Executive Director's Report - 19 October 2007

Audit and Risk Committee

Ratification is required for appointments to the Audit and Risk committee including Michael Wallmannsberger (Chair), Judith Speight and Michael Foley.

The terms of reference for this committee were approved at the 31 August Council meeting.

ICT Week in Parliament

This event was due to be held in October, but has been deferred to March 2008.

NZCID

InternetNZ is now an associate member of the NZ Council for Infrastructure Development (www.nzcid.org.nz). Our membership allows one complimentary attendee at their events, and of most interest for INZ attendance is the 8 November “building nations” event in Auckland. NZCID and NZ Institute are keen to engage with INZ on the issues of broadband / fibre rollout.

Interactive Advertising Bureau

InternetNZ has a contra arrangement for associate membership of the IAB (www.iab.org.nz). I attended their inaugural general meeting in Auckland on 10 October and was interested to see the progress of this organisation. Their activities in providing accurate measurement of online advertising will be useful in assessing changes in the advertising market and increasing impact of online advertising. The IAB believes that international experience shows increasing broadband uptake brings about increased online advertising.

APNIC Meeting Hosting

InternetNZ has been successful in its bid to host the August 2008 APNIC meeting in Christchurch. IP numbers might be the theme for August next year, as we are attempting to back-to-back a further IPv6 workshop with this event, and it also looks like the perfect timing for the IPv6 Hui. Later in August REANNZ are hosting the Asia Pacific Advanced Networking Consortium (APAN) meeting in Queenstown.

INZ is seeking to engage TUANZ as the conference organizer for the APNIC meeting.

$25,000 is the estimated maximum net cost to InternetNZ for hosting this event, and this amount will be included in the 2008/09 budget.

Membership

As at 11 October 2007 our membership was:

Fellows                           14

Individual                        64

Professional Individual   37

Small Organisation          24

Large Organisation            3

                                                -----

             Total membership         142

It should be noted that annual renewals for all memberships have only recently been sent out, and renewals are occurring continuously. I feel confident we will maintain a membership of over 200 members.

We have agreed to sponsorships at Novembers Digital Strategy Summit, Decembers Wireless and Broadband Conference and NZNOG in January 2008 with a view to recruiting members at these events.

Staffing

• Jordan Carter is based in Brussels on his EU Parliament internship and will be back in NZ on 8 December 2007.
• Isabel Carberry has resigned, effective 21 December 2007. Advertising for a replacement has concluded with some good applications coming forward, and interviews due to be conducted prior to the Council meeting.
  

International Travel

I am offshore from 22 October, and back in the office on Monday 19 November, with the following agenda :

• 24 – 25 October                      APTLD Meeting, Bangkok
• 27 October – 2 November      ICANN Los Angeles
• 3 – 10 November                     On leave
• 12 – 15 November                   IGF Brazil
  

I will also be attending the Global Knowledge Partnership “GK3” meeting in Kuala Lumpur from 10 – 12 December 2008.

Renaming

Our legal name is The Internet Society of New Zealand Incorporated, and in recent years we have adopted the brand name InternetNZ. However we are often referred to as “Internet New Zealand”, and we still suffer from sometimes being confused as a branch of The Internet Society (ISOC).

I would like to test Council (and if in agreement) then members for the appropriateness of changing our legal name to Internet New Zealand Incorporated – which would give us free reign to be known as InternetNZ or Internet New Zealand, and will free us from confusion with ISOC.

It may also be useful to consider re-branding with logos, colours, fonts etc, in the next financial year.

I don’t have any formal recommendations at this stage, firstly wanting to get a straw poll of support or otherwise for these steps.

ENUM

The ETSI Guide (Standard) for ENUM (EG 284 004) has been approved ETSI Vote and published on the 22nd of September 2007. The Terms of Reference for the Specialist Task Force STF 302 (12 pages) which drafted the Guide mentioned InternetNZ ENUM UCI PUA Task Force 3 times. InternetNZ is also named in this respect on page 15 of 15 of Mike Pluke's presentation to the ITU in Geneva on 05 12 2006. I have copies of the reports for anyone who is interested.

Returning Officers Report on AGM (carried over from August Council meeting).

There were two issues that arose during the AGM voting process that should be given consideration by Council, as follows:

Majority vote for constitutional change

The current constitution clause states:

“14.5 No motion proposing any amendment to this Constitution at a general meeting shall be deemed to have been passed unless two-thirds of the votes cast on the motion were in favour.”

A supermajority of 66.67% is required to adopt a change to the constitution, and this currently arises from the votes for, against and abstaining. A number of members elected to abstain from voting, whereas their probable intention was that they did not wish to vote, rather than abstaining due to some conflict of interest etc. Given the constitution in its current form, a vote of abstention effectively is a vote against the motion. If Council has concerns with this, I would recommend an amendment to clause 14.5 of the constitution as follows:

14.5 Motions proposing amendments to this Constitution at a general meeting require a two thirds majority of either Yes or No votes to carry.

The other issue that arose during the voting was a number of “ties” in the voting. Currently the constitution states:

“4. If at the end of a round no candidate has reached the threshold, the lowest polling candidate is temporarily removed from the count. (If there are two tied for lowest vote, it is done by `toss of the coin´).”

It occurs to me that a nominee may have greater support at earlier iterations of the preferential ballot, but that this greater support is valueless should a tie occur later down the ballot order, and the “toss of the coin” rule applies. Within the preferential voting system, the drop off rate for voters in their rankings of candidates is high. I believe it would be more representative of a preferential ballot system, in the event of a tie, to re-evaluate the earlier higher order preference votes for the tied candidates. The constitution could be reworded as follows to allow this change:

4. If two candidates are tied for the lowest vote the candidate who received the higher number of earlier preference votes will win. If there is still a tie the successful candidate will be decided by a ‘toss of the coin’.

Recommendations:

1.      That the Executive Directors Report be received.

2.      That Council recommends amendments to clauses 4 and 14.5 of the constitution to the 2008 AGM.

 3.      That Michael Wallmannsberger be appointed Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, with committee members comprising Judy Speight and Michael Foley.
 

4.      That InternetNZ’s commitment to hosting the August 2008 APNIC meeting in Christchurch be noted.
 

Keith Davidson

12 October 2007