Hello Philip,
PS This really does underline the need for Council to adopt updated working procedures.
Yes - updating our rules of procedures has been an outstanding item since about 2002/2003 when the DNSO transitioned to the GNSO. It has not been done for resourcing reasons - staff and GNSO Council members. It now appears that we are using three types of groups: (1) Committees of Council members - generally for issues that are strategically important to the GNSO - this has evolved with the new gTLD committee to allow constituencies to substitute Council members for physical meetings, and allow these people to also participate on the mailing list (2) Task Forces - as per the ICANN bylaws - currently being used for WHOIS and PDP-Feb06 (3) Working Groups - more informal groups for studying a specific topic, either prior to commencing a PDP, or to provide input to an externally managed project (e.g ICANN strategic Plan). These groups are not part of a policy development process, but may allow for further study of a topic. One of the learnings so far has probably been that we have started formal PDPs too early, before there is enough understanding and high level agreement on a particular policy action. We should try to at least formally describe the current state of our processes prior to updating them as part of a review. Regards, Bruce Tonkin