Given that Domainer is now deemed as “media” (as I was told last year by a couple of staff members) – all my questions to auDA have to go through the proper channels to get an answer (or should I say “hopefully” get an answer – and not “spin”).
So these are the questions I have sent off to them today.
Question 1
♦ New membership applications were submitted for approval by the auDA Board on Monday 19th June. I have been advised by several people that no-one has heard a peep from anyone at auDA – and it is now 10 days later. When will prospective new members be advised whether they have been “accepted”? You’ve had their membership application fees for quite a while now!
Question 2
♦ When is the next Board Meeting being held? We can no longer access this information on the auDA website.
Question 3
♦ When will the new improved auDA website / members portal be ready? You have been apologising for the current one for 10 months now; and promising (for the same period of time) that a new one was in the works. Surely if you believe that you have the capability to run a Registry in-house, you can at least get a website up and running reasonably quickly? Just as a further suggestion, wouldn’t it be great if we had something like Canada does – an Internet Forum?
Question 4
♦ At the AGM, the CEO mentioned that he was commissioning Deloitte to do a business case study about the introduction / impact of direct registrations into the Australian namespace. Has this report been completed; and if so, will auDA make it available on their website (as they did with the Westlake report in 2012; and the Cameron Ralph report in 2016)?
Question 5
♦ Can you please give members an update on the work of the “Direct Registration Advisory Panel”? Is it possible to get a timeline of what is going to happen – and when? Are any of the Panel’s initial recommendations going to go out to public consultation (as is normally the case)?
Question 6
♦ Given the massive staff turnover at auDA since early 2016, can you please tell all members how many current staff are employed by our Membership Organisation; who they are – and what areas they are responsible for? The staff list was taken off the website last year. If you don’t want to list all the staff, can you at least advise who the senior management are? Just like Canada does.
Thank you.
Hopefully we don’t have to employ the services of “Madame Fortuna” to get these answers. 😉
Ned O’Meara – 29th June 2017
Disclaimer
Those who have identified themselves as being employed by auDA on LinkedIn:
Aaron Lees, DevOps – Web
Bruce Tonkin, Project Lead – Registry Transformation Project
Cameron Boardman, CEO (not on LinkedIn)
Caroline Fritsch, Manager Policy & Strategy
Diannah Parker, Director Corporate and Regulatory Services/Company Secretary
Helen Hollins, Director Communications, Marketing and Engagement
Jacki O’Sullivan, Administration
Lisa Lunardi, Office Manager
Mark Bouck, Manager Policy Compliance
Peter Mason, Senior Project Manager
Richard McKenzie, Marketing and Research Officer
@Josh – as mentioned on Domainer previously, I believe Jacki and Lisa officially leave tomorrow. Wonder who their replacements will be?
Scratch Aaron as well.
Total corporate memory can now be measured in minutes, not years.
With regards to question 1 new members.
Today the membership was updated and emails sent out to new members.
Why was it not done earlier and why do members (Ned) have to push auDA into action regarding communication?
It seems to me that their is an inherent reluctance on auDA’s part to interact with their members. Is this a directive from the CEO and/or Chair or just bad management. Why poke the bear?
It’s amazing isn’t it. My email goes off early this morning to the CEO and “Director Communications, Marketing and Engagement”, and then the “Welcome to auDA” emails start flowing a couple of hours later.
But as you say, why should I / we have to do this?
Then there was this back on May 1st. Action within 7 minutes!
Are you secretly running auDA Ned?
I can tell you Aaron Lees isn’t there – he’s just a lazy updater on LinkedIn
There we go. Mr Lazy updated.
Another prompt from your articles Ned – bravo =)
I had to Email them after the last board meeting to ask if my membership has been approved. I got a response that it had been approved and that the list would be updated. This was over a week ago. I doubt the list would have been updated if you hadn’t sent the Email Ned…. but I agree with you, it should not have come to this!
Apart from all the issues they’re having, they probably short-staffed, either that or dis-organised.