Developing an appreciation for policy

By on 30 Aug 2014

Category: Policy

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APNIC recently ran a capacity building webinar on its number resource Policy Development Process for members of the Asia Pacific Regional At Large Organization (APRALO).

APRALO is an ICANN structure. The At-Large community is structured into five Regional At-Large Organizations (RALO). The AP in APRALO covers the sub-regions of Asia, Australasia, and the Pacific Islands.

The RALOs are a way for unaffiliated users, Internet user organizations and other structures to interact with ICANN and the domain name policy processes.

Each RALO has a regional Chair and a Secretariat. In addition to their annual General Assemblies, the regions hold monthly teleconferences to develop a regional view on current policy issues and to provide input for the At-Large policy process.

The 90-minute training presentation covered a range of topics relating to the APNIC policy structure and it’s place in the ICANN ecosystem. It was a great opportunity for outreach to a group of people very familiar with the bottom-up, consensus-based policy processes, but not so familiar with the APNIC Policy SIG (Special Interest Group).

This included explanations of APNIC’s Mission and Vision, an overview of our community support activities, and an explanation of the role resources policy plays in APNIC operations. Before looking at current proposals under discussion and the APNIC Policy Development Process (PDP), the training covered the high-level principles of IP address management and a look at consensus decision-making; APNIC style.

It is sometimes a challenge to explain to people who are not particularly familiar with the technical issues facing network operators that make up much of APNICs Policy Community, but the APRALO audience had the advantage of being very familiar with the Internet and the way it works.

The APNIC PDP is a remarkably simple, community-derived policy for the formation of number resource management policies for the Asia Pacific region. The process has proven to be a dependable, collaborative method of gaining community agreement on a number of sometimes-contentious issues facing the technical community.

The 90-minute webinar was simultaneously translated into Chinese, courtesy of the ICANN RALO support staff. The slides are available on this page and the audio recordings in Chinese and English are available for download if you are interested in following along.

If your group, or community is in the APNIC region and you think you would benefit from such a presentation, contact me and we can try to organize a similar webinar.

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The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC. Please note a Code of Conduct applies to this blog.

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