Re: [alac] GNSO Liaison Report

[Bret Fausett <bfausett@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The written LSE report mentions in passing that ICANN has too many
> committees and constituencies and suggests merging many of them, in
> particular ALAC and NCUC.  It also says that orgs and individuals should
> be able to sign up as consituents so they can lobby or be consulted or
> something.

We're not voting members of the GNSO anyway, so there's nothing to merge,
nothing to lose. We'll still have a liaison to the Council, as will the
ccNSO and the GAC. 

On the "sign up" idea, this is something that I hadn't fully understood
until the briefing. As I understand it, the LSE is recommending that anyone
who wants to participate in ICANN, post comments to the website on policy
items, etc., register as a user/member of ICANN....or something like that.
When you register, you'll declare who you are, what constituencies or groups
you affiliate with (if any), state your country of residence, city,
employer, and a few other relevant details. I believe the idea is to give
ICANN a more clear picture of who is commenting and what their interests
might be. Right now, ICANN only has a way to measure volume of contributions
but no real way to parse that to see whether the contributions are all
coming from one constituency (e.g., the IPC likes to stack comment fora with
individual member posts) or are running across groups.

As far as anonymity goes, I think the LSE foresees that ICANN would continue
to allow anonymous contributions, or those under screen names or pseudonyms,
but the registration would be recommended.
 
> Danny Younger called me this morning worried that the board will do the
> consolidation and ALAC will disappear.  I read the report, and that seems
> a stretch, but it's worth flipping through.

This won't happen. The LSE report was only on the GNSO. We'll get our own
review in time, and maybe one day we'll disappear, but we're not going
anywhere because of the LSE report.

       Bret