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

[Rao Naveed Bin Rais]

Dear friends,

Please find below my candidate statement. My apologies for the slight delay
as I was traveling.

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



I consider NCUC as the user’s platform in the world of 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 users of
the Internet.



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. In past few months,
being the coordinator of NCUC Membership Affairs team, I have been trying
to come up with a comprehensive strategy to help engage members, and
realized that this process requires continuous effort and commitment from
the leadership. I hope to do better with the engagement process while being
on the EC.



*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 Computer Engineering Department at Ajman University of Science
& Technology, UAE. Moreover, I have been volunteering serving as President
of ISOC Islamabad Chapter till earlier this year. Besides, I have been
associated with ICANN as fellow and coach (mentor) since ICANN 50 and have
got ICANN fellowship for 5 meetings out of the last 7 meetings held (ICANN
50, 52, 53, 54, and 56), while being invited specially to attend ICANN 55
meeting by ICANN to coordinate the fellowship sessions. 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 two years and an ICANN fellowship coach for 3
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 6-8 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, and realize this even strongly after being associated
with NCUC Membership Affairs Team for past one year. I have also prepared a
draft document recently in order to propose new strategy for engaging the
large membership base of NCUC and the document is still in progress. 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?  *



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 especially
post-transition.
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Regards,
Naveed -
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