CROPP: ICANN’s promise kept?

DigitalSENSE Business News reports that the ICANN Board and Senior Staff no doubt recognized in the financial year 2014 (FY14) operations that, while organization-wide efforts to develop a comprehensive ICANN outreach strategy, this cannot be over-emphasised at this time of development in the global coordinating body for the Internet.
Flexible support for communities:
Also, DigitalSENSE Business News had it on good note that ICANN plans to give individual communities some immediate flexible support to start or continue targeted outreach efforts that support specific community outreach or recruitment strategies.
So, in an effort to provide that support as soon as possible and to test whether such a resource could be effectively and consistently managed on an organization-wide basis, staff was directed to develop - as a pilot programme; a regional community-based outreach trip programme to be made available to regional At-Large organizations and non-contract Generic Name Supporting Organisation (GNSO) constituencies.
Equally gathered by DigitalSENSE Business News was that based on the foregoing, ICANN recognized that the formal FY14 OPP was approved almost two months into the fiscal year, staff reportedly worked hard over the last several weeks to develop a pilot programme framework that is “implementable” in the short term and “assessable” over the long term.
To this extend, DigitalSENSE Business News reveals that a detailed overview of this new Community Regional Outreach Pilot Program (CROPP) showed that ICANN has created a new wiki workspace in addition to administer the programme.
Involving 5 RALOS:
Further, DigitalSENSE Business News reports that in according with the FY14 OPP directive to CROPP provides a framework in which each of the 5 At Large Regional Organisations (RALOS) and each of the 5 GNSO non-contract Constituencies will have available 5 “regional” (three-day) outreach trips in FY14.
The specific processes for how these resources are to be made available are set forth in the attached overview document and in the wiki workspace.
Three critical components of the programme include specific pre-trip approval standards such as flexibly administered by community-based leadership and ICANN Regional Vice Presidents; post-trip reviews and assessments and finally an overall spirit of transparency by which all ICANN community members could observe the implementation of the programme.
Advancing Multi-Stakeholder Model:
Vice President for Policy Development Support, David Olive, described this development is advancing ICANN’s multi-stakeholder model through community engagement.
He noted that community leaders had outlined several key benefits that could be achieved through a programmed approach to global outreach including building local and regional awareness and recruitment of new community members; engaging more effectively with current members and/or ‘reactivating’ previously engaged community members; and communicating ICANN’s mission and objectives to new audiences.
According to Mr. Olive, the programme would be implemented collaboratively thereby involving community leaders and key staff members in the Policy Development, Global Stakeholder Engagement, Constituency Travel, and Finance teams—and transparently.
He pointed out that some of the criteria, would comprise applications and assessments will be available on a dedicated community Wiki workspace.

Understanding ICANN’s community outreach:
In order to further grow understanding on the community outreach, he said, ICANN in view of other policy development issues, encouraged the global internet community participation in the Policy Update Webinar which took place on November 7 with two sessions, namely at 12:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC, covering topics such as Privacy and Proxy Services Accreditation, Thick Whois, Protections of IGO/INGO Identifiers in gTLDs, a briefing on SSAC advisories, an update from the ASO Addressing Council, and much more.
Additionally, the VP Policy Development Support stated that community participation remain the core of policy development in ICANN even as the body reiterates commitment to providing the tools and services to contribute. Maintaining that through an enhanced engagement function, ICANN has continued to advance the multi-stakeholder model.

RECENTLY the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) leadership approved its operation plans and budget for the Financial Year 2014 (FY14 OPP), invariably attractive to most members of the Internet community was the inclusion of the plans to expand resources for outreach, otherwise known as the Community Regional Outreach Pilot Programme (CROPP) as part of capacity-building efforts by internet communities.

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