Special Summary Report of 21 Sep 2023 Meeting 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 Sep 2023 Matters of Interest and/or from GNSO Council Sep 2023 Meeting Records.

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

• Last month, 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.
  
• Just prior to this Council meeting, the vote to adopt these CCOICI recommendations was withdrawn as CPH were not prepared to vote on the one recommendation, as written, to retain the exemption. Hence this matter now goes back to the CCOICI for further consideration and, hopefully, resolution.

2. Charter for Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) Standing Committee

• The GNSO Council EPDP Phase 2 Small Team's work has wrapped up - since their final task in guiding the design of the Registration Data Request Service (RDRS) (formerly known as the SSAD - System for Standardized Access to Registration Data) has concluded - and ICANN org is slated to launch the RDRS in November. 
• Given this, the focus moves towards monitoring of ICANN org's implementation of the RDRS and how well it will function.  To facilitate this, Council is transitioning the EPDP Phase 2 Small Team into the RDRS Standing Committee, and Council has approved the Charter for this Standing Committee.
  • Impact for ALAC: ALAC retains a member seat by virtue of having had a member on the EPDP Phase 2 Small Team, along with an alternate.

3. New gTLD Program Next Round / Subsequent Procedures 38 Pending Recommendations 

• As reported at the At-Large CPWG 20 Sep call, the GNSO Council SubPro Small Team had been working towards recommending a Second Clarifying Statement for Council approval. This Second Clarifying Statement was aimed at clarifying and resolving the ICANN Board's concerns on the group of 10 SubPro Outputs associated with the use, and hence, enforceability, of PICs/RVCs (i.e. SubPro Recommendations 9.1, 9.4, 9.8, 9.9, 9.10, 9.12, 9.13, 30.1, 31.16 and 31.17).
• At the time Council met, this Second Clarifying Statement is subject to further work by the Small Team and hence required that a Council vote on it be deferred to Council's October meeting.
• In parallel, also as reported at the At-Large CPWG 20 Sep call, the ICANN Board held a recent workshop where the Board resolved to, per its Scorecard;
  • Section A, adopt 7 SubPro Outputs with no further concern;
  • Section B, adopt 12 SubPro Outputs with the 5 Sep GNSO Council Clarifying Statement (i.e the First Clarifying Statement);
  • Section C, NOT adopt 7 SubPro Outputs at this this time, with given rationales; and
  • Section D, consider adopting 10 SubPro Outputs with the provision of the pending GNSO Council Second Clarifying Statement, and to continue discussing a remaining 3 SubPro Outputs with the GNSO Council SubPro Small Team with a goal of resolving them via the clarification mechanism.
• Given the above development out of the Board workshop, the Small Team's assignment form (i.e. charter) required a revision to reflect the updated assignment regarding how the non-adopted recommendations should be handled. Council considered and approved this Small Team updated assignment form. 
• The updated assignment form expands participation in the Small Team to each GNSO Stakeholder Group and Constituency, and each Advisory Committees (mainly ALAC and GAC), to elect to put forward one subject matter expert (SME) plus alternate to help inform the Small Team's final assignment #7 (which is to develop proposed Supplemental Recommendations or develop proposed modifications through GNSO's section 16 process).
  • Impact for ALAC: ALAC will be invited to appoint a SME and an alternate to the Small Team. These appointments may be changed from time to time to facilitate the relevant SME's participation to the different the topics being addressed. For avoidance of doubt, these appointments do not affect my participation as an existing member of the Small Team.

4. ICANN78 Joint Meeting of the At-Large and GNSO

• A call for additions/changes to the proposed topics of SubPro Updates, RDRS and .quebec was made to Councilors.
• The plan is to revisit this list of proposed topics in a fortnight for finalization.