Westlake Consulting

Founded:	1999, New Zealand
Founder(s):	Richard Westlake
Headquarters:	The Terrace, Wellington, New Zealand
Country:	New Zealand
Website:	westlakenz.com
Key People
Richard Westlake, Director Vaughan Renner, Senior Consultant Peter Harris, Senior Consultant Colin Jackson, Senior Consultant

Westlake Consulting Limited (WCL) is an advisory firm located in New Zealand that specializes in organizational strategy, board management relationships, governance, and structures. The firm mainly work with management staff and boards in the public and private sectors,including various NGOs and non-profit organizations.

They provide:

1. Structural and strategic reviews
2. Advisory services and reviews on Governance
3. Development workshops for boards and directors
4. Evaluations on boards, directors, and CEOs.

WCL and ICANN

The company has been selected by the board of directors at ICANN for conducting an independent review of the RSSAC (Root Server System Advisory Committee). In November 2008, Andy Linton and Colin Jackson, consultants at WCL, joined in the ICANN meeting held in Cairo to network with people interested in various facets related to RSSAC. In the following month, Andy Linton along, with consultant Vaughan Renner, attended the Minneapolis RSSAC meeting, collecting further feedback from the root server members as well as the members of the ICANN communities. Richard Westlake, Andy Linton and Colin Jackson presented the completed review in March 2009 Mexico City meeting of ICANN.

In February 2008, WCL was selected by ICANN to conduct an independent review of ALAC (At-Large Advisory Committee), which was submitted in July 2008.

In 2006-2007, WCL conducted the structural review of InternetNZ (Internet Society of New Zealand), which was responsible for hosted the Wellington ICANN meeting earlier that year.

Westlake Consulting Limited has also taken the task of governance review for ‘.au’ internet domain belonging to Australia.

Review of Root Server System Advisory Committee (RSSAC) by Westlake Consulting

Findings

Some findings are given below:

• RSSAC is issue-based and highly reactive, but it was supposed to give advice to the ICANN Board.
• Regular Communication between the ICANN Board and RSSAC is not good.
• Root Server Operators dominate over RSSAC and are independent of ICANN. Their focus is mainly operation and due to this very few times RSSAC has given advice to the ICANN Board.
• The meeting processes and committee of RSSAC is incomplete and poor. They are also not updating their website at regular intervals.
• Succession and Appointment Process for Chair Person and Committee is ill-defined.
• RSSAC’s members do not attend ICANN meetings regularly and thereby disconnecting themselves from other ICANN members. Its meetings are held at IETF i.e. Internet Engineering Task Force and as result there are very few and infact no interactions between ICANN entities and RSSAC.

Options

The review team of Westlake Consulting has identified certain option for RSSAC. They are:

• No change.
• Set its focus again and give support through ICANN resources.
• Disband RSSAC or merge its functioning with SSAC or like.
• Convert RSSAC into an organization supported by ICANN.
• Relaunch it and make it accountable to ICANN and Root Server Operators.

Recommendations

Westlake Consulting Review Team has given the below mentioned recommendations:

1. RSSAC should be relaunched and this time it should be a Joint Strategy Group, accountable to ICANN and Root Server Operators.
2. RSSAC’s role should be to give advice to Root Server Operators, Internet Community and the ICANN about the better way to move ahead. It should monitor, analyse and assess the changes proposed and provide timely advice on the risks, desirability and implications of such changes. It should also provide a mean of connection between ICANN, Internet Community and Root Server Operators.
3. RSSAC should have initially 9 members, 4 Root Server Operators, 1 IANA appointed and 4 ICANN Board appointed. The appointed members must have the technical knowledge about the Root Server System.
4. Chair of RSSAC should be appointed from one of its members and it should limit the appointment term to two years and further limiting it three consecutive terms only.
5. RSSAC should attend all ICANN meetings. RSSAC’s sessions should be public and others can participate in it except for some closed sessions when only members could attend. It should invite ICANN Board members and Root Server Operators and must be granted speaking rights.
6. ICANN should nominate two staff members who will support RSSAC, one technical fellow, who will research and draft the reports on RSSAC behalf and other Administrative support, whose role will be to provide administrative role for effective operation.
7. ICANN should fund accommodation and travel for the members of RSSAC for attending ICANN meetings.

Review of At-Large Advisory Committee by Westlake Consulting

Conclusion Drawn

The Review Team of Westlake Consulting believes that ICANN should allow ALAC to continue with its efforts and contribute to the policy making process of ICANN. ALAC 1.0 has progressed a lot in recent months. ICANN must make its activities relevant to the internet user’s needs all over the world. ALAC has to make sure that ICANN Community finds it to be an important part of ICANN Structure.

Recommendations

Some of the Recommendations are as follows:

• Number of ALAC appointees should be increased to seven from five and structure should be revisited at next review.
• ALAC members must be given clear descriptions about their positions.
• To improve the resource management the ICANN should put into operation a costing system based on activity.
• ALAC should be provided further resourcing.
• ALAC chair should negotiate with ICANN staff on annual support, performance indicators and agreed expectations.
• ALAC should have full information and participation rights, but should not be given voting rights.
• Should extend the appointment term of ALAC Chair to two years.
• ICANN should make a multi-lingual and brief guide to ALAC and ICANN for internet users.
• ICANN should build up clear non-compliance sanctions including loss of voting rights, ineligibility for travel funding etc.
• ICANN or ALAC should deal with the issues related to Ombudsman reports 05-1090 and 06-317 at the earliest.