[governance] The .nyc TLD's Community Advisory Board

[Thomas Lowenhaupt]

Since a New York City community board passed an Internet Empowerment 
Resolution calling for the development of the .nyc TLD as a public 
interest resource in April 2001, I've spent a good deal of my time 
advocating for its implementation. This past April the city of New York 
signed a contract with NeuStar to market and operate .nyc as a "geo" 
TLD. The city is expecting to negotiate a complementary contract with 
ICANN soon.

To date, public input in New York's TLD policy development has been 
negligible, and thus the ways it will serve public interest, hard to 
discern. A ray of hope for public engagement recently showed itself in 
the city's updated Digital Roadmap 
<http://www.nyc.gov/html/digital/downloads/pdf/digitalroadmap2012.pdf>, 
where it states:

"...the City of New York will establish a community advisory board and 
convene public listening sessions to encourage meaningful input into the 
development of the .nyc strategy."

The Community Advisory Board (CAB) is in its nascent days with planning 
for membership, duties, process, and outcomes just beginning. While the 
NeuStar's contract 
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/governance-ecology-documents> 
significantly limits options, I'm gathering recommendations for public 
engagement in planning and oversight of New York City's TLD through the 
CAB and listening sessions. These will be shared with the 
administration, the city council (which has indicated an intention to 
hold public hearings), and others. Here are my initial thoughts:

  *

    Membership -- Meeting the political and cultural traditions of the
    city, CAB membership should come from government technology and
    planning agencies, community boards, civic organizations, local
    businesses, and schools. Expertise should be represented by
    anthropologists, economists, information architects, media,
    technologists, and sociologists. CAB members should be appointed by
    the office of the mayor and city council. A salaried executive
    director, with a tie-breaker only vote, should be amember. For
    informational purposes, multistakeholderism as practiced in Internet
    fora will be described.

  *

    Duties -- The Internet is not mentioned in the 1987 city charter,
    but developments of similar scope must go through a Uniform Land Use
    Review Process. ULURP requires that plans having a significant
    impact be reviewed by Community Boards in affected communities. The
    CAB should be required to hear from all sections of the city - each
    of the 59 community boards or blocks of them as determined by the
    boards in consultation with the elected Borough Presidents. Outreach
    efforts should "seed" policy questions to facilitate public
    engagement into the issues. Online participation should be enabled
    through wikis and forums.

  *

    Process -- An executive director should be appointed by the CAB with
    responsibilities to organize the public listening sessions and
    create digital access capacity, e.g., wiki, discussion lists. The
    director should consolidate the face to face community and digital
    input and present it for review to the city's lawmakers.

  *

    Outcomes -- When not strictly in opposition to the NeuStar contract,
    recommendations of the CAB are to be amended to the agreement, and
    monitored on an ongoing basis by CAB. Recommendations outside the
    scope of the extant contact should be brought to the contractor for
    consideration and possible inclusion at renewal of the 5 year contract.

Thoughts from fellow IGC list members will be greatly appreciated.

Best,

Tom Lowenhaupt

P.S. A recent post entitled The 2013 City Elections and .nyc 
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/blog/2012/09/17/the-2013-city-election-nyc/> 
relates tot his and might be of interest.

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