Notes | PGA | 28 January 2024 Agenda 1. Welcome Welcome by Jordan 1. Admin matters * SoI None - any changes, please send to secretariat 2. Update Outline ( See Outline: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KLwT8OSYHnHf-bRHfZuAW15cKIx6vthA_W36g5tx... This is a living document and it is updated after each meeting, the document is always available. Beyond the gaps that were identified by IANA that we have been working through so far, is anyone aware of any other gaps? We can start moving towards preparation of the sessions at ICANN. 3. Support Overview of policies and practices Bart: We had 1 response from Eberhard that was positive, supportive and no further feedback from anyone else. Should be submitted to council at some point. Jordan: If you consider the Overview adopted, please pop a green tick and if you don’t agree pop a red x. All green ticks, the Overview is adopted. The PGA will ask ccNSO council to formally endorse it after sharing it with the members in Seattle. Bart: Important to note, will ask Council to have it maintained or maintain the document because it is a living document once the PGA is done. 4. Complete Analysis/method combination: open topic, method, if any, regarding the minimum level of involvement of the ccTLD Manager See notes added to PGA working doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OOP7lbO9xfoyz09zn1SPBUpEZU5NLmtcgZeyQD-s... Bart: G- Minimum level of involvement, Strawdog - after extensive discussion, people raised concern with the need to understand the scope of the issue. After some preliminary research on the level of involvement of ccTLD managers, it is a fascinating point to look at. Peter raised a point, why have a cross community WG? Why not start with a study group to really understand and appreciate the scope of the issue? This was a little related to local presence. If you just have a ccTLD manager or admin contact in country the whole operation is outsourced to another country. The local presence becomes part of the equation. Suggestion: Revisit this and check whether you still believe the method would be framework of interpretation like group or start with a study group and maybe link it to the local presence discussion (like we did in Item A,B and C) Recap of the discussion. Any additional comments? Peter- Don’t completely recall previous discussion but I believe a CCWG is a very strong vehicle and this discussion of minimum level of involvement could benefit from a broader understanding before we invite other parts of the community that might misread this minimum level and what that means. Chris - agree with Peter, I think CCWG on this sort of thing is a recipe for activism and capture by people who don’t have the best interest of ccTLDs at heart so I would be concerned about that. Jordan - challenging topic because we can’t have a Policy Framework for these public resources that’s only developed by the people who already control them. We can’t have ccTLDs considering the future of ccTLDs. But on the other hand doing some work inside our community to scope the issue before plunging into a broader discussion doesn’t seem like an unreasonable thing to do. Chris: The Policy we set as ccNSO is set in respect to the way we want IANA to deal with ccTLDs. It would be quite challenging to set a policy that says a ccTLD must have local involvement because it’s a matter for the state concerned. A concern is that we are setting a policy that is unenforceable. Kim - a couple of observations, operational challenges because there’s not that detail on how to interpret sort of high level principles. In many regards judgement is put on IANA where we feel that there should be more explicit direction from Policy and other observation is this is made binding on ccTLD managers themselves and this would be guidance to IANA on how to assess requests like ccTLD transfer. On the fip side a call for revocation for cause that they are not meeting this requirement. I would have a clearer mandate to explore these potential dimensions where currently there’s just a lot of vagueness. Bart: It is my understanding that this is not as high a priority from IANA as for example accuracy of data. If I listened to this broad discussion, some of the issues involved in the work. A cross community group is the best way to address problems. The statement from a ccNSO perspective is not clear and that could be a role of such a study group. The role could be to clarify the scope, request for advice like we do right now with a full understanding of the scope and the issues related. Next step is to have a discussion we are having right now. The main focus is people need to understand the issues involved, that might be something to take into account with all these study groups. Jordan: Agree that in kicking off any future work the 1st part of the work is clarifying the question. Chris: Agree with Kim, IANA can always use more guidance. The challenge is guide rails guidelines, guidance policy. Once you start down the road you're looking at , When we say local presence what do you mean? When is it possible to not have local presence? How much climate change has to happen in the Pacific etc the real question would be,is harm being done by some ccTL:Ds not having a local presence. And if harm is being done, what is the harm and how can it be corrected? Jordan: Cross community discussion is needed Study group approach might ask some stakeholders for their input but it’s not going to incorporate them in a formal structure. Kim: lack of clarity, lack of proper expectation around these things is causing problems Jordan: Happy to have a principle agreement for that on this call and to come back to them at the next call. To reinstate the proposal - Instead of recommending that language about CCWG, it would be a study group to investigate the issue, to solicit some thoughts from other ICANN stakeholders around this issue and analyzing it and proposing what future work might be required. It might recommend a PDP, it might recommend creating some guidelines, We don’t need to prejudge that. Action point from Jordan- Study group to investigate issues, involve other stakeholders, and advise on next steps. All green ticks and no red marks. Irina suggested that we group a minimum level of involvement with local presence as topics to study together. I’m pretty sure that with local presence we suggested a study group is the way to go, it does interest other stakeholders. So we could group those two together, It seems to be a logical connection. Does anyone have a case for not grouping them together? All green ticks for this item Add language to row G- 5. Priority setting: what is considered important for ccTLD. Identifying criteria to set priority Jordan: We have a set of issues and methods to address them, we need a ranked list. What will make the biggest issue? What is the most important issue and – resolved. For the next 10 mins - I invite people to throw out ideas of issues- start the conversation, see if there are any novel suggestions. Nick: Technical function is the highest priority for us, ccTLDs are privileged about being able to self govern.If IANA is finding operational problematic which is affecting the reputational credibility of the ccTLDs as a whole then would be something I would make a priority, Irina: The easy and obvious for IANA - the fastest ones to solve and have quick results. Kim: IANA provided their list. With that said , another dimension to consider is if the outcome / learnings of one will help make the others more successful. Right now there is little activity in terms of pending requests. There are extant issues which are publicly known in certain countries that are long simmering concerns, further guidance would help move those along in one direction or another. Last observation is data quality. It's been a long issue that we have inaccurate data for a significant number of ccTLDs, they don’t communicate with us and there is a deterioration of the quality of the records. Chris: Agree with Kim’s prioritize list should be a starting point. Low hanging fruit is a good point, if there are matters on the list that are the easiest, simplest, and most effective way to deal with it is to offer guidance then perhaps we could treat that separately and have a group dedicated to dealing with that. To Kim’s point out, the long standing issues, we need to be careful and treat them tactfully and carefully, address gaps where we know there are ccTLD currently dealing with that. We need to be conscious of the fact that there will be some areas where there is a specific country dispute going on and there is a specific issue with the ccTLD manager. We need to be very careful stepping in to that sort of territory . Jordan: Are you saying to be careful because it could be a minefield or because we should decide to decline dealing with issues where there might be a dispute where is would make a big difference to a particular ccTLD. Chris: The first, stepping into a minefield. But if you look at the fundamental way that IANA deals with the dispute it is often to go and sort it out at home. If we find ourselves in a policy making mode where there is an existing dispute we need to be really careful we are not seen to be, sorry I am not putting this very well. My concern is we don’t step into areas where individual ccTLDs feel targeted. Jordan: A few factors, technical functions, things that impact the trust of ccTLDs, IANA priorities, priorities quickest to solve or low hanging fruit. Some where the outcome of one might help solve more than one problem at a time. This is a good initial discussion. If you think of any more please send an email. Question for Kim: Can you give us a min on how IANA prioritized this list. Kim: We weren’t too scientific about it, made a list and circulated it to the operational team. I wouldn’t suggest we put a lot of thought into the ordering of it. Jordan: Ok, that’s often how these things are. 6. Next meetings: 4 February 04.00 UTC, 18 February 20.00 UTC 18 Feb is now at 20 UTC to avoid conflict with the APTLD meeting in Hong Kong, I hope this does not cause issues with anyone. 7. AOB no other business 8. Adjourn