PIR and constituency finances

[Harold Feld]

Sorry about the dealy in reply.

With the help of Milton and others, I have submitted the following to
the Research and Outreach Subcommittee (which has for some reason been
tasked with presenting this in the first instance).  I will also
distribute to the larger advisory committee. We have put considerable
weight on travel support and further development and maintanence of
infrastructure.

Harold


  NCUC and PIR Support Partnership

2004 - 2007







This document sets out a long term plan for regular and modest funding
support for the Noncommercial User's Constituency. We submit it to the
PIR Advisory Council in the hopes that it will receive their unanimous
endorsement and can then be presented to the PIR Board.


  The Important role of NCUC in ICANN

ICANN is an unprecedented experiment in international governance. It
combines industry, civil society, and governmental input into a policy
making entity with global scope. Within this framework, however, the
forces representing private industry and governments are very strong.
Businesses send full-time, professional lobbyists into the ICANN arena
and back them with significant resources, due to the high economic
stakes they have in the game. Governments also have budgets devoted to
participation in international organizations and full-time employees for
handling the tasks associated with influencing and monitoring policy.



Nearly everyone would recognize that the viewpoints and interests of
noncommercial organizations need to be represented in ICANN. The .org
TLD, one of the most important recognized homes of noncommercial
Internet users, constitutes about 8 percent of the gTLD registration
share. Many country code TLDs have ".org" equivalents. Moreover, the
Internet was originally built by universities, research centers, and the
entrepreneurs who emerged from them. These organizations need to be
well-represented in ICANN's policy making processes. But they rarely
have the time or the resources to devote to participation in an
international governance authority like ICANN.



NCUC is virtually the only organized place for noncommercial entities to
coalesce to influence, shape and discuss ICANN issues. As one of six
constituencies within ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization, it
is the only one devoted to the representation of noncommercial interests
and perspectives. All the others represent the domain name supply
industry (registrars, registries, ISPs) or commercial interests
(trademark holders, business users). Unless NCUC can function as a
strong and effective representative, the entire policy development
process of ICANN will be biased.



In short, it is essential that ICANN's policy development processes and
officer elections benefit from the presence of an organized
noncommercial constituency.


  The PIR proposal for .org Reassignment in 2002

Responsiveness to and support of the noncommercial community within
ICANN was one of the key criteria in the reassignment of the .org TLD in
2001. The .org reassignment Call For Proposals asked applicants to
"describe in detail the mechanisms you propose for ensuring that the
policies and practices followed in your operation of the .org registry
are responsive to and supportive of the noncommercial Internet user
community, and reflect as much of its diversity as possible."



PIR won the .org reassignment in no small part because of its strong
commitment to leverage the .org asset to support noncommercial Internet
activity. PIR's bid was particularly strong in this regard, because of
its links to the Internet Society's nonprofit technical standardization
activity, its creation of a broadly representative Advisory Council, and
its commitment to support the noncommercial constituency within ICANN's
Domain Names Supporting Organization (now renamed the Generic Names
Supporting Organization). PIR's application said:



"ISOC recognizes that an ongoing problem with the ICANN DNSO Non
Commercial Constituency has been a funding short-fall. ...ISOC would
like to explore various funding solutions through its .ORG Advisory
Council to come up with a long term funding solution for the
Non-Commercial Constituency or its successor organization."


  NCUC's Improving Capacity

Prior to Fall 2003, NCUC was hobbled by an open mailing list that
allowed anyone in the world, whether they were a member or even eligible
for membership, to interfere with its deliberations, and by a
dysfunctional organizational structure that gave everyone and no one
responsibility for basic administrative functions. As of November 2003,
the Noncommercial Users Constituency successfully completed a reform and
reorganization. The constituency has left behind old conflicts and
embarked on a new period of effective engagement with the policy
development process of ICANN.



·        A new charter was drafted and ratified by the membership in
August, creating a completely new governance structure. Elections were
completed in November 2003, placing an active, stable, and
representative core of officers in place as an Executive Committee.

·        A Chair, Dr. Milton Mueller, and four (4) regional
representatives (based on ICANN geographic regions) were elected by
members. (The fifth region, Africa, appointed a member.) The Executive
Committee held its first meeting December 5th and its second meeting
February 7th using economical but effective Internet relay chat format
instead of expensive teleconferencing. The minutes are visible here
<http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0312&L=ncuc-discuss&F=&S=&P=1119>
(Dec. 5th) and here (Feb. 7th). Three new representatives to the GNSO
Council were also elected. The Council representatives were highly
qualified, articulate and active participants in the ICANN process: Dr.
Jisuk Woo of Seoul National University, South Korea; Carlos Afonso of
Brazil, and Marc Schneiders of the Netherlands.

·        A new email list, limited to members, was implemented, and the
web site updated. The archives are accessed through the website, which
is at www.ncdnhc.org <http://www.ncdnhc.org/>. The constituency is in
the process of implementing the website at www.ncuc.org
<http://www.ncuc.org/>

·        New membership is being recruited via the World Summit on the
Information Society and other channels. In particular, two key
international NGOs, one of which had disconnected from NCUC during the
organizational problems of 2001-2002, have committed to join or re-join.
NCUC currently has 36 organizations as members, not counting the most
recent additions. Nine (9) are classified as large organizations
including for example ACLU, Educause, Renater, and Computer
Professionals for Social Responsibility; the rest are diverse small
organizations.

·        The constituency has raised funds from EPIC's Public Voice
project to send a representative (Kathy Kleiman) to the Carthage,
Tunisia ICANN meeting on October 2003. Because of the physical presence
at the meeting, NCUC was able to be represented on panels dealing with
Whois and play an advocacy role. The constituency representative was
also able to mobilize additional sources of funding, notably a
contribution from Afilias. That money is being used to support the
travel of four members to the ICANN Rome meeting. NCUC plans a major
presence at the Rome meeting. It will hold a program and workshop at the
Rome meeting and may be collaborating with ALAC on WSIS-related
informational sessions.

·        NCUC has exerted policy leadership in key areas. Two years ago,
NCUC's GNSO Council member chaired the working group that developed
policy for the .org reassignment. The NCUC assisted ICANN's CEO with an
evaluation study of the applicants for the .org reassignment. In the
Whois/privacy policy development process, NCUC's representative on the
Whois Steering Committee was instrumental in ensuring that a Task Force
on data collection was created. NCUC was initially the only constituency
calling for a Task Force focused on which data elements needed to be
collected, and faced stiff opposition from certain other constituencies.
Via persistent advocacy it prevailed on this issue, however.


  Funding Needs

In this section, we describe the funding needs of the constituency and
formulate a request. In total, we ask for an annual commitment of US$
11,000 per year over a four year period.


      Travel Support

The most important support need of the constituency is travel funds.
These are needed to sustain participation. Travel to meetings makes it
possible for elected officials and policy development task force members
to participate. Although a great deal of work is conducted through
teleconferences and email, the fact remains that it simply is not
possible for any constituency to be a viable actor in the ICANN process
without being represented at face-to-face meetings. Support for travel
to these meetings also provides some relief and reward to active
officers and members who devote so much uncompensated time to the
constituency. (NB: Because the current NCUC chair has other sources of
support for some travel and activity, he has pledged not to make any
requests for NCUC funds during his term. This pledge was made in order
to eliminate any concerns about conflict of interest in the allocation
of constituency funds, and to conserve funds for others who might need
it more.)

At the past two ICANN meetings, NCUC has provided full support to one or
two key activists who could not afford to go otherwise. Starting with
the Rome meeting, it has also provided a number of smaller, partial
support grants to individuals who can use the NCUC grant to obtain
matching funds from other sources. Using this very cost-effective model
of travel support, we have found that we can get three to five people to
attend ICANN quarterly meetings with about $4000 per meeting. Thus, with
4 quarterly meetings a year, an adequate level of support in this area
would be $16,000/year.


      Secretariat Services

Most of the current infrastructure of the secretariat is provided for
free by the Chair's home institution, Syracuse University School of
Information Studies. This includes email list support, web site support,
and some labor. This can continue for at least another 18 months,
although extensive use of graduate student labor will need to be
supported. This is especially true if the current Chair is not
re-elected or chooses not to run; few other institutions will be willing
to devote as many resources to NCUC. Thus, we ask for only $2000 and
$3000 in 2004 and 2005, respectively, and $5000 per year after that.


      Communications.

This budget item refers to any expenses involved in designing, writing,
translating and duplicating brochures or reports, and to any expenses
associated with telephone calls, conference calls, and mailing documents
or money transfers. Expenses here are modest, only $1000 per year, as
the NCUC is very efficient in its communications, relying on free online
chat and toll-free calling, and donated labor, services and duplication
whenever possible.




      Other Sources of Funding Support

Over the four-year period of this proposal, total NCUC expenses are
projected to be $75,000, or $18,700 annually. We do not, however, want
to rely exclusively on PIR for the entire amount. In recent months NCUC
has shown a capacity to raise donations from other sources. It also
charges its members dues. Membership dues are conservatively estimated
to bring in about $3000 over the four-year period; donations from other
sources are (perhaps optimistically) projected to bring in $29,000.
Thus, we request an average of $11,000 per year over the four year period.

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