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History of the ICANN at Large Idea
Work in progress
- The Boston Working Group
- The ICANN Bylaws
(The origin of the "appropriate membership mechanisms" clause is historically pertinent. The Commerce Department was persuaded by a group of expert critics, the Boston Working Group, to insert this clause. It was seen as a necessary check on the power of a private corporation that controls a key part of the information infrastructure. One of the Boston Working Group members, Karl Auerbach, became one of the dissident board members elected through the democratic experiment that resulted from the clause. He has subsequently challenged many of the organization's seamy procedures and made it harder for the old boys' club to roll along as it had before.)
- Bylaw changes
Here is a link to ICANN's Original Bylaws (adopted November 6,1998) and
the latest iteration (approved February 12, 2002) side-by-side, so you can
see how its structure has changed over the past three years.
This is on Ellen Rony's site
This way it's easy to spot the changes in approach to membership (Article II) and word usage
from "Election" to "Selection".
- MAC1 (Membership Advisory Committee)
- MAC2
- The Board Resolutions in Cairo
- The first signup of members.
- The first Global at Large Elections of the year 2000. the original 143,806 registered At Large members / the 76,183 authenticated members, the 34,035 members-who-managed-to-vote
- Major Comments on the ALSC report
The END?
Open Letter to the Global Internet Community (Dave Farber, Peter G. Neumann, and Lauren Weinstein )
The ICANN Board's Evolution and Reform Committee's recommendation
5. At Large Advisory Committee.
We appreciate the hard work of the Assistance Group on this subject, led by Denise Michel and Esther Dyson. We welcome their recommendations, and we encourage broad public comment on them. The following are some initial specific comments on the Assistance Group recommendations:
1. We agree with the Assistance Group that the "establishment of an ALAC should be viewed as a critical first step towards structured involvement of the individual user community in ICANN and, in particular, towards a formalized role in ICANN's policy development process that ensures [individual] users' views are taken into account." This has always been a goal of the ICANN effort, and it remains one of the unfinished pieces of organizational business for ICANN. We recommend the creation of an ALAC as the most effective way to begin this process.
2. We note that the ALAC proposed by the Assistance Group is a somewhat complicated – but we believe achievable – undertaking. While we appreciate that some of the initial organizational work has already been done, there is a very long way to go from the presently available narrative and a diagram to a truly workable structure that can provide meaningful and informed input to the ICANN process. Thus, we believe that we should proceed with small steps rather than giant leaps, all the while with the understanding that what we begin with today will likely evolve into the finished product. Just as we have seen with the Supporting Organizations, which in the reformed ICANN will look (and perform) very differently from the original versions, the ALAC we start with will likely mature into a different structure. For that progress to be steady and positive, we should begin with manageable steps.
3. For these reasons, we will likely recommend that the initial ALAC be appointed by the Board, and that the members of the ALAC Assistance Group be included in those initial appointments. We are not as sanguine as the Assistance Group that this complicated structure can be functional immediately, and yet we do agree that there must be a focus for immediate and continued progress. Given the significant efforts to date by the Assistance Group, their appointment to an Interim ALAC seems suitable and appropriate. It may also be appropriate for the Board to augment that group with additional appointments, with an eye toward encouraging continued progress toward a stable permanent structure. We are open to other suggestions as to how to populate the initial ALAC without imposing cumbersome and time-consuming processes.
4. We will likely recommend that the ALAC appoint a liaison to the Board. Like other liaisons appointed by ICANN Advisory Committees, the ALAC liaison should initially be non-voting. By this, we do not mean to dismiss forever the possibility that the ALAC (or some other appropriate At Large entity) could eventually select voting members of the ICANN Board. As the ALAC matures, or if and when at-large elections become practicable, the appropriate vehicles for the expression of the views and interests of the general individual user segment of the community can be reconsidered.
5. As explained earlier, we also accept the recommendation that the ALAC, once properly organized and functioning, should select five delegates (one by each ICANN regional council, as proposed by the Assistance Group) to the Nominating Committee. Until these regional councils are functional and operative, we invite the ALAC Assistance Group or other members of the community to propose how some or all of these delegates could be selected until such time as the ALAC is operational and has shown that it can function effectively.
6. We are not persuaded that the ALAC should appoint liaisons to the Supporting Organization Councils or other Advisory Committees, at least at this time. We do not see the need or desirability for this added complication to the ICANN structure, nor is it consistent with the progressive build-up approach that we believe the evolution of the ALAC should follow. This can be reconsidered in the future.
7. We believe that the most critical step in creating a functioning and effective ALAC is establishing the criteria to be applied in admitting members to the ALAC, and in the processes for selecting members of the ALAC itself. We endorse the notion of local, self-supporting structures, and we remain interested in seeing how this notion will be implemented. We would also welcome additional community comments on this issue in particular.
8. While we believe we understand the rationale for the bottom-up structure suggested by the Assistance Group, the Board will no doubt be interested in seeing how this structure is implemented. We generally agree with the notion of using a MOU approach to the certification of the Regional At Large Organizations, and look forward to suggestions as to what that MOU should contain from both the members of the Assistance Group and the community at large. We also agree with the proposal of the Assistance Group that each Regional At Large Council should appoint two members of the ALAC, and that the NomCom should name one additional member from each region. This would result in an ALAC of 15 members, 10 selected by the Regional Councils, and five by the NomCom.
9. We agree that individual at large entities should meet some "accreditation" standard, and we find the criteria and standards recommended by the Assistance Group to be an attractive list. We would be interested in community comments on how that "accreditation" should be implemented. Our tentative view is that, at least initially, a group appointed by the ICANN Board should do any such “accreditation”, but we welcome other suggestions as well.
10. We are not persuaded that ICANN should reimburse ALAC members' travel costs to ICANN meetings. We appreciate that funding is an issue for all individuals and organizations, but do not believe that it would be appropriate to fund travel costs for one set of Advisory Committee members and not for the participants in other ACs and SOs. We do agree that the ALAC should have sufficient ICANN staff support to effectively carry out its operations, and will so recommend.
In this context, we intend to recommend that the reformed ICANN generally set for itself the goal to depend less critically on face-to-face interactions in physical meetings, and make it progressively easier and more effective for individuals to participate at a distance with no significant disadvantage.
We encourage community comment on this discussion, and on the entire set of Assistance Group recommendations generally.
Your comments are welcome in the Forum.
Last update 14 April, 2003. Questions, proposals or feedback about the website can be directed to the webmaster.
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