Dear Colleagues, According to the ICANN Bylaws, the Empowered Community has the right to approve so called Approval Actions. As you know, the ICANN Board proposed changes to the Fundamental Bylaws. This is one of the things that trigger Approval action process. In Johannesburg there will be a Community Forum. During the Comunity Forum everybody can ask their questions. Right after the end of ICANN59, a 21-day period, during which the ccNSO Council has to decide whether to support, object or abstain from the Approval Action, will start. It means that we need to have a guideline in place in order to be ready to take a decision. The Gudelines Review Committee have developed a draft guideline on Approval Actions (Draft Guideline Approval Actions v6.docx). The plan is: 1) The ccNSO Council reviews the draft and discussed it during the upcoming call this Thursday. The most important thing we need to discuss concerns the decision taking process. According to the Rules of the ccNSO from 2004, 10% of ccNSO members may object a Council decision and call for a members' vote. It is quite clear that we cannot squeeze our process into a 21 day period. The GRC proposes two alternative solutions that we are going to discuss on Thursday. 2) After our initial discussion we send the draft to the community for feedback. 3) The GRC analysis the feedback and proposes the finalised guideline to the ccNSO Council. 4) We need to adopt the guideline during our f2f meeting in Johannesburg at the latest! The Approval Actions process is relatively simple. To make it easier to understand we have prepared: - A high level graphical overview of the process - AA process.pdf - A full timeline (overview) - Overview Approval Action Process.pdf (GANTT chart) - A full timeline (detailed) - Detailed chart Overview Approval Action Process.pdf (GANTT chart) All the files are attached! Have fun! :-) Regards, ]{atrina