Hello All, I have been reading the various comments about the announcement on 30 April 2012 that there will not be a public board meeting on Friday 29 June in Prague. I thought I would set out various improvements being made in Board processes to set this in context. (1) In the past, the Board has typically worked with staff until midnight, and in some cases 2am, on the Thursday before the public session to prepare resolutions for voting. This is after a busy week listening to feedback from the community, and the end result is often Board resolutions that are poorly crafted and create problems in future. (2) For Prague, the intent is that the Board will focus on listening to the community, and then give the community some idea of what future resolutions will be voted on in response to feedback. A board meeting will then be held shortly after Prague to approve those resolutions. (3) An example of this approach was on the topic of Conflicts of interest in Dakar in October 2011. The Board listened to the community during the week, and then in the public session on conflicts Board members gave some feedback to the community on specific measures that would be taken with respect to new gTLDs. After careful review by the legal team, and review by Board members, the Board held a meeting on 8 Dec 2011 - where a resolution was passed on managing conflicts for new gTLDs, along with other resolutions that resulted from the discussions in Dakar. (4) The Board has also been working to ensure that most resolutions at the Board level are relatively routine. This means that bodies like the GNSO have already reached consensus on a topic (e.g the recent work on the transfers policy), or staff have managed a public comment process on a topic - and there are no controversies associated with the matter. For such routine resolutions - we either have a short teleconference or we take advantage of face-to-face time at a Board workshop to pass these resolutions. For example, at the Board workshop just concluded in Amsterdam we had a short Board meeting to pass mostly consent resolutions. It is likely that in Prague we will pass resolutions on routine matters in the Board workshop on the weekend of 23/24 June - if there are matters submitted by staff for approval - and can report on them during the public meetings. If there are controversies on a matter, the general approach would be to seek to return the matter to the relevant body or bodies to reach a stronger consensus. Thus you will see fewer matters that are not on the consent agenda at Board meetings. (5) Where there is a major policy vote, or where there are differing views on a major policy, the Board will continue to schedule such discussions for the public meetings. Past examples of such matters include the .xxx decision and the approval of the new gTLD program in Singapore in June 2011. (6) With respect to transparency. the Board has been publishing rationales for each of its decisions - including those on the consent agenda. There are also detailed minutes of meetings, where contributions from Board members made during a Board meeting are captured. For example, from the minutes of the meeting on 8 Dec 2011 (http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/minutes-08dec11-en.htm) there is a detailed record of the discussion on conflicts as well as on batching. (7) We are still refining improvements and certainly welcome feedback from the community. Feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions or concerns, and certainly feel free to provide feedback to the Board in the Board/GNSO meeting in Prague. Also be aware that I continue to read emails on this list, and I pass on examples of emails that raise concerns about Board processes to the Board list to keep the Board aware as well. Regards, Bruce Tonkin