Dear all,

Here are some notes on the ALAC's Bilateral Meeting at ICANN78 with GNSO Council. Link to the Zoom recording of the meeting is available on the ICANN78 schedule website or at the relevant ALAC Liaison to GNSO workspace tab here. 

Notes on the 21 Oct 2023 ALAC-GNSO Council Bilateral Meeting

Jonathan Zuck, ALAC Chair, provided an update on incoming and outgoing ALAC leadership and Sebastien Ducos, GNSO Chair, provided an update on incoming and outgoing GNSO councilors and the change in GNSO Council leadership.

ALAC and At-Large community members and Council leadership and councilors discussed 3 issues per the agenda:

1. Diacritics in New gTLDs (eg .Quebec and .Québec)

• The GNSO Council recognised that the ALAC, among others, have brought to Council's attention, the potential unsettling impact of certain existing gTLDs (in ASCII or not) running into string similarity issues if the existing registry operators of those certain gTLDs or other applicants were to apply for delegation of what are perceived as confusingly similar strings to those gTLDs but with diacritics. This situation could also impact applications for strings with or without diacritics in the next round.
• Sebastien Ducos, GNSO Chair, reported that Council has not yet determined how they would like to proceed with the issue (whether eventually running a PDP, ie. a policy path, if required or an implementation for edge cases), and will be discussing this further at the Council meeting on Wed, 25 Oct. 
• Justine Chew, ALAC Liaison to the GNSO, would be able to provide an update in due course.

2. Next Round of New gTLD Program - Progress on pending or not adopted Subsequent Procedures recommendations

• There are a number of recommendations from the Subsequent Procedures PDP WG that have been marked (as still) pending and some which have been not adopted (rejected) by the ICANN Board on account of the Board holding that they are not in the best interest of ICANN.
• GNSO Council had established a Council Small Team to address these pending/rejected recommendations to see if they can be clarified (for those pending) or revised in some way (for those rejected) that would address the Board's concern and rationale, respectively.
• Paul McGrady, GNSO Councilor and the Council's Small Team Lead, reported that the GNSO Council is expanding the existing Council Small Team to a "Small Team Plus" to address such recommendations, which includes Recommendation 17.2 on Applicant Support, which he acknowledged as something the At-Large community have a major interest in. Paul encouraged the ALAC to send their very best representatives (a subject matter expert (SME) and an alternate) to join this Small Team Plus to work on those recommendations.
• A workplan is being finalised and the invitation for an SME and alternate from every SOAC, C, and SG, will follow soon.
• Tijani Ben Jemaa, AFRALO, expressed a hope that the major increased of interest in this topic is one that supports the success of an improved Applicant Support Program as compared to the 2012 Round.

3. Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) 

• Greg DiBiase, GNSO Council Vice Chair, explained a bit of the background of the RDRS, from the GNSO recommendations to the Board on the System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (for registration data) (SSAD) and how those recommendations were viewed as prohibitively expensive to implement as-is, and that the Board wanted more data before considering committing a large fund to implement the same. This led to the idea to create a more lightweight system, i.e. a pilot, now called the RDRS, which is to serve as a central place for requestors of registration data that have been redacted to request such data. These requests would be routed to the appropriate registrar for evaluation (and disclosure where appropriate).
• Greg DiBiase, GNSO Council Vice Chair, also reported that work has been done to define what the RDRS would look like and the sort of metrics that would be gathered and shared with the community. Also, that Registrar pre-onboarding has begun (around 10% of domains under management, with up to 35% pledged for on-boarding by launch) and that the RDRS should launch by the end of the calendar year. Onboarding by registrars to the RDRS is voluntary and will inform the paths forward for pending System for Standardized Access/Disclosure (SSAD) policy recommendations. The RDRS will run for 2 years and pending policy recommendations will then be revisited.
• Greg DiBiase, GNSO Council Vice Chair, also reported that the GNSO Council Small Team that had worked on the RDRS design input will be transitioning to a Standing Committee which is tasked to look into issues with the RDRS as they arise, including metrics and reporting.
• Jonathan Zuck, ALAC Chair, expressed a hope that the data being captured/stored will offer the community the ability to do some real analysis as opposed to just relying on reports generated by ICANN org. Sebastien Ducos, GNSO Chair and GNSO Council EPDP Small Team Lead, replied that the data is being stored for as long as the pilot runs but the data that will be shared will only be aggregate data.
• Thomas Rickert, GNSO Councilor and GNSO Council EPDP Small Team member, reminded that the RDRS is in effect just of a basic design which excludes many better features per the SSAD recommendations. However, he reminded participants that it is important for us all to advocate for the use of the RDRS to help ensure that the system will work well to meet the needs both requestors and disclosers, in terms of better quality of requests and better quality disclosures.
• Greg Shatan, NARALO Chair, inquired whether there has been discussions to handle privacy/proxy service providers who "hide" real registrant data and even registrar data.  Sebastien Ducos, GNSO Chair and GNSO Council EPDP Small Team Lead, replied that there have been discussions but since the RDRS is not based on policy but is voluntary for registrars and related service providers, we can only encourage privacy/proxy service providers to also participate in the RDRS. Greg DiBiase, GNSO Council Vice Chair confirmed that there is only existing policy to handle redacted data but no policy to handle data under privacy/proxy services, and there could be future work on that.
• Marie Patullo, GNSO Councilor, asked about what happens to requests are "ignored" by "unresponsive registrars".  Sebastien Ducos, GNSO Chair and GNSO Council EPDP Small Team Lead, clarified that data related to requests that are unattended to will be stored and followed up in some way that would not disincentivize "responsive registrars".  

      Action by ALAC Liaison: To look into periodic intersessional updates from GNSO and discussions with At-Large on the above topics.