Special Summary Report of 25 and 26 Oct 2023 Meeting & Wrap-Up to ALAC

For brevity, I will just highlight a few things here. For some of the issues, you can glean a wider perspective from GNSO Council Oct 2023 Matters of Interest and/or from GNSO Council Oct 2023 Meeting Records.

1. GNSO Council Leadership 2023/2024

• Greg DiBiase, Tomslin Samme-Nlar and Nacho Amadoz, were elected by acclamation as GNSO Chair, GNSO Council Vice-Chair (NCPH), and GNSO Council Vice-Chair (CPH), respectively.

2. Diacritics Issue in Latin Script

• Following a staff presentation and after much discussion, Council settled on asking for a Study (and not an Issues Report as Councilors did not want to potentially trigger a subsequent PDP) in order to be able to make a better informed decision on subsequent next step.

3.  DNS Abuse Mitigation by Contracted Party House (CPH)

• The CPH (i.e. the Registry SG and Registrar SG) has opened their meetings, and plan to invite SOACs to share information with them, to inform on projects and develop possible inputs to such meeting.

    Action by ALAC Liaison: As the ALAC's designated contact point, to liaise with CPH on such outreach opportunities.

4. GNSO Council Committee for Overseeing and Implementing Continuous Improvement (CCOICI) Recommendations Report on Review of the Statement of Interest (SOI) Requirements 

• In August, Council received an overview of the CCOICI Recommendations Report on the SOI Requirements which concluded that no consensus was reached on the ability to exempt participants from declaring in their GNSO SOI who they represented whenever they participated in a PDP in case of professional ethical obligations preventing complications. Although it was recommended that the GNSO SOI format be updated to form two parts (see below), the existing SOI language which allows for the exemption was to remain as is. Further, it is proposed that the SOI be organised into 2 parts:
  
  • a) General Statement of Interest which contains general information about a participant (parent).
    
  • b) Activity Specific Statement of Interest which contains information that is provided specific to the activity, for example, motivation for participation (child)
• The vote to adopt these CCOICI recommendations was withdrawn at Council's Sep 2023 meeting as CPH were not prepared to vote on the one recommendation, as written, to retain the exemption. Hence this matter went back to the CCOICI for further consideration. CCOICI could not come to agreement to change the relevant recommendation.
• Following this, the vote to adopt these CCOICI recommendations was put without any amendment at this Council meeting, requiring only a simple majority to pass.
• The vote failed, with the CPH voting nay and the NCPH voting yay. As a result, none of the CCOICI recommendations were adopted. No change to the GNSO SOI is effected.

5. Topics for Potential Council Response

• Pilot Holistic Review Revised Draft Terms of Reference - Council is considering drafting a comment to this.
• Proposed Process for Retirement of Non-Policy Recommendations - Council is also considering drafting a comment to this.
• Letter regarding Continuous Improvement Program (CIP) Community Coordination Group - it appears that Council does not have any reaction to this.