Comment on Travel Support
I find the proposed Travel Support Procedure document to be less than satisfactory. As Avri mentioned, the Review of Current Travel Support makes no mention of NomCom appointees. It implies that no SO is offered travel expenses, but in section 2.1, it confusingly says that that the ASO has not taken support for travel. Lastly, it makes no mention of the RALO management and ALAC Liaisons who are not part of the 15-member ALAC who currently receive funding for all ICANN meetings. I find the proposal to withdraw support from NomCom appointees and leave it to the discretion of the SO chair as quite inappropriate. As implied by Avri, NomCom appointees are not always welcomed with open arms. To ask them to submit to the NomCom process without a reasonable expectation of what the out-of-pocket costs will be is unreasonable ? particularly to this year?s candidates who have already been told that there is no change expected in travel funding policy. Speaking as a NomCom appointee to the ALAC, I have no Internet business connections and I receive no direct or indirect benefit from my ICANN involvement ? my conflict of interest statement is VERY short. But based on my experience and long involvement in the industry, I feel that I have a valuable contribution to make to ICANN. I pay a high price for this volunteer work ? I estimate that last year, the business income I lost by donating my time to ICANN exceeded my travel costs by a factor of 3+. Even if ICANN had paid for business-class travel, my lost income would have doubled travel cost. I also find equity to be lacking in the proposal, and in fact somewhat insulting to those volunteers who are very active. According to NomCom documentation, the time commitment of a GNSO member who participates in task forces and committees can easily equal that expected of a Board member. In my case, for the last two years, I have been a full-time ALAC member and active GNSO member (as the Liaison from ALAC). Ignoring the issue of business vs economy air travel, I find it inappropriate that even for fully funded individuals, the new proposal calls for some people to be paid for all of their living expenses, and others are to be given a flat per diem amount, which may bear little resemblance to actual expenses. Lastly, in the past (and present), whether funded people flew business class or economy had more to do with who they knew within ICANN than the position that they held. I find that the new proposal could well lead to cases where people in similar positions could be treated differently based on less-than-transparent processes. Alan Greenberg |