Dear all, As requested by Council the GRC reviewed the ICANN proposal to retire non-policy recommendations. Included is the draft comment as proposed by the GRC as was concluded during their meeting yesterday (Monday). You will recall thayt Alejandra received the proposal at the Roundtable and you (briefly) discussed it at the Hamburg Council meeting. As a result the GRC was requested to look at the proposal and propose a comment. Alejandra suggested that she would reply by 7 December 2023. To make this date, please let the list know if you have any objections by 6 December 2023 23.59 UTC. Thank you, kind regards, Bart ------------- Comment proposal to the retirement of non-policy recommendations December 2023 The ccNSO Council and ccNSO Guideline Review Committee appreciate the opportunity to review the proposed process for the retirement of non-policy recommendations, as was introduced to the chairs of the SO/AC at the Roundtable meeting in September 2023. First, we want to commend ICANN for initiating such a process. Secondly, as circulated, the proposal is a sound basis for such a procedure, and we support it. We also request more clarity regarding the criterion: “Time to implement that would defeat the value and benefits of implementation. The implementation time might be affected by dependencies with other work (TIME CRITERION).” Is this criterion looking at the possible diminishing value benefit/benefit of a recommendation over time, i.e. that the longer it takes to implement a recommendation, the more the anticipated value and benefit of the implementation of a recommendation decreases, and the costs of implementation may begin to outweigh the reduced value and benefits of implementation? If not, please clarify what it means. Further, we want to raise whether a community group or multiple groups (the number to be determined) which participate in the Specific Review or Cross-Community working group could request the launch of the process if they believe one or more of the proposed retirement criteria have been met and request ICANN’s Operations Implementation Team to initiate the process. In our view, the community groups that were responsible for proposing a recommendation are very well, if not best, positioned to assess whether: * (External) Circumstances have changed since the recommendation was proposed * Other community recommendations superseded the recommendation(s) considered for retirement * To re-assess the benefit of a recommendation against the expected implementation effort * To re-assess the value and benefit of a recommendation against the original expected value and benefit (diminished return) * There is now a need for more community support as implementation progresses. Finally, as said, we support introducing a process to retire non-policy recommendations, and the proposal provides a sound basis. However, introducing such an impactful process would be better served if it was introduced through a public comment period as proposed in the retirement process itself. On behalf of the ccNSO Council and Guideline Review Committee Alejandra Reynoso Sean Copeland