Subject: Re: PDP - Discussion with ATRT2
From: Mike O'Connor <mike@haven2.com>
Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 11:26:18 -0500
CC: Brian Cute <brianacute@gmail.com>, "James M. Bladel"
         <jbladel@godaddy.com>, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca>, "Alice
 Jansen" <alice.jansen@icann.org>, Michele Neylon - Blacknight
         <michele@blacknight.com>, "rickert@anwaelte.de" <rickert@anwaelte.de>, "Paul
 Diaz" <pdiaz@pir.org>, "roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com"
         <roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com>, "jeff.neuman@neustar.biz"
         <jeff.neuman@neustar.biz>, Avri Doria <avri@ella.com>, Marika Konings
         <marika.konings@icann.org>, "Larisa B. Gurnick" <larisa.gurnick@icann.org>,
        Charla Shambley <charla.shambley@icann.org>, Brian Cute <bcute@pir.org>
To: "Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com>

i'm with Chuck on this.  i also assumed that this was open and have no problem with my comments being posted publicly.

m

On Aug 8, 2013, at 11:19 AM, "Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com> wrote:

Thanks for noting that Brian.  What is the easiest way to forward the strings of messages to the ATRT2 that have been missed?  I for one had assumed it included the ATRT2 but didn’t check & I am fine for it to be open.
 
Chuck
 
From: Brian Cute [ mailto:brianacute@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 11:02 AM
To: Gomes, Chuck
Cc: James M. Bladel; Alan Greenberg; Mike O'Connor; Alice Jansen; Michele Neylon - Blacknight; rickert@anwaelte.de; Paul Diaz; roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com; jeff.neuman@neustar.biz; Avri Doria; Marika Konings; Larisa B. Gurnick; Charla Shambley; Brian Cute
Subject: Re: PDP - Discussion with ATRT2
 
Thank you to everyone for your thoughts and contributions.  A point of order: I just checked and it does not appear that this conversation is taking place in the open - I didn't see the ATRT2 email address above which means this is a closed conversation (unless I missed it, in which case never mind).  ATRT2 work is open as a default and this entire thread should be made available on that list -- and if this good conversation continues, should continue there.  I don't know why it wasn't open.  If any contributor has a reservation about their prior inputs being made public, we are obliged to do so.  If you do, please note that and Staff can have your comments removed.
 
My apologies for the oversight.
 
Regards,
Brian

 
On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 10:26 AM, Gomes, Chuck <cgomes@verisign.com> wrote:
I confess to sitting back and simply appreciating all the good contributions that are being made on this.  And I sincerely believe they are good and constructive.  My compliments to all of you who have contributed.
 
I decided I would jump in and hopefully be constructive as well.
 
In the last couple months as we in the RySG, including the NTAG, have been grappling with finalizing details related to RPMs, TMCH, PDT & PIC DRP implementation details, I’ve realized that we (RySG/NTAG) have worked within our own silo too long and that we could have been more effective and probably saved timed if we involved people from other silos sooner.  Let me use the RPM issue as an example because a comment period has just been opened on that.  In Durban we reached out to some representatives of the IPC and had what I thought was a very productive exchange regarding the RPM issues we were working on.  Ideally, I think we should have done that sooner and I believe that that is a key opportunity for improvement in both policy and implementation efforts going forward.
 
There is lots of criticism of silos and I get that but I don’t think silos are bad.  A silo is simply a group of common interests.  We need those and it is helpful to have silos to formulate impacts to policy and implementation issues related to their particular interests.  The problem is not silos but rather that we restrict ourselves to our silos too long.  I am becoming convinced that we need to discover ways to work together across silos sooner in our processes.
 
Many of you have heard me say that I don’t think that changing processes or structure will help us much if we do not change behavior.  In addition to all the ideas each of you have communicated, I think that we need to focus directly on how we can improve our collaboration across silos earlier.  That would mean of course that each of us in our silos would need to accept the fact that collaboration is essential to the success of the multi-stakeholder model, but that is easier said than done.  It is important for each silo to clearly communicate its positions and collectively for us to identify our differences, but then we need to come together and seek ways that we can compromise to come up with solutions that most can support even when they do not get everything they wanted.  Is that doable?  I don’t know but I hope so.
 
Chuck
 
From: James M. Bladel [ mailto:jbladel@godaddy.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 08, 2013 9:37 AM
To: Alan Greenberg
Cc: Mike O'Connor; Alice Jansen; Michele Neylon - Blacknight; rickert@anwaelte.de; Gomes, Chuck; Paul Diaz; roberto_gaetano@hotmail.com; jeff.neuman@neustar.biz; Avri Doria; Marika Konings; Larisa B. Gurnick; Charla Shambley; Brian Cute

Subject: Re: PDP - Discussion with ATRT2
 
Sorry for the delay, just getting up to speed on this thread.   A few thoughts/reactions:
 
- I agree with Mikey's overall point that we need to invest heavily in "onboarding" new participants.  The veterans have to be answerable to their overlords, and the folks paying the bills want to see their representatives "move up" in the ICANN food chain, as it helps justify the continued costs (including opportunity) associated with participation in this beast.  One of the ideas we kicked around in the RrSG is an informal mentor/protege program, where new blood can be assigned to assist a more experienced member for some introductory period....
 
-  Also agree with Alan that the PDP works, when it is used properly.  But when it comes to PDPs that have "failed," I would point out that in many case these involved ICANN over-reaching in to areas that are well beyond the technical coordination of the DNS.  Whenever ICANN looks into the mirror and sees a new kind of competition authority, or WIPO, or a content regulator, or a consumer protection group, then you can always count on the resulting PDP to be messy and unsatisfactory.
 
- And, frankly, there is a bit of a culture problem when it comes to the expected level of effort for PDP work.  Some participants are, in my opinion, only interested in chair warming. They attend meetings and calls and speak up when it suits them, but to keep PDPs on an aggressive schedule folks will occasionally have to do some homework (gather data, write a draft, review slides/text, lead a subteam).  Even on those rare occasions when we have sufficient participants, it's tough to get everyone pulling on the rope.
 
Just my initial thoughts.  I look forward to our call.....
 
Thanks--
 
J.
 
Sent from my iPad


On Aug 7, 2013, at 23:04, "Alan Greenberg" <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca > wrote:

A couple of more thought Mikey (and again, they are mine).

When you are thinking about how to get more people involved (and up the very steep learning curve of what some of these issues are about - even the "simple" ones tend to have a lot of complex wrinkles), consider those who do not have any sponsor to pay their way and give them a bunch of meetings to start to feel at home. Of the people we get appointed to the ALAC, only a minority really take to ICANN and the policy process. And getting people involved who have never seen an ICANN meeting, or see one every N years, has not proven very successful.

The undefined "public interest" is not going to go away. How do we make sure it is being addressed in PDPs?

In my mind, the new PDP process is a good improvement, but most of the changes were actually in place (or we were moving there) before the new process was adopted. So I think the change you are seeing is a gradual improvement of the process used, and not really due to the new Bylaw words and such (not to minimize the importance of some things such as the preliminary Issue Report, but I don't think that is why we are doing better. It is not the IRTP or Locking PDPs that are the challenge. We understand how to do those. It is the difficult ones that we need to do better. It remains to be seen what is going to come out of the IGO/INGO PDP, and when we get to the next Whois/Directory Services one, things may get challenging again. And ones with large $ involved, with both sides present at the table, are going to be real hard.

So I don't think the PDP is "broken". But how it is executed needs to be modified to meet the more challenging of situations.

Alan

At 07/08/2013 11:42 PM, Mike O'Connor wrote:

hi Alan,

a couple ideas come to mind from your list of questions.

first, another Mikey Picture.  this one highlights an idea that is emerging for me, but not quite fully-baked.  i think one key piece that's missing from the current policy process is an orderly way to bring in New Blood.  so our current crop of PDP participants is "graduating" to other tasks (constituency-leadership, new-jobs-with-applicants, expert working-groups, whatever) but we aren't filling in the gaps they leave with new people who are well-prepared to take up the slack.  with that in mind, here's my Revision Zero picture of the on-ramp for new participants and the off-ramp for those of us who want to wind down a little bit.  there are some things i don't like, but this is close enough for jazz.

<2e11bd8.jpg>

it seems to me that we could see a lot of benefit from building a deeper pool of people in the "contribute" and "lead" layers of all AC/SOs if we paid more attention to the onramp for new folks (enter -> discover -> learn -> practice), and take better advantage of the old-timers by having offering corresponding tasks that they could help with as they wind down (recruit new people, guide them into the parts of ICANN that might interest them, help them learn the ropes, help them polish their early efforts, assist them as they contribute, and mentor the leadership layer). 

it also seems to me that there's a completely blurry continuum between the "outreach" effort and the "policy" effort that's being missed right now.  my sense is that currently the outreach folks don't really know much about the policy side and thus aren't meeting with much success in bringing people on board in a way that they're ready to jump into policy-making.  meanwhile, i think the policy side is being starved for resources (and not taking best advantage of the resources that are already here).  some kind of blending of these two functions might be a way to beef up that pool of contributors and leaders.  i think this could be cheap, and rewarding for everybody.

note that this picture isn't just aimed at the GNSO.  and to that point i think it would be helpful if we got better that cross-organizational stuff.  again, i think we're under-utilizing our old-timers.  getting better at the cross-organizational stuff could also be cheap/fun.

second reaction, since i've been on all the WGs you mention Alan (and had a chair role in a couple).  i think the WG process has gotten a LOT better as the GNSO has settled into the new PDP that came out of the last Review.  the trouble is that these changes take time to take hold, and we're only now starting to see our first complete PDPs out of that new process.  IRTP, Locking, Thick Whois are good examples of pretty-rapid, pretty-good efforts.  i like those ones where the Council and Board votes are unanimous.

big point: don't be too quick to "fix" the PDP just yet -- that's like overwatering a garden or over-pruning a bonsai tree.  let the core process mature a little bit more.  pay more attention to that which surrounds that core policy-making activity for now.  plenty of room for improvement there.

Vertical Integration was tough.  a lot of you were on it.  Roberto and i co-chaired it.  i think that PDP is an exception that proves a few of the rules.  here are the rules it proved for me:

- charter PDPs carefully.  ambiguities in the VI charter meant that we had a bit of a hill to climb before we could really even get under way.  a lot of our energy was spent trying to out-guess the Board, and the Council's reaction to the Board's decisions.  it felt to me like a double-blind poker game sometimes.  i had a tough time chairing Fast Flux too -- again, the charter wasn't very good.  i wrote a pretty detailed discussion about the FFlux charter which you can read here -- http://haven2.com/FF-observations.pdf (note: this was written in 2008, so while there are good ideas in there, some things have changed since then -- but there's lots of role/responsibility discussion that still applies today).

- protect the schedule. i'm still convinced we could have arrived at consensus (or rough consensus) in VI, had we not been jerked around on our schedule the way we were.  this is a lesson that generalizes nicely to the whole new-gTLD program (by the way,that PDP left a lot to be desired in terms of implementation detail, no?).  i think we (all of us) have got a lot of lessons to learn about how the schedule of the new gTLD program was managed.  expectations are all over the map.  it remains, to this very day, a source of conflict.  my view is that PDPs are especially vulnerable to schedule-pressure because it cuts off an important "let's-take-time-to-figure-this-out" premise that underlies consensus decision-making.  a similar impact to the house-limit on the state of play in a casino.

- keep the "layers" clear.  i share the view that the bottom of the the bottom-up process ought to be where the rigorous discussions, leading to precise language, ought to take place.  non-consensus ("representational") layers above (e.g. GNSO Council and Board) should either say "yes, good job" or "no, try again" but i don't think they are as well equipped to actually dive in and chew on the details.  i think we tend to get into trouble when we deviate from that approach.  final VI point -- the Board really surprised me when it gave us that really-short (2-week) deadline at the end of VI and then took the decision upon itself when we said we couldn't get done that fast.  while i support the Board's decision, i'm not sure it's a real good one.

see?  all that stuff off my chest and now there's more oxygen available for our conference call.  thanks for your points Alan.  maybe some of the others want to a) add on to this thread or b) ask more questions?

mikey

On Aug 7, 2013, at 10:39 AM, Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@mcgill.ca > wrote:

We'll follow up with something that is more than just my opinion, but here goes with some of my thoughts.

1. There is little question that the current PDP can work well (ie all sides represented in the process and sound balanced policy as an outcome) in some instances. I think the current IRTP PDPs and Lock are fine illustrations. All parties working in good faith to find a common ground.

2. Vertical Integration is one of the PDPs that attracts the most attention. Some people think that a deadlock is a reasonable outcome, given that it highlights the issues and punts to the Board to make the decision. Other feel the Board should never need to make such a decision, and at best (and I am paraphrasing one Board member during the Durban ATRT-Board interaction) the Board should take an interim do-no-harm decision and then push back to the GNSO.

3. You know I will raise PEDNR as another example. It took far too long to produce relatively little. I personally think that it was a very poor use of time and did not meet the original goals and is a good example of the inability to attract sufficient non-contracted parties to a PDP unless it is very emotionally charged.

4. If we were to (heaven forbid) re-do the new gTLD policy using the current rules, would be any better at getting something that is not mired in the controversy of the current process.

The bottom line is that ICANN has a number of responsibilities but setting policy for the gTLD space is the one that it spends the most time on and is essentially a make-or-break function for the organization. Can we rely on the GNSO PDP to make sound policy representing the balanced needs of all stakeholders, both present and not present, and in the public interest?

Alan

At 07/08/2013 09:45 AM, Mike O'Connor wrote:

hi all,

could somebody unpack this a little bit?  "whether the current GNSO PDP process satisfies the needs of the multi stakeholder model and Internet users" is a pretty broad topic (to put it mildly).  presuming that this is going to be a 1-hour call, 90 minutes at most, i would find it helpful if the ATRT2 could come up with 3-4 questions you would like us to think about and build an agenda from there.

thanks,

mikey

On Aug 7, 2013, at 8:03 AM, Alice Jansen <alice.jansen@icann.org > wrote:

Dear All,

It is my understanding that my colleague Charla has been touched with you to schedule a call with the Second Accountability & Transparency Review Team (ATRT2).

 The ATRT2's activities are focused on paragraph 9.1 of the AoC where ICANN commits to maintain and improve robust mechanisms for public input, accountability, and transparency so as to ensure that the outcomes of its decision-making will reflect the public interest and be accountable to all stakeholders. As part of its mandate, the ATRT has decided to review the effectiveness of ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Policy Development Process (PDP) and so determine whether the current GNSO PDP process satisfies the needs of the multi stakeholder model and Internet users. Given your experience and expertise, the ATRT2 is interested in hearing your thoughts and wishes you to share your unique perspective with them.

The ATRT2 has a face-to-face meeting scheduled for next week (14–15–16 August) in Los Angeles. Would you be available - tentatively on Wednesday, 14 August - to join their session remotely? Please confirm your availability viahttp ://www.doodle.com/x9nk6czhz2exvsyh by Thursday, 8 August – COB. 

The Review Team has received your request for preparatory materials. Rest assured that we will provide you with more information as soon as available.

I look forward to reading your doodle poll entries and thank you for your help. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Thanks

Very best regards

Alice

----

Alice Jansen

Strategic Initiatives Manager

ICANN

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PHONE: 651-647-6109, FAX: 866-280-2356, WEB: www.haven2.com, HANDLE: OConnorStP (ID for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)