Introduction
Alan Greenberg, ALAC member from the North American Regional At-Large Organization (NARALO) and ALAC Liaison to the GNSO composed an initial draft of this Statement [PDF, 255 KB] after discussion of the topic within At-Large and on the Mailing Lists
On 14 November 2013, this Statement was posted on the At-Large Policy & Implementation Working Group Workspace.
On that same day, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC, requested ICANN Policy Staff in support of the ALAC to send a Call for Comments on the draft Statement to all At-Large members via the ALAC-Announce Mailing list.
On 21 November 2013, this Statement was discussed in the ALAC & Regional Leadership Wrap-up Meeting. During that meeting, the draft Statement was discussed by all present At-Large members, as well as those participating via Remote Participation.
The Chair of the ALAC then requested that a ratification vote be held on the Statement. Staff then confirmed that the vote resulted in the ALAC endorsing the Statement with 12 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions.
You may review the result independently under: https://community.icann.org/x/ASefAg.
Summary
- There must be a methodology to recognize when a decision will impact the community, and such decisions must involve a bottom-up process in addressing those decisions.
- The processes must be designed to be time-sensitive – unending debate should not be an option.
- There must be a way to come to closure when the community is divided, and this should not simply give executive powers to ICANN Staff.
- One of the key question that must be resolved is what part should the Board play in taking action if the community is divided. This question is one of the reasons that the ALAC believes that this should have been a Board-led initiative, but the fact that it isn't does not remove the importance of the question.