At-Large Committee recommends 2 key changes in ICANN

Remmy Nweke in San Francisco, USA

The representatives of Internet users in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) policy-making processes, known as At Large Advisory Committee, has made two key recommendations to its parent body, ICANN.

These recommendations borders on ALAC mandate to accommodate the development of strategic operational plans as part of ICANN planning processes and secondly, coming up with the development of accurate cost models.

The At-Large Improvements Working Team C (WT-C) made these recommendations at the ALAC session on Sunday at the on-going 40th public meeting of ICANN taking place in Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Northern California, United States.

The 20-man ALAC Improvement Work Team-C led by Mr. Tijani Ben Jemaa, the co-chairman of the African Regional At-Large Organisation (AFRALO).

They looked at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT).

According to ALAC Working Team-C, ICANN’s strengths lay in its membership diversity which brings talent, regional involvement and balance, strategy is bottom-up and reflects the consensus.

On its weaknesses, At-Large Improvements Work Team-C noted that specific details of strategy are not well defined or easily understood, therefore making translations difficult since ICANN operates in several languages including English, Español and Français to name a few.

This, the Team said limits the number of global participation of the Internet citizens that are being alienated in spite of the fact that delay exist in most of its bid to communicate properly, thereby missing in clear strategic targets.

For opportunities, the 20-man improvements work team-c noted that very powerful communication channel is required in deploying useful tool for ICANN outreach, mostly at the local At-Large Societies (ALSes).

Threats, ALAC Team-C pointed out that lack of funding limits outreach, just like the lack of volunteers reduces time spent on strategic issues, whereas non- establishment of feedback loop from ICANN remains a hiccup.

On the strategies, the Tijani Ben Jemaa-led team proposed that the Finance and Budget (F & B) Subcommittee, should continue meeting regularly, even after Work Team-C (WT C’s) work has been completed and the team disbanded.

Equally, they proposed that ALAC should reach a single Annual Statement of Intent , mapping SWOT with the At-Large planning barriers, noting that Regional At-Large Organisations (RALO’s) input in the Work Team-C has identified this.

Some members of At-Large Improvements Work Team C include Dave Kissoondoyal, Shaarawy Abd Elbaky, Fouad Bajwa, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Olivier Crepin-Leblond (Co-Chair), Adam Peake, and Sylvia Herlein Leite.

Others were James Corbin, Freddy Linares Torres, Gareth Linares Torres, Fatimata Seye Sylla, Charles Mok, Rudi Vansnick, Jessel Ackbarali, Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Sergio Salinas Porto, Cintra Sooknanan and Darlene Thompson.

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