Executive Director's Report to Council 30/04/05
Overview
The output of the secretariat has continued at the same high level for more than six months. Right now we have a bottleneck preventing us lifting productivity, and that is lack of staff. We will resolve this with temporary team members until the new Executive Director is on board and has time to select permanent team additions. It would not be fair to appoint new permanent employees at this time. On the other hand this workload has enabled us to focus and be efficient. InternetNZ is getting very good value from the secretariat team!
As InternetNZ' s reputation as a stable and authoritative organization grows, so does the expectation of delivery. There are more opportunities open to us than we have resources to tackle now or in the near future. We need to carefully select those tasks that most closely fit our strategic direction. This will mean we say no to several otherwise sound opportunities to start projects, or for involvement in useful bodies. To add another note of caution, each new project completed leaves a residual administrative overhead which must be resourced.
The next few months see us heading into the AGM countdown, which bumps the administrative workload significantly. If we provide the resource level for the unplanned peaks (TACTR, ENUM etc) then we create an overweight secretariat. Even though we are over extended right now, the only issue we create by running lean, is slight delays to our projects as we gear up to tackle them. I feel this is an acceptable risk, and is more prudent in managing a not for profit, than gearing for the peaks.
Council Relations
For InternetNZ' s continued success the elected representatives and staff should have a degree of healthy tension between them. In the model we operate, with a higher degree of operational involvement of the officers, this tension is reduced through the day to day involvement of the officers in the secretariat team doing actual work. As you would expect the tension will be higher when there is arm' s length operational effort by councilors. When the secretariat has accountability for work that is being handled by a council subcommittee/working group/task force then it is vital that the councilors engage with the staff and ensure that they have real agreement on how work should be done before starting. We all know that this is not always going to happen, so when the gap opens we need to be ready to quickly reconcile the issues to allow work to proceed. Regardless of the situation, the Executive Director is responsible for the operational aspects of all projects, and councilors report to the ED for the matters that relate to project work. ( See the PMO handbook ) These issues arise mainly because of the enthusiasm of the councilors involved, and this is laudable.
Sadly, we have councilors who do not pull their weight. Pulling your weight does not mean you need to be in the small group of workaholics, but it does mean consistently contributing at meetings and on the lists. The secretariat needs to have every councilor actively involved if we are to hit the ambitious targets council sets us. If you can' t find the time or the will to contribute more, please stand down, as there are heaps of people who are keen to jump in. You can still be an active member! Then again there may be little point in writing this, as the ones who don' t pull their weight don' t read the papers!
Staff
We have hit the wall on staff availability. Jordan, Isabel and myself are running up some quite excessive hours as we fill the gaps. We did have an excellent temp replacement for Gale who started and left while I was out of the country. In the week before the council meeting we will be appointing temporary/contract staff for the following roles:
- Web site content classification, structure and cataloging
- General admin, committee and PMO support
- Web site maintenance
Isabel has a contractor working on document archival, and Hilary Carlile is providing PMO oversight.
Much of this work should be undertaken by permanent staff. We have the job descriptions ready and will start the selection process once the new Executive Director is on board.
Our team is solid and is developing into a long term asset. Both Jordan and Isabel are able to take more responsibility as the work expands.
Gale' s baby was due last week.
PMO
(Project Management Office)
The role of a PMO is not to manage projects, but to provide resources, standards and support to InternetNZ projects.
We have not met our own goals on Project management, and have not delivered an effective PMO. This has happened for two main reasons.
- Gale' s departure. Gale was the PMO officer. We had planned and did appoint a temporary replacement, but she left. We expect to have this gap filled before the council meeting.
- Lack of training. Although Hilary Carlile has prepared an excellent PMO manual and handbook, we have not trained the project teams on each new project at initiation of the project. PMO training will be provided as part of the council induction program.
Remediation of these issues and support from council in enforcing the standards will significantly improve the way we manage and report on projects. Hilary is helping fill the gaps and has stepped in to oversee any new project.
ENUM
This is the most significant single new initiative for the society this year. With technical, political, commercial and international ramifications we need to be ready to move on all fronts concurrently. We also need to be clear about where InternetNZ stands. Right now there is no defined position for us to publish. There is no policy. There is no plan. I find it hard to understand how council has permitted this to happen. Lets find a way to keep the truck moving while getting all the background pieces into place. So far we have not created any difficult external issues. Full reports on this initiative are included in the council papers
ICANNZ06
We are 11 months away from this event, which will be the largest undertaken by InternetNZ, and will be a major international industry event. With Internet "governance" hotting up we expect that ICANNZ06 will see more activity and controversy than usual. We must ensure we are doing everything right. The ICANNZ06 task force reports are in the council papers. Laura Virgo of Conference Online is our Professional Conference Organizer (PCO) and will be a regular round the office as the work load ramps up.
ICOP
The period for public review of the draft code is almost at an end, and we will need to assemble the team to implement the code starting in the second week of May. We still have no response from Telecom. I will pursue them this week.
Netsafe Initiatives
We have often said that if the Internet Safety Group (Netsafe) did not exist we would have to do its work. That is why we provide financial, and any other support they request. The reality is that we could never be as effective as Netsafe. Globally respected for its work and its common sense position on issues, Netsafe is tackling some issues which will require InternetNZ to actively engage with Netsafe.
The first issue is the voluntary filtering of sites by ISPs. (Cleanfeed)
A statement about this is appended to my report. InternetNZ will need to work with ISPs (ISPAG and ICTUS) to establish if this is a solution that can be implemented in NZ. We clearly have a risk in that in some ways this conflicts with our anti-censorship stance, yet is also part of the need to protect users.
The second issue is how to consider Internet Cafes and where they fit in the service provider framework. Do we include them in the Code of Practice? Netsafe and IBM are hosting a workshop this week. I will report from that meeting to council.
We expect to see several more joint initiatives with Netsafe this year.
APTLD Secretariat
Jordan is managing the secretariat well and despite the overall workload is able to keep on top of the APTLD issues.
TACTR
The high quality of the InternetNZ response, thanks to the efforts of Kath Moran, Michael Wigley and our team has ensured that we are able to take some high round in the next stage of this process. Our concern is to get changes made despite the desire to avoid hard choices in an election year. We are continuing to work with Michael to ensure we don' t lose our position, and that we are seen to be effective contributors in the debate. I suspect that the quality of the submissions has had a strengthening effect on the office of the Telecommunication Commissioner, and this can be seen in the draft determination on UBS issued last week. We are working with the Commission to ensure that ISPs can respond without feeling they are putting themselves offside with Telecom. However we do need to consider the high cost of operating in this space. We have just over $50,000 this far.
Interop
Nothing to report this period, as the initiative is still on hold awaiting government funding. I am concerned that we are losing our place and may see leadership in this vital area taken over by regional interests. There is no less need for the laboratory, and issues are piling up. We need to have work done on selection of subsets of global standards if we are to ensure that NZ can move forward quickly as we strive to catch up to the rest of the developed world.
ICTUS & ICTNZ
Our initial funding for ICTUS has concluded and we need to decide if we are to continue to support this initiative. Jim Higgins has reported on ICTUS separately.
There is still some confusion about the roles of ICTUS and ICTNZ. As you will have seen ICTNZ is starting to get some press. We are part of ICTNZ, and Sean Weekes has been attending their meetings. Put simply, ICTNZ is a supplier side organisation focused on increasing sales and jobs, while ICTUS is an industry wide communications facility, allowing consolidated submissions to government, government announcements to industry, and industry wide initiative publication.
ICTNZ and ICTUS are compatible and have very little overlap. ICTNZ can and should use ICTUS to support its work.
Peering
At the last Council meeting a Peering Task Force was formed with the Executive Director as chair. Unfortunately, as I was not aware of this through misreading the minutes and not being at the meeting, we have yet to meet. This will be remedied this week. We have yet to re-engage with Covec to develop an paper on the economic issues of peering. It is my view that we need to address the technical, social, and political issues first, as they will bring a different set of pressures to bear on the economic model.
ISPAG
According to our plans, and in line with the changes in the ISP environment, it is now time to launch the ISP Advisory Group. The first task will be to establish a governance model. We already have many issues for the ISP community to consider. This week the ISPs will be asked to join a meeting held by the Telecommunications commissioner to present the TelstraClear Bitstream Draft Determination, and help ISPs understand the process, and to use InternetNZ as a host for presenting requests to anonomise issues, as there seems to be a concern for some ISPs not to antagonize the major telcos by raising issues with the commissioner.
Interim Web Presence
Jordan has been looking after the site. The steady improvement has continued. As we need Jordan' s time to be invested in research and management issues, we will have a contractor managing content from this week. In addition, the work done by the researcher cataloging pages will improve the quality of the interim site.
New Web Presence
We have entered the final phase with the CMS contract in the process of being let to 3 Months. Shane Middlemiss has submitted a separate report. The main roadblock is the lack of a site cataloger. We aim to resolve this before the council meeting
Digital Certification Authority
Due to pressure of other work, the business plan for the Digital Certification Authority has been put on hold until the first week in May. We will submit the draft plan to Exec Committee by the middle of May.
Conclusion
Interim staffing has to be the top priority for the secretariat in the next few weeks. Once that is resolved we can line up our other priorities properly and put more effort into them.
Cleanfeed
The UK' s independent hotline, the Internet Watch Foundation, receives reports from members of the public and other sources about web sites or web pages within wider sites, alleged to contain child pornography. The IWF investigates these reports and, if it confirms that the site or page does contain child pornography, it also determines where the server housing the site or page is physically located. If the server is in the UK it informs the owner of the server and the site or page is taken down more or less immediately. If the server is overseas the IWF reports it to the relevant authorities.
99% of all the sites identified by the IWF are housed outside the UK and the authorities in the different countries concerned have various approaches to dealing with the reports they receive. In some countries the police may lack the legal powers or the technical knowledge to enable them to pursue the reports expeditiously, or alternatively they may be overwhelmed by the number of reports. This can result in some child pornography web sites being left up and visible for protracted periods of time. This means, of course, that other internet users can continue to view and download the images.
The IWF maintains an up to date database of all the web sites or web pages which it has confirmed are holding material which is illegal under UK law. BT was the first Internet Service Provider to pick up that database and incorporate it into its own internal systems. This became known as the "Cleanfeed" system. Under Cleanfeed, any BT customer who tries to access any of the addresses in the database will receive a message saying that the site, or the specific page, is unavailable. This effectively blocks access to the site or the page. During an initial three week trial BT blocked around 250,000 attempted accesses, and more recently the number was running at around 60,000 per day.
We have to treat the above numbers with some caution. We have no way of knowing if all of the attempts to access the sites were due to the activities of a single individual making 250,000 different attempts or 250,000 individuals each making one attempt. It is likely that some of the attempts were, in fact, made by "robots" or automated systems sent out by other computers. Under UK law BT is not allowed to attempt to track who or what is making the requests. That would amount to surveillance and would require a warrant. However, whatever the reason, these are significant numbers which cannot be ignored.
Soon after BT' s announcement was made the UK arm of Vodafone, the mobile phone company, said that it was going to implement a similar solution to stop any of its mobile users accessing the same internet sites or pages, and now several other UK and overseas ISPs and mobile phone companies are doing the same. However there is no reason why they could not all do the same.
There are two further and important points to understand about Cleanfeed: firstly the IWF' s decisions about what goes in its database are made entirely independently of Government or the police, and their decisions are subject to judicial review in the courts if anyone wants to challenge them.
Secondly, the fact that access is blocked does not mean that the site or the page no longer exists. It simply means that using that particular ISP' s service you cannot reach the site or page. However, if fewer and fewer people can reach the site or page, that means fewer and fewer people can view, download or buy the illegal image, and if that happens on a large enough scale many of the people who make and distribute these images will stop doing it. Many of them only do it in order to make money and if no one can reach their sites to buy the material they will stop recruiting new children to abuse in order to make new pictures for sale.
If every ISP in the world implements a Cleanfeed-type solution it would be a hugely important victory because the worldwide web is perhaps the most widely used, and the easiest to use, part of the internet. But we should be clear that the criminals currently involved in this vile trade will then almost certainly try to find other ways to make and distribute child pornography. Cleanfeed can put the web beyond their reach, but sadly that only means that this particular battle has been won. We have not yet won the war.
At no cost, BT will make available to ISPs and mobile phone companies, the technical details of how another ISP or mobile phone company could implement a similar solution locally. All that is required is for the ISP or mobile phone company to agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement. This way they can gain free access to the knowledge gained from the substantial investment which BT made when it first trialled this new approach to stamping out child pornography.
The person to contact at BT is Nick Truman, Head of Internet Security: nick.truman@bt.com
The person to contact at the IWF is Peter Robbins, CEO: peter@iwf.org.uk
