Dear Colleagues, As we learnt, on 9 March, right before the official start of the ICANN week, in his blog post Göran issued a “call to action” (see: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/independent-review-process-standing-panel-ca ll-to-action) asking for community input on a set of questions about the selection and qualification of standing panellists that need to be selected to the Standing Panel to review disputes under Independent Review Process. Deadline for submitting comments is 15 April. Why is it important for ccTLDs: although the disputes exclude “Claims relating to ccTLD delegations and re-delegations;”, they cover, e.g. “[disputes that] arose from claims involving rights of the EC as set forth in the Articles of Incorporation or Bylaws”, “Claims that ICANN, the Board, individual Directors, Officers or Staff members have not enforced ICANN's contractual rights with respect to the IANA Naming Function Contract” or “Claims regarding PTI service complaints by direct customers of the IANA naming functions that are not resolved through mediation”. I think we all agree that the community should be able to participate in the discussion on, e.g. qualifications of these panellists or the principles according to which those panellists are selected. If you look at the comments under the blog post, some of community members have already expressed their “surprise” that such important questions are asked in a blog post, circumventing public comments procedure. Please note, the Policy Department was not aware of this “call to action” either; therefore, it has not been included in the ICANN Community Leadership Digest (that’s the summary email I forward to you periodically). The idea of the Digest was that we have all the incoming requests in one place. It is impossible to monitor all channels to make sure we’re not missing anything. Blog posts should not be used to seek community input on something as important as implementation of structures described in the Bylaws. To avoid similar situations in the future and to ensure we and other parts of our community 1) know about calls and 2) have enough time to prepare feedback, I propose that we send a letter in which we also call to action: re-launch the consultation according to proper procedure and use only one channel for gathering feedback. If you agree, here is a draft. Your input is very much needed (do your magic)! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1O9NGDIv-UGqCtANMvesgR6T9mn1lLtd2XqzQsSV8 maw/edit We do not have much time for this one. Would be nice if we could finalise it my Wednesday, 10 April. Have a nice weekend, ]{atrina