Summary Record of IGFSA 23rd Meeting of the Executive Committee – 28 June 2017

Jun 28, 2017 | Meeting Summary Records, Reports and Meeting Minutes

Internet Governance Forum Support Association (IGFSA)

23rd meeting of the Executive Committee

28 June 2017

Summary Record 

 

  1. The Executive Committee held its 23rd meeting on 28 June 2017 in Johannesburg, South Africa, in the margins of ICANN 59. The following Members and Co-Secretaries were in attendance:

Avri Doria, Marilyn Cade, Edmon Chung, Markus Kummer, Jimson Olufuye, Eduardo Santoyo; Jennifer Chung. Tarek Kamel participated remotely.

 

  1. A quorum was established for the meeting, with seven of nine Executive Committee members participating.

 

  1. A draft agenda had been circulated prior to the call and was adopted as follows:

a) Adoption of the agenda

b)  Financial situation

c)  Contribution to the UN IGF Trust Fund

d) NRI Funding requests

e) Termination of ISOC admin support and next steps

f) Fundraising

g) AOB

 

Financial situation

4.              The Executive Committee noted that here was a firm commitment from the NRO to make a contribution of USD 50000 and ICANN had indicated to contribute the same amount. Other donors who had contributed previously had been approached, but had not yet made any firm commitment to renew their contributions. NRO. The current reserves of USD 71000 as per end of May 2017 should be sufficient to satisfy pending funding requests. A financial statement for the first half year 2017 will be shared with the IGFSA membership as soon as it is available.

 

Contribution to the UN IGF Trust Fund

5.              The Executive Committee agreed to make another contribution of USD 20000 to the UN IGF Trust Fund pending on reception of the NRO contribution.

 

NRI Funding requests

6.              The Executive Committee agreed on the principle that funding of NRIs should be limited to developing countries and economies in transition. However, it was understood that this principle should be applied with flexibility in some borderline cases. It was also agreed to simplify the decision-making procedure: from now on all applications that satisfied the above funding criteria and were approved by the Secretariat would be automatically approved, should there be no objections within a 48 hour period.

 

Termination of ISOC admin support and next steps

7.              As the arrangement with ISOC for administrative support was expiring at the end of 2017, the Chair had been in touch with the Swiss academic network and ccTLD operator SWITCH with a view to asking SWITCH to take over this task from ISOC. He informed the Executive Committee that he had an appointment with SWITCH in Zurich in early July to discuss this matter and would report back as soon as he had a response.

 

Fundraising

8.              There was a general agreement to step up fundraising efforts. As a next step, targeted efforts should be made to reach out to ccTLDs. In concrete terms, it was suggested to have a working breakfast at ICANN 60 with some of the major ccTLDs who could be potential donors.

 

AOB

9.              The question was raised whether Executive Committee Member Subi Chaturvedi was still interested in the IGFSA and its activities, as she had had been absent from the list discussions  and not participated in any of this year’s calls. The Chair was asked to reach out to her and clarify her position.