Business Constituency comment on ICANN 2015 Op Plan and Budget

[Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Below are comments from the Business Constituency (BC) regarding ICANN's 2015 
Operating Plan and Budget:

The BC understands that with the new gTLD program in particular, addition of 
staff is required to provide the services required for compliance, contracting, 
support to the TM Clearing Center and URS, etc. We also recognize that 
additional staff are being added into other groups, such as the Global 
Stakeholders Group.

It is the view of BC that as ICANN expands, it should do so responsibly, taking 
into consideration community requests and recommendations and following due 
diligence such as critical needs analysis before recruitment.

We note that in several instances there have been requests from the 
Stakeholders specific to support and enhancement of their work. These requests 
have been funded consistently at less than the Stakeholders have recommended, 
with the usual explanation that there is not funding available in the budget 
for further support.  At the same time, it appears that funding for staff 
initiatives related to or overlapping to Stakeholder requests seems to be 
growing significantly.

The BC considers the installation of enterprise system architecture a step in 
the right direction, but would like to know the savings projection the system 
architecture will provide.


These comments were drafted by Jimson Olufuye and Marilyn Cade, and approved in 
accord with our charter.

-
Steve DelBianco
Vice chair for policy coordination
ICANN Business Constituency