Dear All,

Please find below the notes and action items of today’s new gTLD Auction Proceeds CCWG meeting. Note that the next meeting will be scheduled for Thursday 14 June at 14.00 UTC

Best regards,

Marika

Notes & Action Items – CCWG Auction Proceeds Meeting – 31 May 2018

These high-level notes are designed to help the CCWG navigate through the content of the call and are not meant as a substitute for the transcript and/or recording. The MP3, transcript, and chat are provided separately and are posted on the wiki at: https://community.icann.org/x/DLHDAw.

1. Roll Call

• Roll Call will be taken from Adobe Connect
• Please remember to state your name for transcription purposes and don't forget to mute your line / microphone when not speaking to avoid interruption.
• Audio only: Xavier Calvez (only first part of the meeting), Kavouss Arasteh

2. Welcome & SOI/DOI updates

• Reminder - please check your SOI/DOIs and make sure these are up to date

3. Next steps for addressing charter questions

• See email circulated by Erika earlier today
• See template that was circulated to facilitate developing a response to the remaining charter questions. Leadership is offering to develop a first draft response to the charter questions for CCWG review, if possible prior to ICANN62.
• See letter from the ICANN Board providing input on the mechanisms discussion. Board is of the view that there should be various tranches of funding so that the mechanism chosen can be closely monitored and adjustments, if needed, can be made. Mechanisms chosen should focus on effective and efficient disbursement. More information will be needed on relevant costs of the different mechanisms. Should be able to evaluate and monitor projects on a global basis. More work needed on ensuring a common understanding and providing additional definition of the mechanisms in advance of public comment.
• Board letter seems to suggest that CCWG should not rush for public comment.
• Any direct costs like communication, etc. should all be funded out of the proceeds or would some of these come out of ICANN's general budget? Board has not actually discussed that yet - cost for evaluating, managing, running the program would need to come out of the funding. Discreet items such as a communications plan in advance has not been discussed in particular, but could be considered inclusive of overall running of the program. Cost associated with a communication plan should be factored in. Measuring efficiency of funds need to take into account holistic viewpoint of costs that are associated with setting up / running a mechanism. CCWG may need to map out the different cost elements to get a better idea and track key areas of costs to determine how these would be funded. Need to look at costs from a standalone perspective. ICANN's ongoing funding is not set up to take care of this - all costs are expected to come out of auction proceeds. Once implementation starts, this is expected to come out of auction proceeds funding.
• Further input on expected / max overhead costs may also be needed. Board previously mentioned a 5% threshold. Is there flexibility there to ensure efficiency / effectiveness balance? What is reasonable and what is cost effective, depends on the circumstances and the nature of the grants that are being made. % was never intended to be a hard / fast line. % needs to be reasonable in light of the objectives of the program. Focus should be on the use for proceeds in furtherance of the mission instead of administrative costs. Could ask in work on general description to provide an indication if overhead costs would be closer to 3 or 10 %, for example.
• Need to also evaluate mechanisms according to the defined principles mentioned in the Board letter. Factor this into the draft response to charter questions.
• Need to further consider how feasible tranching is as it will depend on size of fund allocation, similar would need to further discuss what mechanisms would need to be put in place that would warrant changes / corrections. Board is committed to the notion that funds would be allocated over a period of time to be able to ensure in earlier stages that proper controls are in place to monitor and manage applications and evaluations. Board has not yet considered possible size of fund allocation to projects. Objectives of fund allocation determined by the community would hopefully further clarity / guide that conversation. Intersection between size of projects and costs of overhead.
• One of the factors that will significantly impact costs, which is not usually considered in any standard percentage, is the cost inherent to supporting a multistakeholder process: whether it is to organize some community communication on the overall process of the auction proceeds, or to support transparency and accountability mechanisms, these activities are rarely encountered elsewhere but are prevalent at ICANN and are very resource consuming. That will  significantly impact the costs incurred for the program. If you take an illustration that the Drafting Team early on and now this CCWG AP have been working on the topic for 2 years, with ICANN's support, the costs is already significant and we have not even started implementing anything.
• CCWG could consider whether certain amounts are allocated to baskets to focus on certain types of projects, including different sizes. CCWG to re-evaluate if that is a recommendation it would like to made.
• The topic of tranches is one of the operational consequence of the board's fiduciary duty that the funds are used within mission and effectively: releasing funds in tranches to a given recipient allows to establish accountability mechanisms for that recipient to demonstrate that the funds are appropriately used. The other tranche topic is, as an example, to provide X million of dollars for allocation during a given year, which also allows to control the amount of effort  required for evaluation and disbursement, allowing to minimize risks of errors or issues.
• As a reminder, Sarah Berg has been asked to assist with developing a general description of each of these mechanisms.

Action item #1: CCWG leadership to work on first draft of responses to charter questions, factoring in board input as well as discussion during today's meeting (31/5). To be circulated at the latest by 18 June to allow for sufficient time for CCWG to review.

Action item #2: CCWG to consider developing list of cost elements to get a better idea and track key areas of costs and determine how these would be funded (from auction proceeds or differently).

4. Planning for ICANN62

• See email sent by Erika proposing to delay HIT session to ICANN63 and have a F2F meeting instead which would include an update to the community. In addition, leadership team is available to come and speak to / present to those groups that are interested. CCWG could consider other mechanisms to provide updates to the community for example in the form of a webinar. Regular newsletters are already provided to ensure that chartering organizations have regular status updates.

Action item #3: CCWG to move forward with the changes that have been proposed (postpone HIT session to ICANN63 and change it to a F2F meeting instead.

5. Finalisation of preamble & reminder to review project examples by Monday 4 June at 18:00 UTC

• No further input received on the preamble so that document should be considered final for inclusion in the Initial Report.

Action item #4: reminder, CCWG to review project examples by Monday 4 June at 18.00 UTC at the latest.

6. Next steps & confirm next meeting (Thursday  7 or 14 June at 14:00 UTC)

• Next meeting to be scheduled for 14 June at 14.00 UTC.

Marika Konings

Vice President, Policy Development Support – GNSO, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 

Email: marika.konings@icann.org

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