RE: Candidates have until *26 August 2014 *to make their public 
statement to the NCSG email list.
        Candidate Public Statements will be posted to the NCSG Elections 
page:
_https://community.icann.org/display/gnsononcomstake/Elections-2014_

/
Candidate Statement: Sam Lanfranco/

·/Name:/ Sam Lanfranco

·/Declared Region:/ Canada/North America

·/Gender:/ Male

·/Employment:/ Economics Professor Emeritus & Farmer

·/Conflicts of Interest:/ None


·/Reasons for Willingness to Take on the Tasks of the GNSO Position:/ 
The recent major expansion of new gTLDs marks a milestone in the 
maturation of the Internet ecosystem as a factor in economic growth, and 
for civil society. The next years will bring growing bottom up pressures 
on the scope and focus of GNSO project and policy activities, especially 
with regard to the less developed and more disadvantaged regions of the 
globe and sectors of society. Policies related to issues of generic 
top-level domain (gTLDs) governance, engagement and accountability will 
increasingly be driven by issues of poverty and social justice. ICANN’s 
efforts will be joined by other significant entities within the Internet 
ecosystem. These concerns have been central to my work as a development 
economist for decades and with ICT for development. I want to bring an 
“outside the ICANN box” perspective to GNSO discussion and debate as it 
formulates its work agenda and strategy within this new emerging reality.


·/Qualifications for Position: /I have been formally associated with 
ICANN for slightly over a year. While I am Chair of the Policy Committee 
in NPOC, and on the GNSO New gTLD Discussion Group, I would not qualify 
for a position on the GNSO if the sole criteria were length of service 
within ICANN. However, I have been dealing with the consequences of ICT 
on economic development and civil society processes for four decades. As 
an ICANN outsider and economist my perspective would complement the 
mainly technical and intellectual property centric view of gTLD policy 
with a more development centric perspective. As a social scientist I 
would bring a civil society perspective that emphasized how gTLD policy 
implementation impacts on stakeholders as they build and work within the 
Internet ecosystem.

·/Statement of Availability for the Time the Position Requires: /As a 
Professor Emeritus I have ample time to meet the demands of the 
position. My farm work involves mutual help between farmers and requires 
only short periods of attention during the year. The rest of my time is 
devoted to issues of ICT and development, with a preferential option for 
empowering the poor via greater stakeholder engagement in policy and 
implementation.


·/Other information that the candidate believes is relevant:/ Rather 
than offer more detail with regard to relevant qualifications, in terms 
of past experience elsewhere, I would like to reiterate my view that 
ICANN (and the GNSO) are at a milestone in the development of the 
Internet ecosystem. The next few years will call for new perspectives, 
even within the existing ICANN remit and GNSO remit, as well as the 
emergence of new significant players with regard to Internet governance. 
New beneficial perspectives will have to come from broader and deeper 
stakeholder engagement in the reasoned dialogue that precedes, 
accompanies and follows creating discussion groups, creating working 
groups, recruiting expert panels, and instituting policy development 
processes within the GNSO and within ICANN. //

-- 
------------------------------------------------
"It is a disgrace to be rich and honoured
in an unjust state" -Confucius
------------------------------------------------
Dr Sam Lanfranco (Prof Emeritus & Senior Scholar)
Econ, York U., Toronto, Ontario, CANADA - M3J 1P3
email: [log in to unmask]   Skype: slanfranco
blog:  http://samlanfranco.blogspot.com
Phone: +1 613-476-0429 cell: +1 416-816-2852