[NCUC-DISCUSS] Candidate Statement - Rao Naveed Bin Rais

[Rao Naveed Bin Rais]

Dear all,


Please find below my candidate statement. I am open to any questions that
any body may have and would be very happy to answer them.


Thanks.

Naveed -




*1.     **Why do you want to serve on the EC?*



To me, NCUC is the user’s platform at ICANN. It is where the users’
interests are taken into consideration and are protected, in one way or the
other, and the EC of NCUC is the right place to make impactful
contributions while trying to protect users’ interest. Coming from a
developing country with huge population, different cultural sectors and a
diverse set of Internet access and usage, I can represent the region in an
effective way while trying to raise voice of underprivileged end user of
the Internet. Moreover, being a technical person coming from academia, I
feel that there is a strong need for NCUC to have someone from technical
background in the EC so as to see and deeply understand the technical
aspect of things which can help in the policy development process while
safeguarding NCUC’s interests.



On the other hand, I also want to be at the EC so as to be able to do some
meaningful and practical work on the outreach strategies and help in
realizing what is being committed normally and is hardly realized. There is
a strong need to take advantage of such a strong new membership base that
has been added to NCUC in past 2 years or so, and I believe that I can be
in a position to do more when at the EC in this regard.



*2.  **Provide a brief biography of recent experience, associations, and
affiliations relevant to serving on the Executive Committee. Describe the
relevance of your personal and professional experience to serve on the NCUC
Executive Committee, and identify any conflicts of interests you might
have.*



I received PhD in Computer Networking with specialization on Internet
Naming and Addressing and Communication Architectures from University of
Nice, Sophia Antipolis, France, and am currently working as Associate
Professor in EE Department at M. A. Jinnah University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Moreover, I am also serving as one of the chapter leaders of ISOC Islamabad
Chapter since past one year. Besides, I have been associated with ICANN as
fellow and coach (mentor) since ICANN 50 and have got ICANN fellowship for
4 meetings out of the last 5 meetings held (ICANN 50, 52, 53 and 54). Since
June 2014, I am working with SSR team of ICANN on security-related matters
and got trained as a trainer for the Middle-East region from ICANN and NSRC
at Dubai in April 2015. On the other hand, I have also got fellowship for
ISOC to attend IETF 92 in March 2015, and am contributing at that forum as
well.



Being a member of NCUC for more than a year and an ICANN fellowship coach
for past 3 consecutive ICANN meetings, I have motivated and helped a number
of new fellows in joining NCUC, NPOC and NCSG, and an increase of new
fellows joining NCUC is quite obvious from the data.



I have no conflict of interest.



*3.  **The EC performs several functional responsibilities for the
Constituency.  What level of time commitment can you bring to your EC role
on a weekly and overall basis?  Describe any concerns or limitations on
your ability to attend online meetings of the Executive Committee and ICANN
Meetings in person. *



Coming from academia, I have more luxury to manage my time depending on the
tasks at hand. My employer is quite open in letting me go out to attend
meetings in person and it is counted as an “official assignment” in
accordance with the university policy. Hence, I don’t have any problem in
attending the meetings either in person or online. Being a member of the
EC, I can pledge to spend at least 10 hours per week to do assignments
related to my responsibility, which may be increased as well depending upon
the requirement and urgency of matter at hand.



*4.   **Communication with the membership is critical. How would you keep
members apprised of your EC-related activities?*



Communication with the membership is utterly critical, and this is one of
the main motivations behind accepting the nomination to serve at the EC of
NCUC. I feel that this is an area which has a lot of margin of improvement
in its current form. I believe that there is a strong need of engaging
regional members and try to keep them alive in the NCUC processes via
extensive engagement sessions, and there should be one of the primary
responsibilities of the EC member from each region. Currently, I don’t see
regional bonding between NCUC members and this have an effect on the local
engagement as well. Secondly, more should be done to engage local
communities and making them aware of ICANN processes and in particular what
NCUC could do for them. Translation could be done in more languages to
increase awareness and this is something I plan to do. As an EC member, I
would pay strong attention towards engagement of new members into the NCUC
activities in order to utilize their potential and making them comfortable
in the community sooner rather than later.



*5.   **How do you foresee NCUC’s function, scale, or role changing in the
future? What areas of ICANN policy, if any, need more attention and why?  *



As an EC member of NCUC, I would strongly push the constituency to follow
up on the membership engagement survey that we had conducted 6 months ago.
At present, I don’t see urgency towards working on the findings of that
survey in order to better manage the membership, their active engagement,
and outreach management. I believe that the constituency should prioritize
this issue before the data collected becomes obsolete. Moreover, I would
urge the constituency to do more towards making new members more engaged in
the NCUC activities, possibly via some kind of mentorship program, or
coming up with a call for volunteers to do a less important piece of a
large task for the new members. Moreover, a proper database with members’
interest and their areas of expertise should be published somewhere on the
NCUC’s website so that members can work with each other online or offline
more effectively.



As an academic having technical background and involved in users’ interest
in local community through ISOC platform, I am more interested in the
policies relevant to users’ privacy and security related issues. Moreover,
ICANN accountability issues should be more carefully addressed and it
doesn’t make sense to tie up the accountability issue with the one-time
IANA transition activity, as accountability is continuous process. I
believe that more attention is required to better understand this issue and
to deal with it on its merit.
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