Executive Director's Final Report to Council 14/12/02

— filed under: .bank, NGI

Executive Director Report
for December 14 2002
Council Meeting

Status: Accepted at Council Meeting 021214

December 5 2002

Introduction

This is my final formal report to the Council of InternetNZ and I present it with mixed feelings. In looking back I see that I have reported to all 34 Council Meetings which have taken place since I started with the Society on August 12 1998, and to five AGMs. My first Council Meeting took place eight days after I started, and I ended up with 11 action items which included: take over the website, prepare constitutional amendments for the November AGM to allow for online participation at AGMs, write a paper on creating the new category of Corporate membership, prepare a membership benefits paper, work with Education & Research Committee on the Seminar to take place before the AGM, prepare a Budget for 1999, write a letter of acceptance of a Councilor's resignation, and take over the financial and membership services which were being done by NZCS. It was a challenging and exciting time, and the work has gotten even more varied and interesting as time has passed.

I have truly appreciated the chance to be involved in the evolution of the Society, and I am pleased to have been a part of the growth from the initial two box files and a spare desk at Domainz to the fine offices and the few but professional staff & contractors we have now.

I would like to formally record my thanks to the Members, Councillors & Officers, Staff, and Stakeholders who have supported my work, and even those who presented challenges, as this has been a truly unique opportunity to both use and expand my skills in what I believe is the most important revolution we have seen since literacy became common place. Having been involved in the recruitment process for the new Executive Director, I am confident that, whomever is chosen from the shortlist of high calibre candidates, the Society will be in good hands as it moves into the next stage of its evolution. I will, however, miss the close involvement with the many colleagues I have worked with over the last four and a half years, some of whom have also become good friends. Thank you all.

Work Completed Since November 8 Council Meeting

Recruitment process for new Executive Director
The Admin Committee will report on this. I was involved through the whole process including consultation with stakeholders, criteria creation for shortlisting, and the actual shortlisting, though not the interviews themselves. This has taken up a fair amount of time, and I am impressed with the professional level achieved in a process which was both rigorous and transparent. The process itself will be published as both a model of Best Practice, and so that members can see the process in line with our open and transparent standards. The Secretary and his team, and the Navigate consultants deserve congratulations for their work.
".bank.nz"
The team completed the consultation process for the proposal to create ".bank.nz" on behalf of the DNC. The online poll was completed on Sunday Nov 10, the scrutineering on Monday Nov 11, and the announcement and media releases went out the same day. The voting turnout was slightly higher than for the first time ".bank.nz" was proposed (481 vs 391) but the support level fell from 65.47% to 56% thus failing to gain the 70% threshold of support. For the full list of voters see: http://www.internetnz.net.nz/dns/2nd-level-domains/banknz02/banknz02poll-result.html.
The DNC has fully taken over the 2LD process now, and issued the Request for Discussion for ".geek.nz" on December 5. See http://www.dnc.org.nz/story/30059-30-1.html. (I note that there are four posts to public-consult to date, and a proposed media release from the proposers' on NZOG). I will be putting out a media release on behalf of the Society today.

IANA Updates

On November 20 2002 I sent IANA a change request as two of the secondaries have changed. I also asked that they action the outstanding "Sponosoring Organisation", Admin Contact, and Technical Contact details, noting that they said they were doing this in July of 2001. On November 20 (time zone differences) I received acknowledgement of receipt and start of process. On November 27 IANA emailed to say they were splitting the update into three actions: Sponsoring Organisation and Admin Contact, Nameservers, and Technical contact; this email asked for confirmation of the first area, which I duly gave. No further communication has been received to date. A strategy was agreed at Tuesday's IAC meeting, and I have done a follow-up action request to IANA. If nothing further happens by Monday, I will escalate the issue.

End of Contract and the Media

The Council issued a very positive media release on my departure. I have had several follow-up calls from the media and did two face to face interviews - one with IDG which has been published, and one with InfoTech which is timed to appear after the new Executive Director has been selected (I requested the delay so as not to risk interference with the advertising process). The coverage has been generally positive, and helps maintain InternetNZ profile.

UNESCO welcome for Dr Abdul Khan, Deputy Secretary General for Communications and Information

Dr Khan was welcomed to New Zealand at an event at (e)-Vision. I suggest the new Executive Director/Social Impact Committee follow-up on this as the focus of his work is Digital Divide issues in their broadest sense.

Website updates

Office Administrator, Zofia Krawczyk, is working through the website tasks which have had to be deferred with the growth in other areas of the Technical Services Manager, John Vorsterman's, work. Zofia's focus has been on getting all formal documents clearly marked as to Status (draft, presented, adopted etc) and this is going well. She is currently working on integrating the three International Indexes into a more useful format, and will complete this during the quieter times in early January. I have updated several areas to reflect the change in responsibility for .nz issues to the DNC, and have pulled together all the material on (a) Planning and (b) the Fellows for easier navigation.

Staffing Review

The Staffing review is now complete, with gaps and resourcing issues identified. As this has been a staged process, some areas have been addressed, and others left for the new Executive Director to make decisions upon. Zofia has successfully completed her first three month review, having now taken on full responsibility for the financial work and the website.
John and I have completed the review of the Technical Management Services contract first let February of 2001. As the webmaster role has now been taken up by Zofia, we have redrafted the services which John provides into a Technical Services Provider contract which more accurately reflects today's needs. This is now a services-outcomes rather than a time-based contract and the Technical Services description will be removed from the website. I would like to note that John provides these services 12X7, and at least half the time via the Internet, and this has proved remarkably effective. We also have an on-call local Linux expert should we need on-site work when John is not in Wellington.

Jury Service

I have been on call for Jury Service all of this week. In the event I have had to report daily, but have not had to serve. I will forward the reimbursement cheque to the Society once I receive it ($15/day!).

Technical & Network

After consultation and research we opted not to renew our secure server certificate with Thwate, in part because it was still linked to secure.isocnz.org.nz at Actrix and couldn't be changed. We decided to bring the secure server in-house, and John completed this November 20. The online membership forms have been updated, and browsers now report an authenticated certificate. As well, DTS has provided us with a dial-up account for staff working away from the Office, and this marks the final step in the shift away from Actrix, giving us total control of our activities.
John Vorstermans has contributed not only quality advice, but a lot of unpaid time to this exercise since March 2001 and it would be appropriate for Council to formally acknowledge this.
The next stage is the migration of all Office machines (Society and DNC) to Linux, but this will come under the management of the new Executive Director.

NGI Consortium

After consultation with the Treasurer and the President, the Office agreed to roll-over our administrative support from the NGI Capability Study to the NGI Consortium-in-formation, as the Consortium lacks the resources to do so until they have hired their CE. This support is for a maximum of three months, ending in February 2003. This is essentially a matter of invoicing the eleven founding Consortium members, accepting the membership subscriptions, and paying the CE once contracted. Full letters of understanding document the agreement.

Correspondence

The BPW Young Career Woman has written to thank the Society for sponsoring her registration fee to the BPW International Congress in Melbourne. I will pass this to the Social Impact Committee in case they wish to follow up.
An invitation has been received from the Hon Lianne Dalziel to make submissions on the Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Bill once it is tabled and sent to Select Committee. The Vice President is sourcing an electronic copy of the Bill for the website, and I have replied to the invitation and raised issues of concern flagged by the Vice President.
I made a late comment on the draft Government Website Guidelines v 2.0 (see http://www.e-government.govt.nz/web-guidelines/review.asp ). I made this as a personal comment as there wasn't time to consult with Council and members.
I have written to the Hon Paul Swain with an update on the ICANN Shanghai meeting and flagging that InternetNZ sponsored the attendance of the GAC representative because we felt it critical that the New Zealand government was represented. I stressed the important contribution that Frank was able to make.

Preparations for Hand-over

All my "spare time" has gone into preparing for hand-over to the new Executive Director, and gathering all documents into a consolidated "Desk File". This work will continue for the rest of the month. I will be working at least one day between Christmas and New Year, if only to pack up my Office, plants etc before heading off for a break in January.

Membership

With the upcoming completion of my contract with InternetNZ, I have taken the opportunity to reinstate my membership of the Society.

Outstanding Action Point

I note from the Minutes of the Society's 1995 founding AGM that there is an outstanding action point which I would be happy to complete for the Society. ;-)
- " Motion: I move that a general vote of thanks be passed to the organizing committee for their work and that the incoming committee consider, given the constraints of time and budget, that at an appropriate time a plaque be erected providing due recognition of the enormous effort put into the formation of the group by the committee at large, in particular by the Chairman and Secretary. May I also suggest that this plaque be prominently displayed at whatever office ISOCNZ establishes and that a similar monument be established, with the same conditions, in cyberspace." D. Hollander Carried - Abst.: 2

Best wishes for the Holiday Season and 2003.

Sue Leader
Executive Director
InternetNZ

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