ALAC response
[This comment posted by ICANN's General Manager of Public Participation on behalf of ICANN's Chief Financial Officer.] The attached ALAC statement dated 12 May 2009, in response to the FY10 Operating Plan and Framework was received by email on 15 May 2009. Although too late to be considered in the draft FY10 Operating Plan and Budget posted on 17 May 2009, an earlier, but essentially the same, draft of this document was received by email on 5 May 2009 which was considered in the draft FY10 Operating Plan and Budget. ALAC and all stakeholders are encouraged to comment on the draft FY10 Operating Plan and Budget and post those comments prior to the 17 June 2009 deadline. The following comments, not originally included in the summary of comments received, should be included in the summary. Those reviewing the summary are requested to consider the following additional points. * A major awareness and education campaign across the existing At-Large community should be undertaken directly in order to improve awareness of ICANN issues and their relevance to Internet end users. * Funding of an adequate and timely education campaign for Internet end users related to IDNs should be included in the next budget and involve existing At-Large Structures integrally. * Advance communications initiatives preceding each International Meeting should be put in place in collaboration with the region’s At-Large community to increase awareness of ICANN meetings and their importance. * ALSes efforts to reach the grassroots communities in their areas should be supported by ICANN. * More translations are essential – without them ICANN’s legitimacy is in question. Multilingual transcriptions and translations of ICANN's documents are crucial for the international community. We believe that optimization of translations is desirable. We therefore suggest that a mechanism allowing the ALSes to be actively involved in the process of translation of documents that are important to be displayed in other languages (the UN official languages) be collaboratively developed. ALSes with their capacities and skills in ICANN matters could be considered as a possible translating resource, and to have the opportunity to step into the translation cycle with all the responsibilities of a third party translator. RALOs could help in identifying the documents which need to be translated and process this information to ICANN. * ICANN’s processes need to respect cultural as well as linguistic diversity. This requires a more globally distributed staff, organs, and activities of the organisation. More activities should be managed from outside of the USA. * The At-Large Community identifies several areas where transparency should be further improved. To date, ICANN has not been able to provide financial information about the costs of each ICANN entity, including ALAC itself, or for specific At-Large projects. Consequently ALAC has not been able to undertake its own cost-benefit analysis and budgetary planning. Indeed, At-Large is not yet included explicitly in the ICANN’s FY2010 Operating Plan and Budget. * Create budgetary allocation for expenditure by ALAC and its constituent RALOs, for agreed activities, including accountability. Account for expenditures made by, or on behalf of, ALAC and its constituent members. * The responsibilities of each person in charge of an area of ICANN should be clearly stated and the effectiveness of each should be the subject of periodic public evaluation. * External audits of the efficacy of compliance activities should be undertaken. ICANN should instigate a study of how the implementation of DNSSec might harm some network implementations, such as WiFI hotspots. ICANN should support industry more in accommodating DNSSec more securely. * ALAC believes that the introduction of IDNs is a major step in the evolution of the Internet. As such, it deserves from ICANN a focused public awareness information campaign * The funding of an adequate and timely public information campaign in collaboration with At-Large Structures should be included in the next budget. In order to execute an efficient information campaign, ICANN should consult regional ALSes for the most effective ways to reach communities and end users. * In order to guarantee effective results, we wish to insist once more upon the need for a face-to-face At-Large meeting in each region once a year. Attachment:
AL-ALAC-ST-0509-1-Rev2 Budget and Operating Plan FrameworkPC Advisory - EN.pdf |