At the last ALAC meeting, I was asked to draft a statement for the endorsement of the ALAC on the New GNSO Communications and Coordination Work Team (CCT) Final Consolidated Recommendations. In general, the report is worthy of supporting, although I have identified one area where I disagree with the recommendations. The report can be found at http://gnso.icann.org/drafts/cct-consolidated-report-final-09apr10-en.pdf (not easy to find, since it is not pointed to by the Public Comment web page). The report is a rather difficult to follow and for a document discussing communications, I think that it is an example demonstrating that we need improvement. Nevertheless, it does identify a lot of areas where improvement is needed. Some of them are of specific interest to the GNSO, but many are particularly relevant to those who are trying to understand and/or influence GNSO policy discussions and to At-Large in particular. I was personally gratified to see "The GNSO Council has been very well served by the nonvoting ALAC liaison who participates actively on Council calls and in various policy working groups." and the recommendation that this be used as a model for engagement of other ICANN groups. My one significant concern is with a recommendation concerning Working Group Charters. The recommendation reads:
5.8 Lack of Known Desired Outcomes or Ultimate Objectives The CCT believes that the GNSO's work and communications would be much more efficient and easy to handle by all participants if proper context is established, including a clear explanation of the outcome that the Council hopes for in convening the Working Group or work activity. The CCT recommends that Working Group charters be drafted with careful attention to the issues or questions that should be considered and the outcomes desired. The CCT acknowledges that the Working Group Work Team is developing a set of guidelines that will recommend more precision in the drafting of charter documents and it fully endorses this effort.
Although WG charters must carefully identify the scope of the problems or issue, I strongly object to the concept of the GNSO specifying the outcomes of a WG and in particular a PDP WG. The WG must be free to craft outcomes that really will address the issue, and not be constrained by the position of the GNSO prior to the start. The draft statement can be found at https://st.icann.org/gnso-liaison/index.cgi?gnso_cct_recommendations. The comment period ends on May 16. Our original intent was to have the is statement ready for discussion much earlier and to vote on it prior to the comment period ending. Due to the lateness of the draft, I would suggest that we allow most of this week to discuss, and start a 5 day vote at the end of the week, submitting the statement within the deadline if there is not a strong disagreement with the statement (and noting that a vote is in progress). Given that this is not an extremely high priority issue, our vote should be complete prior to the summarization. Alan