Marika, ccWG colleagues and ICANN staff,

Marika, thanks for your "Next Step" summary.

I will be on a road trip from California to Oregon on the 18^th so I will miss that important call. I would like to single out several points discussed in yesterday’s meeting. There are several “construction sites” in the process for the allocation of the auction proceeds and it is important that they be kept distinct and separate. They are not all to be done by the same groups and they include:

• 1.       Terms of Reference and Procedures for Proposals

• 2.       Terms of Reference for formation and operation of the selection committee

• 3.       Helpful instructions/online tutorials/videos, etc. for potential applicants

There is the thorny and yet unresolved issue of what to tell failed applicants. In some existing granting processes the application process assigns “points” to various aspects of the proposal, e.g., consistency with ToR mission/vision, budgetary detail, etc. and failed applicants can self-evaluate. In some cases there is feedback (see tricky issue below). In others there is none, but with outside (third-party) help, failed proposals can be evaluated against successful proposals for insights and lessons learned.

It is usually enough to urge failed applicants to review their applications, to invite future submissions, and leave it at that. One must take care not to leave scope for a challenge process that is messy, time consuming, and will deter good candidates from serving on selection committees.

There are usually lessons learned by the selection committee and the safest path forward is to incorporate those lessons learned in the ancillary “helpful instructions” (in ways that do not identify failed applicants.)

Lastly, and this is a tricky issue, one would hope for some consistency in the selection committee, and the actual selection criteria for subsequent proposal submissions, or at lease very explicit information on changed selection criteria. I have seen instances where government official development assistance competitions have commented on shortcomings in failed proposals, only for subsequent amended proposals to fail again because the selection committee has changed, and/or has changed the relative weights across its evaluation criteria, and applications were not informed of the changes.

Good luck with the session on the 18th. Within our ccWG mandate I feel we are making good progress.

Sam Lanfranco, NPOC