ICANN travel support

[Robin Gross]

I'm concerned that ICANN is only proposing to pay for the travel of
half of the remaining councilors.  The idea that only half of the
councilors should be supported is insulting to the many volunteers to
contribute their time and energy to ICANN policy development.

It is important the the GNSO be fully funded, otherwise ICANN (the
organization) will have little difficulty in continuing to "manage"
the GNSO ("the people").

We need ALL of our councilors at policy meetings, not half of them,
to effectively carry out the work of the constituency.

Robin


On Jun 6, 2008, at 10:03 AM, Milton L Mueller wrote:

> Dear members
> In what could prove to be an important change in ICANN policy, a
> new travel support policy has been proposed.
> http://www.icann.org/topics/travel-support/draft-procedure-22may08.htm
>
> This policy is only a proposal and there is still debate about it.
>
> The essential features of the policy are:
> 1.      Eligibility: GNSO, ASO, ccNSO.
> 2.      Administration. ICANN will directly pay for air travel,
> provide reasonable reimbursement for other forms of travel (e.g.
> rail), and pay a per diem to cover all other expenses (meals,
> lodging, sundries, taxis, parking, etc.) Actual per diem amounts
> will be published for each meeting, based on international standards.
> 3.      Budget. ICANN will allocate sufficient funds so that the
> Chair and half of the remaining Council members will receive travel
> support. So for the GNSO this covers 12 of 23 GNSO members
> (including liaisons).
> 4.      Allocation. SO Chair (or designated committee) to determine
> for whom this travel support funding is to be used, based on best
> meeting the policy-making needs of the entity so may include non-
> Council members (by excluding further Council members).
> 5.       Class of travel. To maximize participation, class of
> travel will be economy, however the Chair will travel according to
> the same policy as the Board. (For trips longer than five hours,
> Board member travel is booked at Business class airfares.
>
> Some of us are concerned about the idea of covering only half the
> GNSO Council members and requiring a committee or the chair to
> decide which half.
> We will probably file some comments on this. Obviously the supplier
> constituencies (registries and registrars) who view themselves as
> being taxed to pay for flying around people who want to regulate
> them, oppose any travel support, and the user constituencies tend
> to want all the Council members to be supported. Your comments
> welcome.




IP JUSTICE
Robin Gross, Executive Director
1192 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA  94117  USA
p: +1-415-553-6261    f: +1-415-462-6451
w: http://www.ipjustice.org     e: robin at ipjustice.org



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