Normally when a senior staff member leaves auDA, there is generally some sort of announcement.
But to my knowledge, not so for Caroline Fritsch.
When I made some enquiries at auDA (and I did try hard), I was met with a wall of silence.
Her position was that of “Manager – Policy & Strategy” – and, according to her Linkedin profile, she quietly left in July this year.
On a personal level
I first met Caroline at the inaugural meeting of the PRP (Policy Review Panel) of which I was briefly a member. She was a likeable person, but it seemed to me she was on a mission to make direct registrations happen come what may. And it also appeared to me that she was not a fan of domain investors generally. Consequently, a few of us on the PRP butted heads with her.
Fast forward a few years, and she got involved with the decision making on my application to the Defence Department to seek permission to continue using the domain name AIF.com.au. (Though she did try and keep her involvement secret!). She wrongly informed her contact at Defence that I had previously had an application refused by the Minister. This caused Defence to do an about face and refuse me permission. I complained to the auDA CEO Rosemary Sinclair, but my concerns fell on deaf ears. (Cue another article why auDA needs an Ombudsman or similar).
Licensing Rules for Direct Registrations
She was the person who drafted these. There may have been others involved, but it was her primary role.
Many people found these confusing – even auDA staff! We were supposed to get rid of the red tape.
And as someone from auDA told me, “an academic wrote the rules, and our challenge is to actually put them into practise so that that they make sense” – or words to that effect.
Comments
If you choose to make a comment, please ensure it is constructive and not personally demeaning. Thank you.
I really think .au isn’t going to go ahead.
11th hour power move
I mean seriously, why would auDA welcome spammers, fraudsters and consumer confusion to the Australian namespace?
If .au was really going ahead then why would Caroline Fritsch not stick around for the glory?
In my opinion, she was one of the most detrimental and overall costly people involved in the.au namespace.
Should never have been in the job.
No real world experience or knowledge of ppc, monetisation, domain aftermarket, the .UK or UK conflicted names processes.
https://www.dntrade.com.au/threads/are-auda-staff-trying-to-influence-the-auda-prp-with-crazy-ideas.11856/
The following comments are all “in my opinion”.
I believe accountability and transparency is still lacking with auDA under the current 3rd CEO Rosemary Sinclair.
I asked some questions directly to the 3rd auDA CEO and the response was less than suitable.
Paying stakeholders who fund auDA deserve answers to very simple important questions such as these.
Caroline F was in my opinion highly biased and in many areas seriously wrong. I believe she lacked the required knowledge when making and proposing policy changes and interpretations that affected many parties and Australian Critical Infrastructure.
In my opinion, her auDA given powers and push against facts and reason did massive damage to the stability and confidence in the .au namespace.
She seemingly did want to ban .au domain name monetisation.
When the ICA got involved auDA backflipped throwing the PRP under the boss for the blame auDA itself was pushing and peddling to them.
https://www.internetcommerce.org/auda-management-rejects-wrongful-attempts-to-prohibit-domain-name-investment-in-australia/
https://www.internetcommerce.org/ica-recommendations-to-the-auda-board-reform-of-existing-policies-implementation-of-direct-registration/
“auDA, the Australian registry, is considering some dramatic policy changes, one of which attempts to potentially devastate domain name investing in Australia.
While auDA has never had domain name investment-friendly policies, these new proposed changes make things decidedly worse and threaten the very existence of investment in Australian domain names.
The ICA views this as a threat to domain investing globally, and believes auDA should embrace domain investing, rather than oppose it.
We have composed and submitted a comment letter, which you can read https://www.internetcommerce.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/ICA-Letter-re-Policy-Review-April-9-2019.pdf .”
https://domainer.com.au/prp-clarify-domain-monetisation/
___________________________________________________________________________
Forwarded message ———
Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2021, 4:22 pm
Subject: Re: [EXTERNAL] – Rosemary auDA .au domain Administration Limited staffing
To: Rosemary Sinclair
Dear Rosemary,
On no it’s auDA 2.0 again?
Ok. Please advise the person who is the current auDA Manager Policy & Strategy.
If there is no one is currently in the auDA Manager Policy & Strategy role will it be advertised for new applicants, where and when?
On Fri, 27 Aug 2021 at 16:07, Rosemary Sinclair wrote:
Dear Sean,
Your questions relate to staff matters which are confidential to auDA. All related decisions are taken within the Board approved HR Policy Framework.
I will not be providing further detail on individual matters.
Kind Regards,
Rosemary
Rosemary Sinclair AM
Chief Executive Officer
rosemary.sinclair@auda.org.au
+61 (0) 413 734 490
.au Domain Administration
http://www.auda.org.au
__
27 Aug 2021
Dear Rosemary,
In light of the Commonwealth’s requirement for auDA to improve transparency and reportability to stakeholders may I ask the following and seek your answer today.
I have been advised by an auDA Registrar that Caroline Fritsch has left auDA.
Has Caroline Fritsch left auDA and on what date did she finish?
Who has replaced her?
What date did they start?
How was the role advertised and how many applicants applied?
Has auDA made any public announcements on the new person and their background etc if they did come on board?
Best regards,
Sean
auDA is run by a small handful of people. Those in control think they’re even more powerful now that Caroline F. has gone. She seems to have been used to create the new policy rules and then vanished? Now they continue to allow the monopoly of the Registrars and have safely outsourced one of the main reasons they were getting paid in the first place, to sort out complaints. Time for another pay rise and kick-back!
How can we find out the real reason for Caroline F. leaving? is the auDA hiding something?
I might be wrong, but I believe the real auDA Policy Review Panel final report was against direct registrations.
Ex auDA CEO Cameron Boardman and ex auDA employee Caroline Fritsch did not apparently accept it.
The auDA Policy Review Panel was then shutdown by auDA management because they did not get the result they wanted which was a Yes to direct Reg and as fast as possible auDA wanted.
auDA COO Bruce Tonkin, ex auDA Caroline Fritsch and ex auDA “who knows what” Alister Paterson https://au.linkedin.com/in/alister-paterson-8b17405a then fumbled through a policy and direct reg fake consultation meeting at UTS in Sydney to tick a process box.
Less than 15 non auDA related people attended that.
auDA never contacted all existing .au domain name registrants at any time in the surveys or rigged “consultations”.
Very few existing registrants know of the auDA changed policies, direct .au conflicted names process, the new conflicted names token fees etc.
auDA is not thinking of existing registrants. It is 100% focused on more profits, KPI bonuses, how to sell more names, how to profit more from affected existing registrants.
My guess is like others before her Caroline is a legal liability for auDA. Her decisions are at the core of the big legal issues and more.
The auDA PRP wanted to have legally plain English policies. auDA did not want that and they didn’t want to pay for it.
It seems auDA wanted it even more confusing so they can choose how they want to interpret it on any given day. …or they can spend $millions on legal fees as has been the case for the last 5 years each year.
I went to a public meeting in Melbourne to discuss direct registrations, and Brett Fenton was the biggest anti domainer cheerleader. He was part of the review panel. Disgusting.
If this proceeds as it might we can’t wait to get him on the stand under oath and present him with his own statements and materials.
Brett Fenton should never have been on the auDA Policy Review Panel. A clear conflict of interest.
His stacking and rigging of direct .au surveys is well known and documented here on domainer also!
Brett also stated to the meetings the failure direct .uk was now the most popular and preferred domain extension in the UK market. Total BS peddled at auDA PRP meetings. The .co.uk has always been the most popular even when the direct .uk version option was offered 100% FREE!
https://www.dntrade.com.au/threads/auda-to-cripple-business.11762/
“Written on 27 May, 2015 by Brett Fenton
https://www.netregistry.com.au/blog/why-we-should-have-anything-au/
“Bypassing the .com.au or .org.au makes domain names shorter, snappier and more memorable.”
Brett Fenton”
A source told me that she played a Workplace Health & Safety card, and engineered an early departure. Can’t swear to it though.