[council] Some comments and first set of responses to travel-related questions

[Doug Brent]

Dear GNSO Council,

I have followed the discussion on travel procedure over the last few days.
Clearly, there is some dissatisfaction with the new Community Travel Support
Procedure, and there have been questions about its implementation, some of
which seem to go back to the original discussion on this topic in 2007.

So for those who haven't followed this from last February when public
consultation began, a couple of quick comments:

- the initial impetus here was to follow-up on the Council's request to fund
additional travel to ICANN meetings; as most here know, opinions ranged from
support all to provide no additional travel support

- a key piece of feedback in the consultation was to allow for a good deal
of flexibility in the allocation of funds to each Supporting Organisation;
the intent was to not make the selection of funded travelers staff directed
or too top down within an SO, in part, because the SOs are different and are
in the best position to use travel funds in a way that advances their work;
given the amount of discussion, maybe leaving this item as open was not
right.

- to allow for the fact that there are always a number of special cases with
travel, the thought was to try and build up detailed implementation rules as
the questions come in through a posted "Frequently Asked Question" (FAQ)
list, as opposed to "baking in" an inflexible set of rules that don't work
for ICANN travelers located throughout the world.

If there is some staff support that can help at this time, so that this
doesn't become a further distraction for the council, please let me know
what kind of help we can provide.

I have attached a document that addresses the first set of travel questions
that have come up during the last week. These will be turned more into a FAQ
form and posted, but I thought it was faster to get it to you this way now.
Basically, it tries to make things as simple as possible for this first year
in implementing the travel procedure.  Also, the Cairo meeting is coming up
so fast - the attached information will help us meet the goal of providing
GNSO participants with additional travel support. This includes
headcount-based funding instead of budget based.  Also, it recognizes that
the Council may want to take more time than is available now to get to a
more sustainable approach to making its decisions as to who can be funded.

As I've communicated separately to Avri, I'm personally committed to
facilitating a review of this travel approach at the end of the year. I'll
continue to monitor the travel-related threads, but suggest that you email
travel-support at icann.org to get any specific travel-related questions
answered. Of course, please email me directly as you see fit and I will
respond.

Best regards,
Doug
--
Doug Brent
Chief Operating Officer
ICANN
Voice: +1 310.301.3871
Mobile: +1 650.996.4447
Fax: +1 310.823.8649



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