[council] PDP Leadership Travel Support Pilot report - any objections

[Mary Wong]

Hello Ayden and everyone,

In response to Ayden's question, the ABR Evaluation Team (i.e. the Request Assessment Team) comprises staff from the strategic community operations, planning and engagement team within the Policy Department (viz. the team that I now manage) along with staff from other departments which interact closely with the community (such as the Global Stakeholder Engagement and Public Responsibility Support Departments). The Evaluation (or Assessment) Team consults with ICANN's Finance Team and other relevant staff (depending on the specific ABRs under consideration) and reports to the senior executives responsible for Policy, GSE and Finance. All recommendations are first reviewed by the senior executives before they are finalized and sent to the Board via the Board Finance Committee as part of the overall FY budget planning and approval process. 

If I may, and having helped shepherd the last ABR process through, I think it will be very helpful if all community groups submitting ABRs include clear, achievable objectives and precise, meaningful metrics in their requests that align with the role, scope and goals of the respective community. The Assessment Team looks at all requests submitted very carefully and thoroughly, and as stated in the ABR Principles, all requests "must be consistent with the charter of the requesting community group" and "must be resolved within the parameters of [i.e. what is stated by the relevant group in its request) the request" (see https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/74584652/Community%20Special%20Budget%20Request%20Principles%20%28FY19%29.pdf?version=2&modificationDate=1518204458000&api=v2). For pilot programs - such as the GNSO PDP chairs' travel pilot - assessments are always conducted before a decision is made as to whether or not a program should be considered part of the core (rather than ABR) budget from year to year.

I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if the Council - or, indeed, any of the stakeholder groups and constituencies which you represent - will find it helpful to meet with representatives of the Assessment Team.

Thanks and cheers
Mary (briefly wearing my non-GNSO staff hat!)

_____________________

On 9/5/18, 17:45, "council on behalf of Ayden Férdeline" <council-bounces at gnso.icann.org on behalf of icann at ferdeline.com> wrote:

    Echoing all of the earlier comments, I too support this ABR — it is a pity it does not cover a delegate’s travel for the entirety of an ICANN meeting and just covers three days, as the people being supported through this program have a need, I would think, to be present for the entire duration of an ICANN meeting.
    
    Secondly, I think our current metrics are a little weak. They are fine for now, but we might want to think about beefing them up. Measuring the ROI of travel funding to a volunteer contributor is not a new concept; perhaps we could look at how the Ford Foundation or another organisation with a large travel budget does their evaluations and benchmark our more modest support against their criteria. I say this in part because I think we’d score really well.
    
    Finally, do we know who is on the “ABR Evaluation Team”? It might be worthwhile to see if we can coordinate a meeting with them (if that is possible) so we can understand how helpful/useful they found our metrics, or whether they have any feedback on what they would like to see us reporting back.
    
    Ayden
    
    > On 5 Sep 2018, at 06:34, Heather Forrest <haforrestesq at gmail.com> wrote:
    > 
    > Dear Council colleagues,
    > 
    > As noted on in our August GNSO Council meeting, we received in the FY18 budget process funding through the Additional Budget Request (ABR) mechanism to run a pilot of travel funding for a limited number of our PDP Chairs/leaders who otherwise would not have received funding to attend an ICANN public meeting.
    > 
    > We are required under the Additional Budget Request process to provide a report summarising how the funds were used, and how they contributed to our activities. 
    > 
    > Donna, Rafik and I put the attached report to your attention; if you have any objections or proposed amendments, please could you post these to the Council list by next Monday, 10 September?
    > 
    > Many thanks and best wishes,
    > 
    > Heather, on behalf of Council leadership team
    > <FY19 PDP Leadership Travel Support Pilot - ICANN62 2018 09 05.docx>
    
    
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