Dear Councilors,

You will recall that staff talked through a rough draft of what the three deliverables for ICANN77 (i.e., work plan and timelines for the pending recs, policy development for closed generics, and IDNs EPDP Phase 2) could look like. As I stressed yesterday, I would encourage you all to take a look at the format of the table of pertinent information, as well as and the concept of provisioning additional explanatory information and/or caveats, and then secondarily the actual numbers included: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8H-XdCjohRhKCO5_28eWQGSSMHnl12c5TaHMrSQz9Y/edit#heading=h.gv442g52nah6

From the call, I know that Councilors would like more time to look at the document and consider whether it is fit for purpose from a formatting perspective.

That said, we certainly heard some concerns about the specifics of at least two of the work plan and timelines.

• For the IDNs EPDP timeline, there was a suggestion to include a secondary timeline that takes into account all of the additional measures the EPDP Team plans to take to try and pull in the completion date. As Ariel noted, the Team performed a great deal of analysis to come to its conclusions – the end data should not be amended. While measures are being deployed to pull in the completion date, there is still quite a bit of uncertainty that prevents the Team from committing to a far more aggressive date. From a staff perspective, you will not be shocked to hear that we definitely do not recommend committing to dates that are overly aggressive. We believe that over-promising and missing deadlines can erode trust and credibility. If the Council wishes to include a secondary timeline, that is of course its prerogative, but that timeline will be coming directly from the Council, not the IDNs EPDP team.
• For the closed generics timeline, there were concerns expressed about both the mechanism (EPDP) and the timeframe. For the mechanism, we encourage you to suggest alternative mechanisms and provide rationale for why it both meets requirements and is a more efficient path to completion (For your reference, I’ve attached the recommendation and rationale provided by Council leadership for an EPDP). For the timeframe, we have similar reservations as to the IDNs EPDP. We highly suggest at a minimum, putting forth an achievable work plan and timeline. A best practice is in fact to build slack into the schedule to account for unknowns, not to make it overly aggressive. As was noted on the call, there is nothing preventing a group from beating its timeline. Note, staff is currently gathering reference data on how long PDP/EPDPs take to help inform your discussion that we expect will be available no later than for the Council’s working session on 11 June. I would guess that everyone in the community and ICANN org is supportive of looking for ways to gain efficiencies and speed up the process, but any timeline will need to size the actual effort needed for that particular step in the process, informed by past experience, as well as the community resources available.

Best,

Steve

Steven Chan


Senior Director, Policy Development Support & GNSO Relations

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) 

12025 Waterfront Drive, Suite 300

Los Angeles, CA 90094-2536


Email: steve.chan@icann.org

Skype: steve.chan55

Mobile: +1.310.339.4410

Find out more about the GNSO by visiting: https://learn.icann.org/

Follow @GNSO on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ICANN_GNSO

Transcripts and recordings of GNSO Working Group and Council events are located on the GNSO Master Calendar