Introduction
Holly Raiche, ALAC member from the Asian, Australian and Pacific Islands Regional At-Large Organization (APRALO) and ALAC Leadership Team member composed an initial draft of this Statement [PDF, 226 KB] after discussion of the topic within At-Large and on the Mailing Lists.
On 30 April 2014, this Statement was posted on the At-Large ICANN Strategy Panels Workspace.
On 02 May 2014, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Chair of the ALAC, requested ICANN Policy Staff in support of the ALAC to send a Call for Comments on the Recommendations to all At-Large members via the ALAC-Announce Mailing List.
On 08 May 2014, a version incorporating the comments received was posted on the aforementioned workspace and the Chair requested that Staff open an ALAC ratification vote on the proposed Statement on 09 May 2014 and close on 15 May 2014.
On that same day, the Chair requested that the Statement, referenced AL-ALAC-ST-0514-04-00-EN, be transmitted to the Public Comment process, copying the ICANN Staff member responsible for this Public Comment topic, with a note that the Statement was pending ALAC ratification.
On 16 May 2014, Staff confirmed that the online vote resulted in the ALAC endorsing the Statement with 14 votes in favor, 0 votes against, and 0 abstentions. You may review the result independently under: https://www.bigpulse.com/pollresults?code=3897Mv3KfEPxzifKaIuzmd4F.
Summary
- The ALAC supports the report from the Panel on Multistakeholder Innovation with some reservations.
- This panel is a useful reminder of the need to reach beyond the 'usual suspects' with suggestions on how new techniques and technologies can be used to support global engagement.
- However, we are concern that some of the suggestions, such as crowdsourcing, for obtaining broad-based input may be seen as alternatives to existing methods of reaching consensus on issues. New techniques should not be seen as replacing the valuable policy processes of collaboration and dialogue. Crowdsourcing for policy input risks breaking the truly bottom-up policy development.
- We suggest the development and use of tools to assist participation for those whose voice should be heard but do not communicate, or not communicate easily in the English language.
- Ultimately, multistakeholder innovation should be targeted at enabling widespread participation at grassroots level as opposed to encouraging counter-arguments at top level.