, the policy development matters within the supporting organizations.  We have a subscription of 4,000—over 4,000 people receive this on monthly basis in addition to circulating it through our networks and you get it that way as well if you’re not on the subscription list.  The Board gets it and all the SOAC leaders also receive it in addition to the subscription.  And we think it’s a pretty good way to keep track of things and we also note, we report on the ALAC activities as well.  And in that regard, we will, on next month’s report, include a short article with the links to your white paper that you recently presented so that people will have a greater knowledge of what’s in that and we look forward to having that showcased in our next monthly edition. 

With that I also would like to thank the At-Large community for their input into the policy process.  The policy, as you know, is made at ICANN through the supporting organization influenced and inputted by the advisory councils as well as our general community.  And that element of At-Large’s view and inputs are reflected in your statements that I now see are quite extensive but it’s relating to many of the issues that are for the supporting organizations as they’re working their way through the formal policy development process for possible recommendations to the Board of Directors.  And so, to that extent, thank you for all that good work. Those inputs are taken, at least within the CC and the GNSO context, within their various issue reports.  Noted, the views are there and we appreciate that level of input. 

And finally, I would just like to point out some of my concerns going forward and your white paper, I think, was a very good statement of what we should be looking at going forward.  To that extent, I am looking at, indeed, how we can get the GAC involved more integrally into our systems and into the process.  I’m also looking at the impact of the new GTLD program on the structures and policies and processes of ICANN and, to that extent, the work of the structural improvements committee under the leadership of Ray Plzak but also Bertran’s initiative is another good way and I hope you would channel this paper— Jean Jacques, I know, was there was there—channel those ideas against that group because they will also be meeting in Beijing to continue the discussion and I think that’s a very good way to keep the attention on these future-oriented elements.  So to that extent, that’s very good. 

In terms of the GAC, and I just would like to share with you, I did—was asked to give a presentation about the policy development process as the Board GAC Committee is looking at early engagement in the process and we showed them the various step-by-steps that we have within the GNSO and the CCNSO, in particular, and somewhat of the ASO in identifying elements and areas where they can be involved and can have input.    You know this very well as we elect a known start of a PEP or an issues report or a document in the process, we try to put it in the monthlies so that people know about it.  We send it around to the SOAC lists and it’s shared by the staff and the staff tries to make sure that everyone quickly gets a copy of the notice.  And so, to that extent, we’re trying to present this information and guide the GAC so that they can do their work which is to identify the public policy implications or interests of various activities of the SOs and the ACs. 

So with that, I think those are the issues that were keeping me very busy in addition to trying to visit all your other working groups—the 25 or 26 sections here of the ALAC. Twenty-five, the other ones in the CCNSO and GNSO and others.  It was a busy week but I think a productive week and my thought is that with the, I detect today, a wonderful attitude of working together and cooperating and, hopefully, in that sense we will be able to move the agenda of ICANN forward in that spirit and that’s what I hope to do.  Thank you.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you very much, David.  And before I open the floor for questions, and I already see Rinalia having put her hand up, two comments.  The first one, I think that we often have the—we’re often tempted by mentioning the number of statements that we have issued—that the ALAC has issued.  And take this as a milestone and say, yes, we issued 20 statements this month and last month it was 10, and the month before it was 5.  So it sees a marked increase in ALAC activity.  And somehow whilst, yes, it’s great to be able to release more statements, it’s not the alpha and omega of the ALACs work.  The increased activity is one thing but quality of output, I think, is equally, if not even more important.  And there have been calls in the community to reduce the number of statements that we send out whilst, at the same time, focusing on some issues more and, basically, maybe focusing on other issues less.  So I’m a little worried sometimes when we continue seeing an increase in the number of statements that we send out because one day there will be less statements that we send out.  So does that mean at that point that our performance starts going down and we will be frowned upon and be told we’ve become lazy.  Which, anyway, so—so that’s one and, I mean, yes, it’s great to see the increased activity as I said. 

                                    The other comment was just actually one on the report itself.  Two small things and I’m probably going too fine in granularity but the total policy update subscribers for the mailing list—for the policy mailing list—have very strange dates.  I didn’t think that we were that far out 40,787, 40,878—well, just numbers, it might be a new code at ICANN to define months and days but it didn’t work out too well.  And I also notice with sheer disappointment that, as far as At-Large is concerned, our beautiful logo with radiance coming out of it is not included whilst the CCNSO has brought their logo in the picture, the ASO as well.  So we would like this cosmetic change to take place.  And it’s an action item.  And I know it’s not really so relevant but there you go.  It is relevant for the image of At-Large and we do have a nice logo.

Anyway, let’s get on with the questions and so we have Rinalia, Oksana, so start with Rinalia.

Rinalia Abdul Rahim:      Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Rinalia Abdul Rahim for the transcript.  I have questions for David.  The first one is about—well, they’re both about the policy brief for the GAC in facilitating the out-participation.  David.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    And if Alan does not behave, I will have to ask him to sit in the corner of the room facing the wall.

Rinalia Abdul Rahim:      Right, that was the Chair.  Now.  Rinalia is continuing.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Back to Rinalia.

Rinalia Abdul Rahim:      Thank you. David, I have two questions and they pertain to the policy brief or assistance that the policy team is providing to facilitate GAC early engagement in GNSO policy development and possibly CCNSO.  I’m not sure about the latter part.  And I understand that this policy brief will include a highlight of issues relevant to public policy that will draw the government’s attention on what’s implicated. 

And first question is would this policy brief be open to other communities to see or access?  The second question is would it be a stretch if you were to expand that analysis or highlight of issues to include issues pertinent to end users?  Because then that could be valuable to our community and we could see if there is a common interest between the GAC and the At-Large that would facilitate our collaboration.  Thank you.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    David?

David Olive:                   Thank you, Rinalia.  In terms of the information of the GAC, basically, what we’re going to be doing is keying from the policy monthly updates.  We would show them the various status of the formal policy development processes in place—where they are, what stages.  The purpose of that is information.  The policy staff, or ICANN staff, does not inform the GAC as to what their role should be, and that is the identification of public policy interests or implication.  That’s their role to identify.  We’re just telling them what’s being developed by the various supporting organizations so that they know the process and, if they wanted to input into the process, they could do so.  

Within the CCNSO, they could have a more formalized notification system to the chair, from the chair of the CCNSO to the chair of the GAC at a certain stage of their development asking them for inputs. The GNSO doesn’t have a formalized process but the GNSO reaches out to all the communities and the supporting and the advisory committees to inform them and solicit their inputs.   So, to that extent, that will be the report to that. 

As expanding it, that really depends on the various working groups. Their focus is on a particular policy issue—transfer policy or pick who is or something like that and, to the extent that they are just working on those issues, the inputs from the ALAC as to what the end user, that could be a good input for the At-Large to ask those things when policy development requests are coming for public input.  So to that extent, that would really depend on the working groups’ activities. And they focus on what are the issues in their charter for the scope of their purpose. 

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, David.  Next we have Evan.

Evan Leibovitch:             Hi there.  I just wanted to expand on the topic that Olivier was bringing up and that is the nature and the volume of what we do.  As a point of comparison, you have the GAC which releases one statement at every meeting but it’s very concentrated, it’s very deliberative and it carries a lot of weight.  As opposed to what ALAC does where we give a lot of stuff and part of the frustration is sometimes it feels like it’s going into a black hole. 

When the question came up of the whole consultation on public input that’s going on right now, one of the inputs was how we give comment is less of the critical issue to us than if we know what happens to it once it goes over the wall. So I’m wondering if you could give a couple of minutes to that.  And also maybe some personal opinions on your thought about lots of small comments as opposed to perhaps concentrating on fewer topics but being more weightier and more detailed and deeper about them.  Thanks.

David Olive:                   Thank you, Evan.  That’s a good point.  Good question.  My first reaction is I surely don’t want to inhibit or limit the inputs that ALAC would like to give in the various public comment forum topics that are presented every month and the like.  I think, to that extent, at one level that is very much appreciated and noted. 

Though one could distinguish between commenting on another advisory committee’s report versus an ongoing PDP process that may result in some sort of new policy action by the Board, that could be a distinction.  And how one can do that is one surely could maybe within—at the ICANN meetings, if you were to then take and restate with the focus on the PDPs, those opinions of At-Large as  a way to emphasize.  So granted, a month ago you commented on something that was going on in the GNSO, you could maybe collect that and show your comments to the GNSO and CCNSO as a way of highlighting those. 

Evan Leibovitch:             The reason I’m asking that is also, though, because our scope is actually broader than the SOs. So for instance, one of the things that was mentioned at the public comment period was about the URS.  Not only from a policy point of view but also from the way that was implemented. So you have implementation issues that are technically beyond the scope of the SOs but are very much within our remit. And so I’m just—that’s also an issue. 

David Olive:                   And that goes back to my first comment that I don’t want to limit, because those inputs are looked at and incorporated and noted.  Just that the difference between what would be a policy development process versus an implementation process and those inputs are equally needed. And that’s why I wouldn’t want to discourage that. So you’re right about those other elements.  How best to do that because they’re needed in the timeframe that they’re asked but, at the same time, there might be a way of re-stating it in a larger document similar to what the GAC does though that’s a different process for them to draw attention to it at a meeting or to pass around or things like that within the—at an ICANN meeting.

Evan Leibovitch:             Sorry, I don’t mean to harp on this but—and also and could you respond to the way that our input gets responded to.  I mean to the extent that you’ve got a lot of volunteers working on a lot of stuff and if there’s a perception that things just go into a black hole and is barely even acknowledged in receipt, that becomes very difficult to sell back to the community as an (inaudible). 

David Olive:                   I’ve heard the comment on this and I can only really go to the experience of the Policy Support Team’s work.  For example, in the GNSO, when there are an issues report—and those are out for public comments well—we try to link to any statements from the advisory committees as reference to that.  And that is usually cited in the section of what do other people say about it.  And if we have a statement from the ALAC, then we put that in.  ALAC sent a statement and that expressed interest in—and so in that iterative process, that is how those statements are taken into account and, correct me, Alan, if I’m wrong on that, but the working groups and whatnot would look at and take in the public comments that came in as they’re moving that process forward.   

And I know in terms of the implementation side of the house that they need and demand those public comments as they’re looking at what best to do.  So I don’t—and as for the Board, I can’t really speak for the Board though they do get the information and then we try to re-state and point out to the fact that they are doing this and this is where you meeting with the Board is an important element to talk about those issues that are important to you—brought to their attention and show them where you’ve been working on these things.  That’s another way of doing that.

                                    Now we’ve talked in the past about how best to communicate all these statements to the Board in terms of as they come about or collective in one source or quarterly or something like that and that’s something you might want to consider as well, a periodic report detailing the comments of the At-Large that you might want to send to the Board.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you very much, David.  And actually, just regarding these, I pursued a test of two different strategies.  Last year, my first year of tenure, any statement that we sent to the public comment period et cetera was carbon copied to the Board Secretary for direct access by the Board.  I don’t know whether the Board received them or not.  This year, since some of our members mentioned that maybe we shouldn’t send so much to the Board since I did hear from the Board chair that they did receive a lot of statements from us, we did not do that.  Only a handful or those for whom the statement was intended directly to go to the Board were sent to the Board.  Which strategy, in your view, would have more impact?  Because I’m asking this from David. 

                                    I think from us we’ve tried both strategies and neither appear to work.  So I mean, this is something we might ask Steve but I would also like to see, on the staff side of things, I don’t know what happens to our statements.  Do they go on the Wiki?  Do they go in an internal?  Do they get sent to the mailing list which apparently receives hundreds of emails a day and, therefore, ends up in the junk box?  If you’d be able to shed some light over that, that would be helpful.

David Olive:                   In terms of any comment within the public comment process that is received from the At-Large Community, obviously there’s an immediate end user of someone running a PDP or wanting to have that information and input for the work they’re doing.  That’s not always a Board decision.  That’s not always Board work.  If we look at the PDP process within the CCNSO or the GNSO, the process takes some time as you’re developing a consensus and the Board is not looking at those individual steps.  They’re waiting to see the consensus.  So to that extent, they would understand and acknowledge that it’s good to see that At-Large is part of that process and that’s very good.  But in the sense, as advice to the Board, they would say, well, that will be put into the mix and we’re glad that they’re inputting it.  So at the final decision, they will ask—the Board will ask has everyone—all the SOs, ACs and others been consulted and how?  And that is being listed now in the new Board procedures that would show this checklist.

                                    In something that is more closer to a Board decision that ALAC wants to give, that should be sent to them before their Board meetings.  In terms of the overload of information that we all receive, that is a challenge.  The Board—books come like this, emails are huge, and that’s why I am, kind of, interested in this quarterly statement that would provide a one or two-pager that would show the activities, a quick summary from the work, or just even links to that that they might be able to see and look at quickly as opposed to a 50-page document which, unless they have to make a decision on, they prioritize their work too. They would not necessarily go there and so you need a little more headline.  That’s why I like a monthly update style so they can quickly look at that if they’re interested.  They can click on it or they can get more information from it.

                                    But that—Sebastien might be better to tell about how best to get the attention of the Board members.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    At this moment in time, I’ll take questions only specifically on this subject so we don’t break the flow.  Oksana, is this—is your question specifically on this subject?  Okay, we’ll go to you at the end of this session.

Evan Leibovitch:             Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt the flow of the queue but I just had an idea to bounce off both of you based on what you’ve both been saying and it’s, sort of, a hybrid of the two approaches.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Evan.  It’s just Oksana had put her hand up so I had her in the queue but, if it’s not related to this subject, I was asking Oksana if we could put her at the end of the queue and continue.  I do have Alan and Evan.  So let’s go to Alan first and then back to you, Evan.

Alan Greenberg:              I’m one of those annoying people who said (inaudible) things to the Board.  I’ve talked to some Board members and I think that was good advice that I think we need to continue following. 

In general, the only statement that we sent to the Board that I’m aware of that, in discussion, we exclusively say this is advice to the Board, are either in response to decisions in response to decisions they are about to make or waving a red flag that it’s something that they’re not doing that they should be doing.  And I don’t know how many of them there have been in the last year.  I don’t think there’s that many.  It would be interesting if we had a nice collection of those in a single place.  I don’t know if we do or not.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Alan.  We have all of our correspondence published on one single place.  I’m just trying to think, the correspondence page, theoretically, should be able to select this, however, because it’s been misfiled over the years, at the moment the filters, which we have at the top of the correspondence page if we can go up to the top Classification, Entity and Region, those are not really working too well.  So when we will be updating this we could actually have Classification with the Board and so, having the tag in our paperwork that will then let us show everything that we sent to the Board, would probably be the way forward.

                                    Okay, back to you, Evan.

Evan Leibovitch:             I was going to suggest an approach or bounce an idea off you that’s a bit of a hybrid between some of the various things we’ve been seeing.  Now, there’s usually one Board meeting that happens in between the ICANN meetings.  Is that usually the case?  So we can assume, let’s say, six Board meetings per year?  Outside of emergency ones. 

Okay, so rather than quarterly, maybe the idea is having, as part of the Board materials in preparation for each Board meeting, you say, here’s a compendium of what ALAC has produced since the last report of this kind.  So six times a year, a document is sent to the Board or a link is sent to the Board saying here’s what ALAC has produced and it’s grouped by reaction to SO work and other materials.  And that way, if it’s done that way, then the Board can look at it and say, “Here’s the things relevant to what we’re talking about.  Here’s things relevant to we’re about to wait on some of the work that the SO’s coming, but here’s a heads up on the At-Large point of view if that’s so desired.” 

So rather than, “Here’s an email from every single statement that ALAC does,” forty odd or whatever per year or just doing nothing and sending it through the regular PCP, perhaps putting a summary of something as part of the Board materials in advance of each meeting.  Just a thought. So it’s a variation on your quarterly but it’s more relevant to the Board’s timetable.  Thanks.

David Olive:                   Well, I think that and the real test would be, when you’re talking to Steve Crocker, what he says about that.  And you can then adjust and decide how best to present your materials for them.  But it would be interesting to see what Steve Crocker says because Alan is right, it’s the huge amount of information they get and, especially in preparation for ICANN meetings, it’s even larger than the inter-sessional—the Board meetings because it’s less of a demand, if you will.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you very much, David. Just focusing on this, the reason why I brought the matter up was to do with the process as to what resources do the Board have in front of them.  When sending a statement to the Board Secretary, does this get sent to the Board’s mailing list automatically?  Does this get filed in a Wiki?  Does it get filed in an archive database?  Does it get filed so that a Board member could check on that specific subject and immediately have access to the ALAC point of view?  And that’s more of a procedural thing, I think, that Steve will be more likely to tell us what he prefers as far as the advice is concerned.  But on the procedures, could you expand on this a little bit please?

David Olive:                   I don’t know how further it’s distributed once it goes to the Board’s support, to Diane, basically.  And I know they have their own, kind of, Board Advantage which is, kind of, the e-briefing book, if you will, where they have access and links to the materials and it’s organized by the various committees and the issues that they’re dealing with.  So that’s probably an area where it can be placed in their, if you will, electronic briefing page.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Okay.  Thank you.  Next is Jean Jacques Subrenat.  It was back to Evan, but let’s go for Jean Jacques.

Jean Jacques Subrenat:      Thank you.  This is Jean Jacques.  If the chair of ALAC sends you a document, let’s say making ICANN responsive relevant and something else, as a letter to the Chair of the Board, and with the indication that it is ALAC advice, so is this treated differently from the rest and how?

David Olive:                   That’s a good question for Steve Crocker but I would think that, and this is not part of a regular public comment process.  This is being directed to the Chair as a special report or white paper that you’ve gotten.  And likely, Steve Crocker would probably put that on the Board list saying I’ve received this communication from At-Large in this white paper and I encourage you to read it.  Usually that’s what he does.  I mean, when I used to—we regularized the process but I used to send the monthly update to him and he would do that.   And he said, “Well, let’s regularize that process,” so it goes automatically and this type of thing.

Jean Jacques Subrenat:      This is Jean Jacques, just to follow up; I’m bringing this up because I think that that is, in a way, the most visible contribution of an SO, at least of ALAC.  It is when it is accompanied by a letter from chair to chair.  You confirmed that.

David Olive:                   Yes, I would think so.  It’s just not for your information.  It’s more directed to you, chair.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Okay thank you, Jean Jacques and thank you, David.  Am I not speaking loudly?  Strange, I’m usually very chirpy.  We still have Oksana in the queue so, Oksana, you have the floor.

Oksana:                         Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair.  Oksana (inaudible).  My question is related to discuss the (inaudible) practical (inaudible).  We discussed a lot of this week problems and I’m very happy to see (inaudible) for example, (inaudible) just now (inaudible) to begin with that problem.  But what else can be done?  In what way?  Whom we have to address dealing with current problems and with future challenges?  Thank you.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Oksana.  David.

David Olive:                   Good question because we normally deal with the challenge of the day and the issue of the day and inputs for that.  And so, in that sense, it’s very good and refreshing to have the broader view to look up from your work and say, ah, what else is there?  What else is happening?  Where shall we go?  And that’s why I like the white paper of ALAC because it allowed us to take a look at that. 

                                    The SOs and the ACs—the SOs, excuse me, are so focused on the priority projects that they have and the deadlines that they have and the pressures that they have that there’s not much time left for, if you will strategic planning, but they try.  They try to do that.  And to that extent, the more we can remind them that that’s a good thing and I think, in this process of both the ATRT recommendation six that Bruce Tomkins’ session on Monday of last week talked about, how else do we get information to the Board if it’s not by public comment?  That is one focus of looking forward as well as Bertran’s exercise and focus on the impact of the new GTLDs on us.  That’s kind of, in a sense, it’s interesting new GTLDs surely but we’re looking at what are the future challenges coming our way not only from new entrants in to the ICANN system but new issues into the ICANN system.  Now, answer to that extent, there are these two tracks that I think are important focuses by the Board members and we should follow those and be involved with them.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, David.  Next is Evan.

Evan Leibovitch:             Just to follow up on that in terms of the solicitation of how public comment comes in. I think one of the frustrating things that we have is because there’s such a huge pyramid below us in terms of not only ALAC, but also the RALOs the LS’s and the AOS members beneath them.  So trying to get through the process that both works top-down in getting information out in a digestible method and getting the response back has both a timing issue and also a process issue.  And it’s, sort of, been almost in rumor form, sort of, brought  back that there’s some people that think, “Well if something isn’t said at the public comment period—sorry, if something isn’t said at the public forum, well it’s not necessarily a priority issue.”  Whereas we have, sometimes, an iterative process that almost always results in a written statement because of the nature of the consultation. 

So I just hope that’s kept in mind in terms of everything that, yes, there’s a public forum and yes, it’s important but it’s always biased towards what I’ll call the usual suspects in terms of hearing from the same people about the same interests.  Meanwhile, we’re trying in outreach to bring in new people all the time but the only people—I’m not going to pre-suppose we speak for the billions but at least we speak for as many people as we can reach through our AOS’s.  And even doing that becomes a very difficult thing and for us to get new people on in order to bring that forward, doing it through the public forum process doesn’t always work and it’s not always capable. 

And in fact, even the ability to respond nimbly to things that happened this week, if you want to be totally consultative, is almost impossible. So sometimes—we had a situation this week where somebody went to speak at a group and they said, “Well, do you represent all of ALAC?  Where’s the proof of your vote?  Where’s the proof that you did the consultation?”  And if it’s not considered to be complete, well then somehow that means it’s less important or it’s discarded. We’ve got—we really have that challenge and I just hope that can be kept in mind as this solicitation of comment is being pondered.

David Olive:                   May I?

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Yes David, go ahead.

David Olive:                   I mean, I’m glad you brought that up because I view the way you collect public comments within ALAC through the RALOs and through your networks and then have that, kind of, certification, if you will that that’s what we’ve done.  I thought that was a very rigorous and effective way and it should stand up that attention of who do you represent because it’s not just a opinion.  You put it through a process that ensures it has taken all the opinions that you have within your networks and presented it in a summary fashion. 

Evan Leibovitch:             And yet here we are this week, sometimes having to respond to things that we hear this week in the course of seven days and say something at the public forum. Obviously that level of iteration and communication just isn’t possible.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Evan.  In fact, touching on the issue of public comments, I know the public participation committee, the Boards, VTC has worked on this and I remember that, in Prague, there were several sessions speaking about the public comment period discussing this, the length of it.  But also the timing in which the community was asked to comment.  I think you were present in a number of the sessions.  It seemed to be quite clear that a blackout period was required before an ICANN meeting because people are just, one, travelling, two preparing an enormous amount for this meeting.  Two, a blackout period after an ICANN meeting because everyone is so wasted.  And three, a blackout period during an ICANN meeting because everyone is in a tunnel and doesn’t see what is around them.

                                    Unfortunately, much to my dismay, this appears to have gone directly into the famous black hole that we’re very well knowledgeable about and we, therefore, have ended up with at least a dozen public comments sent in this week, today, tomorrow, the day after when we know that there will not even be any staff to neither file nor read the comments themselves with dates that have been taken up as entirely proprietary, I guess, and just pulled out of a hat.  Very disappointing.  What are you going to do about that?

David Olive:                   It’s not that we did not hear those comments. We did.  ICANN is a large complex organization and we’re going to try to sort that out.  We surely—the blackout periods, have to be carefully looked at.  What we surely did not want to do is have common periods—ending a common period during an ICANN meeting but to alert people to it even if it’s before the ICANN meeting starts or even during the ICANN meeting if the end date is 21 days or more beyond the end of the meeting, that’s just something for the calendar and it doesn’t require immediate action at that time thought I understand processes start. 

And so we’re still looking at and examining that really closely and there will be a review for the one-year period of this new process to see and determine, through the PPC, the changes we have.  We had to be careful of starting something that interferes with a lot of other inter-moving parts within ICANN and so I’m sorry to say, but we were cautious so that we wouldn’t hinder or block or cause a problem for the processes that are under their timetables.  But we’re sensitive to the fact that we have to have some sort of blackout period and much of that is not, of course, staff controlled. If a working group says this is not ready, go forth, it’s hard for us to say stop, you’ve got to wait three weeks. 

But until we get those rules set forth, and we’ll take that into account, we’ll try to be sensitive to the community’s time and the time that they need to take to have effective comments.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, David.  Do you feel roasted enough yet or a bit more?

David Olive:                   Not quite Joan of Arc but I’m okay.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    We still have a question from Alan and then afterwards, I think, we can probably move on and we’ll release you from your shackles.

Alan Greenberg:              A very quick comment on comment periods. When we started discussing that a while ago it wasn’t just a, “Don’t start, we’re entering ICANN,” it was the, “ICANN days don’t count.”  Because although we do happen to meet with our constituents on occasion, at least the GNSO have an opportunity to meet within stakeholder groups or constituencies, we, in general, do not. And in fact even teleconferences that might have helped them during ICANN probably don’t even happen.  So making the days disappear— now given that you’ve now elongated the minimum period to 42 days, adding an extra seven or eight or ten days is problematic, I understand.  But it needs to be thought about.  We have a huge number of comments that end within three or four days now and some of us are not going to work for the next three or four days. 

If you want us to live past that period—regarding the question that Evan raised on whether our comments are, in fact, representative and have we done due diligence, I think we have a dual problem.  Both of these problems were created for us and I think we need to all work together diligently to try to fix it.  The problems are, number one, we have a structure which is hierarchical.  There’s a level of expectation that we are consulting all the way down to the ALS’s and the ALS members are feeding their input back.  Of the arcane subjects that ICANN talks about in general, that is—I won’t use the word I would have used in a private meeting that isn’t being recorded but it’s unrealistic. 

So we have a set of expectations that just cannot happen.  One has suggested that perhaps the At-Large structure was set up to make sure it failed because one couldn’t come up—I couldn’t dream of one which was less likely to work.  And linked to that is the term “we represent users.”  I’ve said it at this meeting several times.  I’ll say it now.  I rarely send out one and a half billion emails and read all of the responses.  If I had I would probably be put in jail for spamming people.  We don’t represent the users.  We represent the interests of the users.  And that’s all we can ever do and I’m on a campaign to stop using words which people are going to which set expectations which are impossible to meet.  So yes we need to get better consultation within the ALS, RALOS structure as long as we’re stuck with it.  We need to do better.  We don’t do very well but we need to set reasonable expectations and the current words, including in the bylaws, I believe, are not setting reasonable expectations.  Thank you.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you very much, Alan, and David, thank you for joining us.  It’s been a very frank and interesting debate with you.  Any last words before we press the eject button?   Of course, Alan would have to delay us.  Alan.

Alan Greenberg:              These are my last words. I want to really thank David.  It is an absolute pleasure working with him and I won’t say it’s such a change from previous people because that reflects negatively but, David, you’re doing a marvelous job.  Thank you.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    And therefore, I think a round of applause.

David Olive:                   Thank you.  And I just would like to say that we talked earlier about the possibility of focusing on particular policy issues under consideration to do a special webinar for the At-Large and we can—it’s just it’s a scheduling problem.  But the real force and leadership is now behind me and I’ll let him take this hot seat.  Thank you very much for your time and attention.

Unidentified Participant:   Thank you, David.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, David.  And now joining us we have the Chair of the Board, Steve Crocker, who is joining us. And this is the first time that Steve joins us on our ExComm post-AGM session and post-closing of the meeting session.  So effectively, this is already starting the session after the closure of the meeting.  And this came up by discussion we had earlier this week where Steve was not aware that we had such a session and the challenge of being able to survive the questions and missiles and other things fired at you was something that caught his—he was interested in. 

So Steve, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us.   We have—it’s a recorded session.  It’s transcribed as well which is—so we set the rules but here we have a more informal session than throughout the week and we are very thankful that you’ve managed to come and see us.  Already several questions were fired at David who has managed to escape but we now hand the floor over to you.  Maybe I should let you start with a few introductions around what’s been going on this week and then I’ll open the floor for questions.

Steve Crocker:                I’ll just say thank you very much.  It’s a pleasure to be here.  I may well speak to it afterwards but at the moment it feels like a pleasure to be here.  So I’m here for you.  Whatever you want to discuss.  I’m wide open.  The week’s been an extraordinarily successful week.  A great team.  We’re extremely fortunate with Fadi with the way he stepped in to take over the staff and the changes that he’s made and the perceptions that he’s brought and he really does see what’s going on.  And his instinct, wherever there’s a problem internally, is to grab a hold of it and deal with it in a positive but firm way.  And his instinct in how to deal with anything that involves external parties is to embrace, to lean into it as opposed to distancing himself or distancing the organization.  So it’s been remarkable.  

And it’s—and the Board is working well.  And it’s been, kind of, a pleasure to be boosters and observers.  I have the mental image of getting out of the pit or out of the kitchen and going up to the balcony and watching the show.  So it’s a good time.  There will be challenges ahead but it’s been nice.

                                    I’ve made a practice not quite uniformed in my role as Chair of the Board.  The org chart says that the SOs and ACs are connected to the Board not directly to the staff.  That the staff has supporting roles but, in terms of the formal structure.  So taking that as something to pay attention to, I’ve tried to make—open up halfway for communication so Olivier and I have been having breakfast together early in the morning.  I won’t say exactly when or where but we get—so it’s not a substitute for anything but it’s helpful to share perceptions and helps me for sure to the extent that I can be helpful. I’m happy to do that.

                                    And I try to do that with others but it started, actually, first with Olivier and it’s been a nice practice and it’s been enjoyable, I think, for both of us.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Steve, and just for your information, the members of the Executive Committee are Carlton Samuels, Rinalia, Abdul Rahim, Tijani Ben Jemaa and Evan Leibovitch.  Others around the table are invited as observers.  It’s a very open session so they’re also very welcome to ask questions.

                                    We had a discussion a bit earlier with David Olive with regards to the Board response to the statements that the ALAC makes and not all statements, of course, are sent to the Board.  Some of them are, some of them are not.  But there’s no real set way in which the Board has or has not got to respond to the ALAC and also, in the way that the Board treats ALAC advice.  I felt, perhaps, to expand on this question would provide the gun to Evan Leibovitch to fire first salvo.

Evan Leibovitch:             This is candid.  I wouldn’t really want to use that kind of terminology up here.  Having said that, I think there’s a couple of issues that are on the go.  One of—some of them date back quite a way and they have to do with the way that ALAC information is transmitted to the Board.  And one case that stands in my mind very, very well is the Joint Applicant Support Group. Is that we had information about how we wanted to do a proposal of applicant support.  And there seemed to be, at least in my mind and in the minds of other people in the group and, Tijani, you can correct me or back me up, that the presentation that was made to the Board, didn’t necessarily reflect the work within the group.  And part of the problem is that we don’t know what we don’t’ know.  We don’t know that filter was given to our work before it was presented to the Board because we never saw what the Board received on our behalf.

Steve Crocker:                Who did the presentation?

Evan Leibovitch:             I’m pretty sure it was Curt.  In (inaudible).

Steve Crocker:                And so, more broadly, it came through staff.

Evan Leibovitch:             Correct.

Steve Crocker:                Right.

Evan Leibovitch:             And even just having some kind of transparency so we would see the staff presentation.  Not so that we can vet it and edit it and whatever.  But just so that we can be aware that it accurately portrays the information we wanted the Board to see.  And so there’s a feel of a disjoint.  So rather than ALAC and (inaudible) with a cross-community group, rather than having the information from that group go to the Board, there was a feeling that there was a filter being applied.  And Tijani can speak to that. 

                                    There’s another point or two about the way that we give information to the Board and I don’t know if you want to exhaust this one before I move on to the Black Hole effect. 

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Let’s first touch on this one.  It’s a problem that we have had in the past.  Of course, one also has to acknowledge that, since then, there have been changes to the way the Board works and certainly the material which the Board has in its hand during its meetings is not all published.  So the community is able to see at least some of the material that the Board has received.  And I think that was partly in response to a previous complaint that we had about this.  But perhaps is there more that the Board can do to reassure us that what they’re being told is what is being really said?

Steve Crocker:                You’ve got my full attention on this one.  I’m putting a couple of thoughts together in my mind.  Then I want to give a quite substantive and action-oriented response.  But I have a feeling there’s more to be said before I—

Tijani Ben Jemaa:           Thank you.  For the last working group, it seems that the Board don’t read the reports of ALAC but they read the paper prepared by the staff without reading this report. We discovered it later and it was what made us try to know what happened.  It was the position of the Board and (inaudible) and then we discovered that the paper prepared by the staff didn’t reflect at all the milestone report that we prepared by the (inaudible) working group.  So my—it’s not a question it’s perhaps a quest.  Is there a way to give us the format, the length, the way you want our report to be done so that you read them directly other than the paper prepared by the staff?

Steve Crocker:                You’re far too differential and polite and I’m going to give you a pretty strong response because this touches a chord.  And because I think it’s very important and I want to emphasize it.  I want to draw a slightly bigger picture. 

                                    The Board is fully engaged at the moment in a discussion with the GAC about how GAC advice is to be formulated and dealt with and so forth.  And you may be watching or not but all that is pretty dismal. 

                                    Separately, I chaired the advisory committee for a number of years and, when we were first organized, one of the important issues on the minds of the initial set of people was what degree of input they would have from the rest of the organization.  And a personal note, when ASAC was organized, there was a number of—most of the committee was recruited and then I was asked if I would chair it.  So I inherited a well-formed group.  And so I gave that a moment’s thought.  I said “Oh, if I’m going to lead this group, the first thing I’m going to do is get their attention and approval that it’s okay for me to be their leader.”  So I had individual discussions, one-on-one with each of the people who were recruited.  And they were all different and said different things but there was one thing that got said over and over again and these were independent (inaudible). And the basic message that was common was, “We think security is important.  We don’t mind or are willing to be part of this.  We have great suspicion about ICANN as a political organization.  We don’t want to get too wound up in it so we need this degree of independence.” 

So we—it was clear that we had to draw a line and make it clear, if only for our own sense of purpose and being, that we were going to speak and speak what was on our mind and that it wasn’t going to get filtered by anybody.  And we would speak to the Board because that’s what it was, the formality, but we would also speak to the community.

                                    Out of that you will have seen a series of reports that are called the ASAC reports.  They’re labeled SAC and they have numbers and so forth.  Those documents come out of that committee and are not controlled or written by staff.  There’s staff assistance and the staff assistance is enormously important because it’s a bunch of volunteers versus (inaudible) but the content and the tone and the messages, the nuances, are all worked over by the volunteers who are in that committee.  

While I was chairing SSAC over a period of years and growing it from a disorganized and, sort of, an intermittent operation to getting staff and getting it more orderly,  I watched ALAC go through a similar process.  And I found myself extremely impressed with the growth and maturation process in ALAC. And Cheryl and I used to compare notes and I found myself learning from some of the things that ALAC did.  So we were in separate but somewhat parallel ways, both going through this maturation process.  And, as I say, I have viewed ALAC as a leader that I could learn from.

                                    But I have labored to say all of that so that I can now say the following.  You need to take control of your messages.  I would say, straight out, start your own document series.  Publish your documents and don’t have any hesitancy to do that and put your stamp on it; put your label on it and be forthright about that.  That’s one big piece of what I want to say.

                                    I want to say another thing which is related but distinguishable.  I referred to the Board as grappling with the mechanics and processes associated with GAC advice.  GAC advice is a term of art.  It’s embedded in the bylaws and, because it’s the GAC, it sort of has a different status and, even if it didn’t, they think it does so that has a certain reality to it. 

I think that the next step along the way for the Board and for the, certainly the advisory committees and perhaps the SOs as well, is the development of processes and procedures and practices that take this process of providing advice and regularizing it so that there’s the answer to your question—what’s the format, how do we do it is worked out and everybody knows what to do and documented and, speaking from my position as Chair of the Board, the Board—I’m pushing the Board very hard to develop practices and procedures and documents so that the business cycle of all of that is put in place.  Something that I’ve been a little unhappy about and one of the first things I said is we’ve got to document the Board processes and we have not yet succeeded in doing that.  We have some lightweight memos but a Board Procedures Manual and I have avoided using the other P word, Policies.  I’m not suggesting anything having to do with policies. It’s just the practical business of making sure we have good communication, that we know what to do. All the judgment and sensitive things, you’ve got to get the basics of the communication going back and forth. 

                                    So I am deeply empathetic with the anecdote hat you described of staff presented your thoughts in ways that you think didn’t capture it.  Then I can tell you, since I was there, that, on the receiving side, that we were not at all happy with what we got because it was hastily prepared, it was presented without proper notice and put us in an awkward position of now what do we do with all that?  And so it was equally unsatisfactory on the receiving side.  A broken process.  And that’s the bad news.

The good news is it’s a trivial fix—not trivial but easy to fix.  This conversation is—brings it up to the level of, “Okay, and now we know exactly what to do.”  So don’t ask.  It’s almost a variation of don’t ask forgiveness, don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness later or whatever.  Do it.  Write your reports.  Get your—figure out how you want to present it and, on our side, absolutely, we will build a pathway in which we have a formal acknowledgement of receipt and which goes into a tracking process.  We will allocate the resources to read and respond.  We’ll get staff help to do an analysis.  We’ll get staff help to do various other things but what we will be very careful about is to make sure that we do not get the staff implicitly transforming what you’re trying to say. You may tell us things that are completely infeasible.  That are wishfulness.  That’s fine.  We’ll tell you that we’re not going to do it.  But what you don’t want and what we don’t want is for somebody in the middle to say, let’s do it this way and so forth, and have that all be sub rosa. 

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Steve.  Alan?

Alan Greenberg:              Thank you.  That comes to a very closely related subject.  At one point every ALAC output, no matter how trivial a public comment it was, was sent to the Board. We got messages back real quick but they didn’t really care about the things that were purely in the implementation phase, in the interim phase, and commenting on it.

Steve Crocker:                Well, how did you get such messages?

Alan Greenberg:              Many Board members would tell us that one piece of paper or one three-page document a week about a subject that wasn’t anywhere near what the Board was discussing (inaudible)

Steve Crocker:                So that’s another thing I’ve been working on is to make sure that the interactions and discussions and the preparations that are all done well in advance of the time with something put on the formal agenda for the Board.  In the past, we’ve had Board meetings—telephonic Board meetings that have gone on for hours and, when you dig back and figure out why, it’s because somebody raised a new issue that should not have needed to be—that should have been dealt with earlier and so we’re off to the races in a detailed discussion.  Meanwhile it’s 3:00 a.m. for somebody around the world and we’re having this late night discussion.  That’s really broken so I put my foot down and said let’s have those discussions earlier.  By the time it comes to the Board for resolution and we’re not ready, then we’ll take it off the agenda and we’ll just take whatever time it takes to have those discussions.

                                    How does that relate to the public comment period?  I don’t know exactly.  I’m not sure that having ALAC contribute to the public comment as if it were a general member of the public.  There ought to be some substantial recognition for the structure and continuity and depth of the existence of this organization and the fact that, by the time that you prepare comment, it’s not a single person but it is a considered piece of judgment.  That’s not a promise that we’ll do everything that you say, just because it’s ALAC and you said it but there ought to be, in my mind, something that raises the visibility of that.  And I’m open to any mechanism that is mutually satisfactory and, as I said, there’s no reason why this has to be filtered through staff.  There’s no reason why it has to be lost in the morass of everything else that goes on.

Alan Greenberg:              Let me be clear because I think we’re talking about different things.  I was referring to if a GNSO working group or drafting team comes out with a preliminary version and asks the public what do you think about this, the ALAC will often say we disagree with this direction or something like that.  It’s not a Board issue.  It’s way, way, way below a Board issue.    And at one point, all of those documents were going to the Board.

Steve Crocker:                Well, going to the Board won’t do much at that point.  Maybe we’ll get a copy and maybe we won’t but the GNSO needs to pay attention.  My recollection is that there is a bylaw requirement for—maybe it’s related but maybe not (inaudible)—advisory committees have, for the GNSO, the statutory ability to trigger a policy development process, if I recall correctly. 

Alan Greenberg:              Yes we do and we have—I’m talking way below that level.  I’m talking it’s something that maybe really—you spelt a world wrong.  At one point those documents were all going to the Board.  We have now stopped and said things that are advice to the Board, either on a formal comment period or that we think the Board is ignoring something that we think is important, those are the ones that are going to the Board now.

Steve Crocker:                I think you guys are in the best position to look at the whole landscape and say, “We need a mechanism to do the following.  We need a different mechanism to do the following.”  How do you engage with the GNSO, CCNSO, the GAC, whatever?  Not that you need to replicate the pattern that we did at SSAC but we identified three levels of documents, reports, advisories, and comments and labeled things that way.  And that was a system that we put in place as a way of expressing ourselves.  But I would recommend, and I know that you guys have the institutional strength now and organizational wherewithal to sit down and say, “If that’s what we want to do, we could just do this and we’ll have a formal mechanism.”  And if you’re getting ignored, go tap on somebody and say, “We’re working very hard to do our part.  What is the problem?”  And if you’re tapping on my shoulder with respect to the Board, we’ve had this interaction.  If you’re concern is the GNSO’s not paying attention to you or somebody else and if they genuinely continue not to pay any attention, then you can come separately, come and chat with me and we’ll get there.

Alan Greenberg:              Sure.  One more sentence.  You’ve answered the question I was going to ask.  I didn’t get around to asking yet.  The real question was we have been regularly told don’t send the Board big documents.  People are not likely to read it.  Summarize things.  But your answer of let’s divide them into different categories of advisories, reports, whatever, I think that may be the right answer and that really addresses issues of length and focus.

Steve Crocker:                One of the cleanest work examples recently is SSAC wrote a document commenting on the “Who is review team report,” and raised some serious big questions and it’s getting a lot of attention.  It’s not a one or two-page document.  If you’re going to write a big document, write an executive summary and use the usual tools for making it efficient to understand.  But I wouldn’t back away from saying whatever you want to say in whatever depth and with whatever force.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Steve.  We have a long queue but I was just going to jump into the queue by touching on something you have said just now.  But you’ve also mentioned it several times during the week.  Which is by the time the issue reaches the Board, it should be at its tail end.  The discussions on policy issues, generally, today are centered around GTLD issues and take place in the GNSO and the GNSO council.  The ALAC is outside of that.  We are inside the process through some of our individual members that do—sorry, some of our members who individually work in working groups et cetera, et cetera but the policies themselves that the GNSO develops is something entirely GNSO-centered.  And as an advisory committee, we have very little else to do when the GNSO does the wrong thing and I guess we could say that—or we believe that the GNSO does the wrong thing, than to come to you.  And what happens then?  Essentially, in one sentence, what happens when the community does not find consensus?

Steve Crocker:                Yes, there’s a key thing that either I don’t know or I’m not remembering or whatever.  The GNSO thinks of itself as owning the policy process for GTLDs.  Others, not obviously including ALAC, but certainly others, think that they too should have a role in some of these things.  What I don’t know but I think it’s important and I apologize for not being—paying a lot of attention to this—what is that method of engagement?  And if there is a gulf that exists that shouldn’t exist, then it’s time to have the discussion about reorganizing or about making some adjustment about who’s allowed to come to the table.  Versions of that are already taking place.  The recognition that large number of new GTLDs is going to cause structural change of some sort is one avenue in but the more basic thing is who gets a seat at the table to have these discussions?  Who has to be listened to?  I don’t have a quick answer for you but I do believe that it’s a vital question, not a small question at all.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Rinalia.

Rinalia Abdul Rahim:      Thank you, Mr. Chairman.  Rinalia Abdul Rahim for the transcript record.  Steve, I’d like to highlight an organizational dilemma and it was touched upon in the questions that preceded my intervention which is about staff influence and in the process of I10.  And the dilemma is this.  In all organizations that are international or, well, any kind of organization, there is a fear of bureaucratic influence and this is established.  It’s been studied and it does exist.  In public policy they call it the budget maximizing bureaucrat.  That’s, sort of, like the orientation that they position themselves in. 

Now in terms of trying to address the issue areas of ICANN, staff has a particular role.  It sends out information and, in the GNSO, the policy development process is triggered by the preparation of an Issues Report.  And that is prepared by staff if I understand it.  Now that in itself could contain certain biases or not.  I’m not going to discuss that here.  But anyone who understands the process will say, okay, it comes from staff but we take our own take on that process and we will highlight the issues that we are concerned with. 

Before you, David Olive was here and asked him, is it possible for staff to actually do some analysis for the At-Large because I thought this was going to be done for GAC to facilitate their early engagement in the policy development process of the GNSO.  Because I thought that this would actually accelerate and intensify or deepen our consultation with our community because the public comment period is so short and it’s hard for us to go down to the regional level and up again with such (inaudible) comments.  So if we had something that could trigger that immediately, then we could have our own take as a response rather than take up volunteer energy which all of us put in full time work and it’s difficult.  I just wanted to flag that.  Thank you.

Steve Crocker:                Yes, so there’s a nice clean line between Board and staff and I must not take the very attractive possibility of saying yes, we should do that, and start to give orders.  But we can and we should transmit this message and ask that, to examine how best to support the model that you’re putting forth, that there be issue paper that supports ALAC and supports the engagement of the different layers and levels and regions and so forth. 

                                    Again, let me encourage you to lay out how you’d like things to work as if you have the authority and the privilege and stature to speak in those terms, then it will be so.  And it is the advisory committees and the SOs that are the primary drivers and the staff is in a supporting position rather than a controlling position.  It’s intentionally different from a lot of the international organizations and yet, as you say, and I fully agree and we can see examples, there is a natural tendency of staff to, sort of, take things on and put things in their own terms and drive things. And we have the tension between having very, very good people, legitimately very good people in the Policy Support Department and throughout the rest of ICANN and, at the same time, need to be vigilant about where the control points are, where the decisions are made, where those judgments are.  I’ve had to deal with that from SSAC point of view in certain kinds of cases and I think that’s just part of the overhead of having—dealing with people and dealing with the organizational structures. 

Wouldn’t make too much of it but I wouldn’t back away from the need to do it so you guys are in charge.  You are the equivalent of a major piece of—if this were a corporate environment, you’d want to be operational arms of it and the Chair of ALAC is the equivalent of, like, a General Manager or a Vice President in a big organization and ought to command the authority, the respect, the resources and get things to work and put the pieces together. 

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Steve.   I think the dichotomy is when we’re as if staff is being criticized for influencing the advice that we provide to the Board, staff could equally be criticized for influencing the issues that reach the ALAC.  It starts with any kind of pre-churning of issues.  I see that Rinalia is ready to jump.

Rinalia Abdul Rahim:      Thank you, Mr. Chairman. How do I say this?  It is understood that when staff issues advice or reports that it comes with a particular point of view and it is up to the community to take a look at it with a grain of salt and accept it in terms of whether or not it really pertains to our interest.  I’m just saying that it is a starting point in which we can respond on the issue and we have to manage it somehow because it’s not manageable at this point in time.

Steve Crocker:                Let me just say, particularly with the staff present here, the staff is very earnest in trying to do the right job.  They’re not—it is not their picture of themselves that they’re in charge and the rest of us are all in the way and we’re just an annoyance that has to be managed.  So I think that if we reach the right balance here, they will like it too.  They really want the system to work.  They want to do their portion of the job to be facilitating and, if there is an imbalance, it could easily reflect a vacuum which, if you fill it, they will fit into the mold that you design.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Steve.  I’ll continue in the queue or, Heidi, did you just wish to?

Heidi Ullrich:                 Yes, just a comment.  This is Heidi.  Just a possibility of rather than doing AC-specific policy advice which, again, I am somewhat concerned that there will be, maybe not from ALAC but from other community members that there would be staff influence there.  A bias.  So I’m proud of the fact that At-Large staff have been, historically, not accused of that.  So one possible solution would be when a public comment is published, a key public comment or one that affects all ACs and SOs that, perhaps, a webinar could be set up for all ACs and SOs to hear about how that policy, what the main points of that policy are et cetera.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you very much.  Do you wish to continue on this?  Okay Rinalia, back to you.

Rinalia Abdul Rahim:      Thank you.  Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Heidi, thank you.  That is a very good recommendation but my point is and I’m looking at the interests of the At-Large in particular, is that I would like some research and analysis on the issues, particularly from the point of view of the end user community which would help us in terms of figuring out how relevant it is.  And okay, it’s fine, if we have conflicting views in the community.  All I’m saying is that I think it would really help in our consultation in coming up with statements.  Thank you.

Heidi Ullrich:                 Rinalia, thank you again.  Very valuable. But I think, again, you are the community.  You are the experts in how to represent the interests of the end user.  So I’m happy to say we could work together on that.  So if you set up webinars, set up calls with particular people who are sending out that public comment or that policy issues; but we’re not policy experts in terms from staff.  And again, just to stress that it’s you, the community, the At-Large community that are the experts.

Steve Crocker:                Let me recommend that you take a specific example, work through what happened versus what you would have like to have happened if you’re looking at the past.  Or for something coming up, how you’d like it handled versus the way it would appear to be handled going forward. I think of one or two concrete examples will provide a basis for having the rest of this conversation and then choosing how to restructure and build the right pathways and do all that.  Then we’ve reached the end of having enough information on the table that we can deal with in this setting.  But the main take away ought to be that if this is broken, it certainly needs to be fixed.  And that it shouldn’t really be super hard because, I think, the basic orientation and the posture is very much in line with what you want and so it would then would shift into how do we make it work and how do we make the assignments rather than having to argue about whether it does or doesn’t happen?.  Let’s just remodel the house.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Evan.

Evan Leibovitch:             Given that there’s a hard stop in five minutes, maybe I should have said this first rather than last.  I’m going to take it to a really high level and, at the risk of sounding a bit presumptuous, I’d like to ask you how do we deal with something where the Board sends out a request to the community and we think it’s asking the wrong question?  This has happened twice recently on some things that are fairly important and I made a note of two examples.  One of which was the Red Cross IOC issue on which ALAC is—being presumptuous to speak, almost unanimously in saying that these things should have been split up and it was a real big mistake to lump them in together.  And so this has tainted the way the GNSO looks at it and it’s tainted the way we’ve been able to react.

                                    The other one was the request to create the Consumer Choice Trust Innovation or whatever that committee is called.  The request that came down from the Board to check those metrics and create those metrics constrained that committee in a way that the committee members said we’ve got this little window to work in and measuring consumer choice and innovation outside that window is outside our scope so we won’t even address it.  From an At-Large point of view or at least the point of view that I had going into that committee, that constrains that to the point where it ends up being an exercise in self-justification as opposed to looking at a bigger picture.  And so is there a mechanism, when the Board asks something for the community, that we can go back and say, “Could you have done that question a little better when you sent it to the community,” because sometimes the nature of the question, biases the answer ahead of time.

Steve Crocker:                Yes, of course.  So two things.  The first thing, but not quite the most important but the first thing that comes to mind is yes, you can say and you should say if you feel it’s appropriate, you are asking the wrong question.  Following is what’s wrong with it.  There’s assumptions built in that are the wrong assumptions and take the time to play out why you think it’s the wrong one.  What the implicit assumptions are.  Why the things that are put the way they are, are the wrong things. 

                                    The second thing and I don’t want this to get lost at all is it’s almost always the case and it’s particularly the case in the first, I don’t remember what the details were in the Consumer Choice and competition (inaudible) but I certainly know where the IOC and Red Cross question came from and you do too.  This was a demand, sorry, advice from the GAC and what we were doing, not quite as cleanly expressed as we will in the future, but what we were doing was cross-checking the advice given to us with considerable emphasis by the GAC with inputs—we wanted inputs from the community and consequences and so forth. 

So the second piece of what I want to say is in looking at things that you think are the wrong things coming, and you may well want to blame the Board but you should also look behind that and understand where it came from and account for that as part of what you say.  So to say the Board asked the wrong question about the Red Cross and the IOC, I would say that you would—you should, if you want to be effective, you should say we recognize that this came from the GAC.  And further, we recognize that the GAC viewed these as the same and further, we recognize that the GAC simply views those as the same because they are treating these as a class of treaty-based organizations which are distinct from others. 

I did a little white board sketch trying to get up to speed on what all this stuff was about and there are international governmental organizations, IGOs.  There are NGOs of a wide variety.  And so the question in my mind was, during this conversation, was so what class are the Red Cross and the IOC.  They’re not inter-governmental organizations.  They are NGOs but they are special NGOs so, without wanting to have this terms be socialized, they were, kind of, like super NGOs.  So you wound up with three classes: super NGOs, IGOs and regular NGOs.  What you’re suggesting is that this small class that consists, as far as I know, of two, mainly the Red Cross and the IOC.  You want to split further and say, they’re not the same.  They need to be treated differently.  That’s not an easy case to make given the context of what just happened.  So if you’re going to make the case, you need to account for the fact that that dialog already took place, not just say that we disagree.

Evan Leibovitch:             I understand.  It’s just to put us in an awkward situation because it was an all or nothing and that’s what made it divisive.  I don’t think you’ll find any disagreements here about the Red Cross.  There was a wide disagreement about the IOC.

Steve Crocker:                As I say, you are entirely welcome to say it and would invite you to say it but, in order to be effective in that conversation, you need to come up to the level of what the required dialog is and account for all that, and then you have a bit of a challenge to try to get the attention and cause a change of thinking there, which you may or may not succeed at, but in any case, the minimum is to take that all into account otherwise you run the risk of being dismissed out of hand for not having coming up to speed on the—

Evan Leibovitch:             I understand the prospects with the proviso that by the time it gets to that level, that we know what’s going on with that.  It’s probably too late to change the question. 

Steve Crocker:                Maybe.  Maybe not.  A little hard to know.  One of the reasons why we ask is to find out whether the picture that’s in front of us is the right picture.  We’re doing due diligence when we ask that question and we do want to actually hear that.  As I said, we didn’t phrase it in exactly those terms.  I’m working on that. 

                                    The other side of it is, the GAC says why are you going asking all these people?  We told you what the answer is.  You turned it over to the GNSO for a policy development process.  What does that make us?  Chopped liver?   We told you what to do. 

And so we’ve got the other side of that to balance.  “No, no, we’re not ignoring you. We’re not starting a policy development process, we’re just doing due diligence on understanding what it was.”  And so we need to straighten out, sort of, the tone of what we’re asking and where it fits into the position.  But the reason why we ask is so that we’re not just in the position of passing messages back and forth and not knowing what we’re doing.  And so if it’s genuinely the case that the IOC ought to be treated differently from the Red Cross and I’m not taking a position on that but I’m just saying, if that’s the point that you want to make, then make that point and put us in the position of having to make that judgment of coming back to the GAC and saying, “Well, we’ll give you one but not two.” And all hell will break loose but if that’s the choice that we have to make, then we’ll do it.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Okay, thank you, Steve.  Realizing that we are about to get cut off from the Internet et cetera, very soon, I’ll have one last question or comment from Jean Jacques Subrenat. 

Jean Jacques Subrenat:      Thank you, Olivier.  I really appreciate the possibility of saying this as I’m not a member of the Executive Committee but I’m seated here.  I’d like to make a general remark to Steve.  I was on the Board.  Now I’m starting my second term of two years on the ALAC.  It gives me double vantage point of perspective on all this but I must say that we are entering a new season to take a term that was used by Fadi.  For instance, the way the CEO was recruited.  This was very ably done.  I’m not sure that, in a different atmosphere, the previous atmosphere, the previous Board and all that, before you became the chair, it would have been possible because so many questions were approached in a contentious mood and you have created a sense of trust within the Board, I am told, and also between the Board and all the other elements of ICANN that has made this possible.  Of course, there was also the talent of George Sadosky and his team in the recruitment process but I think that this element of trust was badly damaged for a few years and you have really changed this.  So I wanted to underline that. 

                                    And my last point is that, because there is an element of renewed trust now, I think that the way forward which has been indicated by you and by Fadi is of great importance.  In other words, to be more issue driven rather than structure or constituency or process-driven.  Very well, process, yes, that’s very important, but not so much structure driven.  So I’m looking forward to that for a new period within ICANN as a member of the ALAC.  Thank you.

Steve Crocker:                I treasured your participation on the Board and always enjoyed your erudition and depth of thinking and so I’m quite humbled and appreciative of your comments.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you very much, Steve, and finally, one last mention which is that of the R3 paper which you might have heard about making ICANN more respected.  Just a few words.  Jean Jacques?

Jean Jacques Subrenat:      Thank you for giving that opportunity.  Evan and I as co-chairs of the Future Challenges Working Group have suggested to Olivier, our chair, to send a letter to you making our white paper, the R3 white paper, an ALAC advice.  And he’s been taken up by a whole lot of other things but he promised that he would be doing this in the coming days or weeks, I suppose days.  So this is just to announce this and we’re very happy that it has become a white paper.  Thank you.

Steve Crocker:                And I was trying to remember exactly, we received it I think we formally acknowledged receiving it although I’m a little unclear about it.  Let me circle back.  As a matter of form, when we receive an SSAC document, it comes with a cover letter that says we’re hereby forwarding it to you.  The liaison does that as a matter of form but it doesn’t matter, it could come from the chair equally well. 

We note it and we respond to it and feel obliged to treat it as an action item one way or another.  And indeed, even to the point of suggesting that a useful pattern would be that, not only should they send us the report, but they should also send the suggested actions that they want us to take so that the optimum thing is we really didn’t say yes, we agree with you and we’ll do these actions and we just are in the position of taking that and passing it on and saying this is so.  It’s not for me to tell you exactly how to do so but I can tell you that, if you did that, if there was a, kind of, recorded sequence or numbered set of actions just from a purely bureaucratic point from of view, we did treat it that way and some of what we’re stumbling over and not getting attention would just naturally, sort of, be forced into getting attention.

Jean Jacques Subrenat:      That’s in Olivier’s hands.  The draft he has, I sent it to you, includes some suggestions between now and Beijing.

Steve Crocker:                I don’t want to impose the same structure on everything but the high point of my life was this silly trick of having a number of RFCs and I seem to keep inventing that idea and saying well, this works here and this works here.  But anyway, to the extent that it resonates, it will certainly get attention on our side. 

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Okay, well with time already having been passed by nine minutes, I think it’s time for us to close and thank you very much for joining us, Steve Crocker. 

Steve Crocker:                Thank you.  Thank you for inviting me.  Thank you.  It is a pleasure to be here as I anticipated it would but I can report, based upon facts.  And I hope this was substantive and meaningful, not just (inaudible).  Anyway, again.

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    Thank you, Steve.  And I hope that we can repeat this again in next, future ICANN meetings.

Steve Crocker:                I’m available. 

Olivier Crepin-Leblond:    And with this, I declare this meeting closed.  Thank you everyone and have a safe flight home.  We’ve reviewed the action items already yesterday so this is off the agenda.