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This request is being submitted by the ALAC Chair on behalf of the
ALAC.<br><br>
<br>
The ALAC has met with the GAC for many years, and have always talked
about more substantive collaboration and the possibility of exchanging
Liaisons. However until recently, such collaboration has not actually
occurred. The ALAC and GAC are now more effective in addressing issues of
joint concern (such as potential harms from specific sensitive gTLDs).
Current GAC leadership was very supportive of establishing an ALAC
Liaison to the GAC, ensuring a regular bi-directional flow of information
and ensuring that both groups are aware of each other’s “hot issues”. As
of June 2016, this liaison has now been put in place (roughly equivalent
to a similar GNSO Liaison to the GAC). To ensure that the Liaison can
fulfill his/her mandate, it is essential that the Liaison can attend all
ICANN meetings and participate in GAC activities.<br><br>
Currently the ALAC has travel support for its Liaisons to the GNSO and
ccNSO. Fortunately at the moment, the Liaison to the ccNSO also has
travel funding as an ALAC member, so we have been able to “reallocate”
the ccNSO Liaison travel slot to the GAC Liaison. However such a
fortuitous “spare” travel slot cannot be guaranteed and is not expected
to be available for much longer.<br><br>
<b>The ALAC requests one additional ICANN meeting travel slot (airfare,
hotel and per diem) to for its Liaison to the GAC.<br><br>
</b> <br><br>
The ongoing At-Large Review has identified the need to those At-Large
workers who are active participants in At-Large and other ICANN policy
activities to attend ICANN meetings. Having such active workers attend
ICANN meetings will not only enhance At-Large discussions at its
meetings, but will benefit the other ICANN activities they are involved
in as well. The ALAC strongly supports such an initiative. The Review
Final Report has not yet been delivered (it is due within several days),
but it is expected that the proposed method to fund such travel will not
be implementable (based on extensive ALAC and At-Large review of the
proposed methodology).<br><br>
The ALAC requests that additional travel support slots to ICANN meetings
be allocated to At-Large active contributors. The ALAC would establish
criteria to be met and ALAC Leadership would ensure that such support is
only provided if other sources of funding are not available. This request
is very comparable to the FY18 GNSO request (FY18-22) for four Working
Group Chairs which has just been approved.<br><br>
Unlike participants in many other parts of ICANN, At-Large participants
are volunteers in the true sense of the word. Virtually none of these
contributors are employed in activities related to ICANN or the domain
name industry. None are paid to attend ICANN meetings. Many have to take
unpaid time off from work or use vacations to attend meetings.<br><br>
The ALAC further notes that its travel funding has been close to uniform
since mid-2009 (the last meeting of FY09). At that point At-Large was
funded for its 15 ALAC members plus two regional leaders per Regional
At-Large Organization (RALO) for a total of 25 travel slots. In FY14, it
was increased to 27 to cover the liaisons to the GNSO and ccNSO if they
were not otherwise funded. During this same FY10-FY16 period, the number
of funded GNSO travel slots has gone from 23 to 49 (for ICANN56). Since
the GNSO did not tend to use all of its travel slots in the early years,
the average funded number of GNSO travellers per meeting has increased
from 17 in FY10 to slightly under 48 in FY16.<br><br>
<b>The ALAC requests as a pilot program for FY18, five additional travel
slots per ICANN meeting, to be allocated to demonstrably active
contributors.<br>
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