Hello Councilors: 

I am writing to offer an amendment to the Motion to initiate the GNSO Guidance Process (GGP). It is enough of a departure from the original that I don’t think it can / will be considered a friendly amendment. In any case, I think it’d be beneficial to the outcome if we debated the two approaches and decided on one. I think the discussion is as important as the outcome.

The amendment more directly affects the GGP Initiation Request that is incorporated into the motion. It seeks to simplify the process for creating an Applicant Support Program. (An Initiation Request is a prerequisite to launching a GGP.) 

Background and Recent Developments: The SubPro Final Report recommended that a “dedicated IRT” be created to flesh out the Applicant Support Program. In response, the ODP Team expressed concern that the work recommended by SubPro was potentially out of scope of the role for an IRT and should be returned to the GNSO.   

The Council recognized that this work could be accomplished using the GNSO Guidance Process (GGP), which is flexible, i.e., adaptable to the needs of various policy-related tasks.   

The current motion calls for the creation of a 30-member (20 active, 10 alternate) Steering Committee to complete the Applicant Support program development with the added implication that this group could be used for additional policy / implementation issues.

Recommendation: Rather than a Steering Committee, the Council should form a small team that works with ICANN to retain and employ the outside skills necessary to create the Applicant Support program framework.

Rationale for this Recommendation:

1.     We approved the SubPro Final Report, so we should do what it says. The Report advised that a community-based team would not possess the requisite skills to develop the Applicant Support program and an issue-specific team with the necessary outside skillsets should be formed. Creating a 30-member community team is, at best, an unnecessary step and, more likely, is the antithesis of the SubPro Report direction and disrespectful of valuable volunteer time.

2.     Creating a small team does not contradict the participatory, bottom-up model. The broad community discussed this topic for five years and provided the best direction it could, to take the discussion out from under the community umbrella. In any event, no GNSO stakeholder group would be precluded from sending a member to this small team, and whatever Applicant Support program is recommended, the community will have the opportunity to discuss it prior to adoption.

3.     Nor is a standing 30-person Steering Committee likely to be an economical or effective approach if asked to consider additional issues. This steering committee likely would be populated by those interested in the Applicant Support program and not have the necessary skill sets for, or interest in, tackling different issues.  Community members interested in subsequent issues would likely be closed out of participating because the committee would be populated by those interested in the Applicant Support program. So, the 30-member committee, already demonstrated to be inefficient for the purpose of sorting the Applicant Support issues, would also be ineffectual on the subsequent issues.

4.     This is likely to be an extended commitment on the part of our depleted volunteer workforce. Cannot we, as managers of the policy process, manage these important areas of policy / implementation administration, and reserve volunteers’ valuable time for substantive work? In the meantime, we can launch this first-ever GGP effort, keep it narrow to make it efficient, and learn from it. 

I’ve attached an alternative GGP Initiation Request. Amendments and additional discussion are welcome