[ga] Re: [governance] RALO

[Vittorio Bertola <vb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Il giorno mar, 24/01/2006 alle 11.57 +0100, Wolfgang KleinwÃchter ha
scritto:
> Here is the Statement

I think that many of your comments are reasonable, though I'm not sure I
would agree. In any case, there are a couple of points I feel the need
to clarify:

> 1.	I do not understand why some (former and current) European members
> of ALAC have started the initiative for an EU-RALO now.

Because three years have passed, and we do not want to stay in the
interim status forever. We think (but the ICANN Board will have to make
a judgement on this) that a RALO with ten orgs and some individual
members is better than no RALO at all, and, once processes are actually
active, more people might be encouraged to participate; it's hard to
sign up more participants if, after three years, nothing happens.

> 3.	What I miss totally in the proposed draft is a chapter which
> defines the aims and principles of an European RALO.  Para. 3 in
> Chapter II says only that the purpose of the EU-RALO is to provide a
> "channel for participation by the European individual Internet users
> into the activities of ICANN". This is only a formal and procedural
> point. 

That's exactly the point. The EURALO is just an umbrella mechanism to
select representatives in ICANN, and create a "network of
relationships", as Bret rightfully pointed out. It's not meant to become
an "Internet party" - it might release positions on substantive issues,
but only if its members agree and want to use the EURALO as a
coordinating point. It's not a competitor to coalitions like EDRI or
umbrellas like ISOC-ECC, nor it wants to be.

> 4.	While I fully support to have two categories of members -
> institutional and individual - I do not see a right balance between
> the two categories in the proposed draft. As it stands now,
> individuals are rather marginalized in the proposed "Executive
> Board" (EC). What will be the outcome if the EU-RALO would be
> established now? We have now 8 (or 9) ALS that means each would get
> one seat in the EC. With the low level of outreach so far I would be
> surprised to see more than 20 or 30 individual members within the next
> three months. With other words, the EC would have ten members, nine
> from the accredited ALS.

But pardon me, if on one side you have ten organizations with a total of
~1000 members, and on the other you have 20 individuals, why should they
have the same weight? I look forward to involving hundreds or thousands
of individuals, but no one needs generals without armies. If people
believe in direct individual participation and want a channel for it,
that's fine, but then it has to actually happen (and I'm confident it
will, much more than you seem to be).

> This looks like a closed club which does not like "foreign members"
> but want to give the impression that they are "open". Such a structure
> is exclusive, not inclusive. It keeps people out and decourages
> individuals to join. 

On the contrary: there is a strong incentive to join and bring more
people in, because the more people join, the biggest their role becomes.
If individuals had (as you propose) five reps no matter how they are, it
would be sufficient to have 20 friends sign up and then flame everyone
else away, to capture half of the EURALO forever.

> 6.	I strongly disagree that the officers of the EU-RALO (including the
> ALAC members) are selected by the Executive Council. This opens the
> door for a "friend of my friends network" and  allows all tricky games
> behind closed doors.

We had some discussion on this, but how can you then weigh organizations
and individual members in such appointments? I considered the idea of
letting all individual members of the ALSes vote exactly as if they were
individual members of the EURALO, but then you enter into every kind of
problems of identity verification, double representation, practical
feasibility etc. The first objective is to keep it simple (stupid),
we're not electing the European Parliament anyway.

> 7.	I support in Chapter VI - Funding Mechanism - that the EU-RALO
> should be in the first 24 months supported by the ICANN budget. But as
> it stands now, it looks like the former and current ALAC members are
> asking for money for a half day job for one person in Brussels
> (selected by the EC) and to guarantee financing of Travel and
> Accommodation for EC selected people for two years. There is no
> paragraph which says, that money should be used for local seminars and
> workshops for further outreach or human capacity building. If money
> comes from ICANN it should not be spent in five star hotels but to
> help people on the ground to understand better the challenges of
> Internet governance from a user perspective. 

Good suggestion. We hope that the part time ICANN staff person in
Brussels could be not a "personal assistant", but rather someone that
can also travel and do outreach and education.

> 8.	The dateline for Comments - February 15, 2006 - is totally
> unacceptable. Giving the low level of outreach and publicity, the call
> for comments has got so far, this can not be taken seriously. The
> authors of the draft should use the forthcoming IGF consultations in
> Geneva, February 16 - 17, 2006, to inform about the efforts to build a
> EU-RALO and to get feedback from the different constituencies, which
> will come to Geneva. It looks like a coup to create facts before the
> IGF consultations.

But... if nothing has happened for three years, why should anything
happen in two more weeks in February 2006? This is not a "no", however:
we will think at it.
-- 
vb.             [Vittorio Bertola - v.bertola [a] bertola.eu.org]<-----
http://bertola.eu.org/  <- Prima o poi...