[alac] Draft on structure criteria

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

(I think we should try to use this list for discussion on policy
matters, so that messages are archived and visible to the public.)

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003 10:31:38 -0800, you wrote:

>3) At-Large Structure and MOU work -- there was much discussion in Rio among
>ALAC members and with others in attendance on criteria, processes and
>templates, and Sebastian and Thomas have emailed ideas.  Building on these
>efforts, I think it would be useful for the ALAC to attempt to come to
>closure this week on a) minimum criteria for an At-Large Structure (ALS) in
>a Geographic Region without a RALO, b) the process for certification of an
>ALS based in a Geographic Region without a RALO, and c) guidelines for a
>RALO MOU (from which a template can be crafted).  I have attempted to
>incorporate the discussions to date in the attached -- for your discussion.

My comments to your draft follow.

First of all, I'm not sure why we are talking about criteria for
accreditation in Regions "without a RALO". According to the ICANN
Bylaws, accreditation goes through the ALAC and the Board-established
criteria independently from the fact that a RALO exists or not. RALOs
don't officially have a role in the ALS accreditation process.


-- ALS CRITERIA

(possibly you should number the bullet points in the next draft, so
that it's easier to refer to them)

I'd suggest a change on the second one - you should perhaps split this
in two parts. One is that the ALS should predominantly reflect the
interests of individual users; the other one is that it should be
related to the Region for which it is applying. The bullet point is
fine for the first one if you remove references to the "citizens... in
the Region". About the second one, we have to find a way to
accommodate global organizations; so I'd put it this way:
  - an ALS may require accreditation for one or more Regions;
  - to be accredited for a given Region, the ALS must have at least
(10) individual members that are citizens or residents in that Region;
  - these members have to sign and send to ICANN a support statement
for the accreditation request (which isn't a bad thing in general, I
think, because it actually makes a little harder to put up completely
fake organizations for the sole purpose of getting accredited, and
leaves some paper trace about potential fakes)
  - the ALS appoints a contact/representative for each of the Regions
for which it is accredited, chosen among one of the individual
signatories from that Region (this to ensure that even in the
organizational RALO model there is an involvement of the ALS members
from the Region)

I have a note about the fourth one - the MoU should not enter into how
the ALS funds its activities, so it should simply state that the
agreement does not imply or allow any kind of exchange of money
between the parts, except that ICANN might reimburse to specific
individuals their costs for participation in ICANN and ALAC
activities. (This is a separate transaction between ICANN and an
individual, though, so it might not even be necessary to mention it.)

I don't think that we should require full disclosure of funding
sources, as that would discourage many potential ALSs - at most, we
can require a disclosure of certain types of funding sources (for
example, we might want to know whether a single entity originates more
than, say, 20% of the revenues of the organization, and in this case,
who they are; or whether there are any commercial entities funding the
organization).

About the penultimate one - I'd also add that it should be able to
provide an updated list of its members' names and personal data in
electronic form. The MoU should contain appropriate privacy protection
for such data, ie that it may be asked and used by ICANN only for the
purpose of verifying the identity of the members.


-- ALS PROCESS

Required documentation should include the Bylaws and incorporation act
(if the ALS is incorporated).

The ALAC may deny the accreditation if the additional documentation
that it requests is not supplied.

There should be an accreditation challenge process, where anyone may
point out that an existing ALS lacks the criteria or has faked its
accreditation request - in this case there needs to be a quick inquiry
followed by a de-certification vote by the committee.


-- GUIDELINES

In the first bullet point, you should remove "based within... Region"
if we're going to have a per-Region accreditation mechanism as the one
described above.

About the fourth, the MoU should be signed even if there are no ALS
yet - only, it should become operational when a minimal threshold is
reached. Perhaps there should be an aggregated individual threshold -
ie 100 individuals as a sum of the memberships of the ALSs.
-- 
vb.                  [Vittorio Bertola - vb [at] bertola.eu.org]<---
-------------------> http://bertola.eu.org/ <-----------------------