Thanks, Mike, for all your work and commitment on these issues. On the StratPlan comments -- I was a little dismayed to see that I had somehow totally missed the process. Normally, ICANN posts a notice on the front page of comments being open and with it off under the StratPlan on the side, it just wasn't apparent to me. The letter that Bruce circulated from Paul Twomey somehow didn't shed any light on this situation for me until I read it a few times... I finally figured it out -- but with all that is going on in hard and real work for the Council, and "day job stuff" I just have limited time. So short deadlines are ever so challenging. I'll try to do something but it has to be minimal. And I'm hard pressed to make a firm commitment, given the extreme lack of time. One suggestion I will pass along to the staff and perhaps you can seek to support it is that the community expects to see the notices of "open for further comments" on the front page, with a link right on that page... :-) That way when we visit the site, we are reminded.... perhaps in the future, ICANN can adopt an "announce" system like the ITU and others use where one "opt in" to a notification list and when items are posted on the reflector/list, all who have opted in are notified and can then retrieve the documents. It is a rather simple way to ensure that in a very distributed and very diverse community, interested parties [who bother to opt in to notification] are "alerted" to changes or updates or new documents. Marilyn -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Michael D. Palage Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 12:17 PM To: council@gnso.icann.org Subject: [council] Upcoming & Outstanding Action Items Dear Council Members : I just wanted to comment on the thread about 17 out of 20 recommendations from last year's independent review regarding improving the effectiveness of the GNSO Council (and thus the GNSO) which have not yet been implemented. I have been going through the independent review recommendations (http://gnso.icann.org/reviews/gnso-review-sec4-22dec04.pdf) and I fully agree that not all the recommendations have been implemented. However, I believe that things are perhaps a little better than the 3 out of 20 (15%) figures that have been referenced to date. I spoke with Olof just a couple of hours ago and he mentioned that staff would be providing Council with a mapping of these 20 recommendations shortly . I look forward to reviewing this document as I am sure Council does as well. I think it is important to acknowledge the contributions that Olof, Glen and Maria are making in trying to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of Council. There is a lot of heavy lifting over the next couple of months heading into Vancouver, however, I am confident that by everyone pulling in the same direction we will be able to achieve the collective goal we all seek. Looking forward to the upcoming Council call tomorrow (Sept 1) as well as the Terms of Reference Call with the Board on Sept 8th. Although I have had a number of positive replies from some board members regarding their availability for this call, some Board members have existing conflicts that will prevent them from participating. One other final inquiry, does any constituency or individual representative have any intention of submitting any comment to the Strat Plan. Unfortunately Sept 2 is the deadline for both the GNSO terms of reference and responses to the additional Strat Plan questions. Best regards, Michael D. Palage