The battle between ALAC and the NCUC
- What is the difference between NCUC and ALAC anyway?
- Why do we need both the NCUC and ALAC?
- Would it be better if we combined them?
Many people, including some on the Board have asked these and similar questions. And the fact that people, including those in the leadership, do not understand the place of each of these critical organizations in the structure of ICANN has been the source of many problems. These problems that have of late erupted into sniping and a food fight over members. Unfortunately, I believe this tension is also being exacerbated by the some of the activities of the ICANN Policy Staff.
In any case the sniping and competition over members is silly and wasteful and should be brought to a close. The two groups have different mandates and are complementary, or at least should be. They both represent many of the varied interests of civil society. No one group can ever be said to represent civil society. But many groups working together can begin to represent their interests. And this should be happening within ICANN. But for some reason it isn’t, and as far as I can tell it never has. I do not believe that this is because of the people who are members of the ALAC or of the NCUC; I know many of them and they are all well intentioned and all (OK, it is never all but mostly all) believe in cooperation. I believe the cause is the environment they have been formed within and the fact that they have been set at odds by those who should be supporting them.
The NCUC’s mandate is focused on policies relating to gTLDs, whereas ALAC’s scope comprises the principles that should apply to all the things that ICANN does and encouraging remedies for the problems that may hurt civil society. The two groups have roles and responsibilities that are orthogonal to each other, so there should be no way for them to be in competition or to be seen as having overlapping mandates even though they both represent the interests of civil society.
I believe this is the way it should be in an organization that has a woven architecture, where the Advisory Committees are like the warp in a weave (the lengthwise threads that provide continuity and the strength of a fabric) and the Supporting Organizations are the weft in the weave (all the pretty yarn that makes the design). Without each other they are just balls of twine and wool. But woven together they can be quite amazing and effective.
The two groups should be working together. Working together they would be formidable, one with a narrow specific focus and one with a broad global focus. The shared influence of these civil society based organizations would be powerful and could go a long way to shape ICANN in its public service role as one of the stewards of the Internet. But this has not been nurtured into existence, this has not even been allowed to bloom on its own.
Instead of being brought together in cooperation, they are kept apart. I have been watching the relations between ALAC and the NCUC for years, long before getting involved with the NCUC, and from my vantage point I have seen the evidence of a divide and conquer strategy being used to keep the interests of civil society from working together.
In a better ICANN, the energies of the Policy Staff would be spent on trying to bring the groups together, on trying to help them bridge differences and strengthen their ability to cooperate; i.e. to produce the weave. The real goal should be to allow their synergies to influence ICANN policy for the benefit of the public good, something that civil society specializes in. This has not happened.
Aside: Speaking of bridging differences, can anyone tell me about the last time the current ICANN Policy regime did something to try and bring people together to bridge their differences?
Who knows, maybe the new CEO Rod Beckstrom, with his strong championship of distributed bottom-up systems will find a way to stop the ICANN Policy Staff from treating the two organizations as combatants for enjoyment in their own private dog fight. And who knows, maybe he will actually be able to do something to make the ICANN Policy Staff leadership realize that its job is to be the ICANN Policy Support Staff with its role to assist the work of the volunteers of ALAC and the NCUC and not to create intolerable situations that waste the volunteers’ energies and reduce their effectiveness.
