Re: $12 million !!!! -- really total $61 M

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Karl Auerbach <karl () cavebear com>
Date: July 2, 2009 9:40:52 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] $12 million !!!!   -- really total $61 M

On 07/02/2009 04:52 PM, David Farber wrote:

> From: Bob Hinden <bob.hinden () gmail com>

> It would appear that ICANN spends more than 2x on travel per year than
> the total cost to run the IETF.

When I was on ICANN board and when I finally got to examine the  
general ledger (after nearly 18 months of legal wrangling to do so) I  
found that ICANN had lax travel policies.

One staff member, for example, seemly being confused between "Club  
Med" and "ICANN", used ICANN's money to travel roughly 5 times around  
the world in one year, stopping at high season at lush places like  
Davos.

One minor event in Kenya was attended by something like a half dozen  
ICANN staffers and board members.

ICANN paid for lavish travel expenses for the law firm that had  
created ICANN (and who remains among ICANN's largest yearly creditors.)

That was then.

I have heard that things have have improved.

However, ICANN still remains a traveling circus.  Its meeting in  
Mexico City had over 1100 people and an uncountable number of special  
events (many paid for by companies who have, or who aspire to have,  
relations with ICANN.)

As for ICANN's staff - there are a lot of 'em.  Many are pretty good.   
Some are amazingly good.  Many work their tails off. And many seem to  
regard the travel as a burden rather than a boon.  On an individual  
basis, they are a fine group.  As a collection, they are expensive to  
transport, house, and feed.

The "fellowship" program that ICANN uses to pay for certain attendees  
is viewed by some as a well designed program, by others as a not-so- 
subtle inducement to build support for ICANN among certain groups of  
people.

The point of this is that while ICANN has matured - at least these  
days it has written employee policies - it still suffers from rampant  
mission growth and overheated elaboration of its org chart.

And what has all this expensive sound and fury produced?  Not really  
very much.  One would have a hard time coming up with concrete  
evidence of how the process of turning DNS query packets into DNS  
reply packets has become more reliable, more efficient, more secure,  
or more accurate than it was before there was an ICANN.

                --karl--






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