Re: [ALSC-Forum] Staff Level Support

[Joop Teernstra]

At 21:34 15/05/01 -0700, Bret Fausett wrote:
>
>An additional way* of representing user voices in the ICANN process would be
>through the appointment of a staff-level officer charged with representing
>the user community in the implementation of ICANN's policies. (ICANN now has
>staff-level liaisons to the registrars and the ccTLDs, why not to the user
>community?) 
>

An excellent idea.

>It's increasingly clear that significant work is done at the staff level,
>and the day to day activities of ICANN's operations could benefit from
>someone charged with representing the users. The salary and benefits would
>be paid out of ICANN's operating funds as collected from the registries and
>registrars. These are fees that are ultimately collected from the registrant
>community in the form registration fees, so funding a user representative
>out of them seems fair.
>
>You could fit this person into ICANN's existing budget by converting the
>position of "Policy Analyst" (which is now advertised on the ICANN site)
>into the position of "User Community Liaison."
>
>The employee would serve as a contact person for user input, feedback and
>complaints. He or she would assist other ICANN staff in the implementation
>of policy, focusing on the user's interests in those implementation details.
>Like an ombudsperson for a newspaper, the staff member would be independent
>and free to openly criticize the organization when he or she believed that
>it was acting in a manner contrary to the interests of the user community.
>
>     -- Bret
>
>--
>* I am strong believer in the concept of nine Board members elected from the
>user community as a balance to the nine Board members elected from the At
>Large. The suggestion above should not be read to suggest that a single
>staff member replace the nine elected Board members.
> 
I am very glad that you made this P.S. 




--Joop Teernstra LL.M.--  
the Cyberspace Association and 
the constituency for Individual Domain Name Owners
Elected representative.
http://www.idno.org