Dear Councilors,

Please find below a message from the Board Readiness Small Team to the Board Chair.

Kind regards,

John and Caitlin

From: "kurt kjpritz.com via Gnso-board-readiness-smallteam" <gnso-board-readiness-smallteam@icann.org>
Date: Sunday, October 6, 2024 at 9:36 PM
To: "tripti.sinha@board.icann.org" <tripti.sinha@board.icann.org>
Cc: Wendy Profit <wendy.profit@icann.org>, Caitlin Tubergen <caitlin.tubergen@icann.org>, "kurt kjpritz.com via Gnso-board-readiness-smallteam" <gnso-board-readiness-smallteam@icann.org>, Becky Burr <becky.burr@board.icann.org>, "kurt kjpritz.com" <kurt@kjpritz.com>
Subject: [Gnso-board-readiness-smallteam] GNSO Initiative: Board-Ready Policy Recommendations

Dear Tripti: 

The GNSO Council has formed a small group to study the “Board Readiness” of Council policy recommendations, with the aim to adjust our policy development processes in a way that will increase the likelihood that GNSO policy recommendations will be readily adopted by the ICANN Board.

On behalf of that team, I am writing to solicit the cooperation and participation of Board members in a series of interviews conducted by the small team. The information coming from the interviews will be used to build a set of hypotheses that, once tested, will guide the development of improvements in the GNSO’s Policy Development Process (PDP) practices. We plan for the interviews to be conducted in informal, one-on-one formats. Questions can be provided in advance, but initial responses might take interviews in different directions.

We will study several past PDPs and wish to ask designated Board Liaisons and one or more Board members who participated in the Board deliberations to join in interviews.

To provide a bit more background: the team will develop questionnaires for interviews with selected PDP working group Chairs and members, ICANN staff, and Board members to develop information needed to refine practices in the Policy Development Process.

The questionnaire content will be developed based on the considerations such as:

●    Were PDP working group members surprised (or unsurprised) by Board rejection of certain, specific policy recommendations? Why?

●    During the policy-making discussion, did the PDP working group consider Board reaction to potential recommendations (as indicated either by the Board liaison, the public comment process, or otherwise)?

●    In the opinion of PDP working group members / ICANN staff / the Board did the PDP working group have the sufficient expertise, resources and information to develop a “Board-ready” set of recommendations?

●    What are the expectations of the Board liaison role by: the PDP working group members, the Board liaisons, the Board? What are the effects of differences in those expectations?

●    How did Board members receive information regarding PDP working group progress, during the Policy Development Process and after recommendations were approved by the Council?

●    What (negatively or positively) surprised Board members in the policy recommendations? At what stage of the PDP did those surprises occur? Through what channel (reading PDP report, reading summary report, Board liaison report) did the Board member receive the specific information?

●    How does the Board apply the Global Public Interest framework? Have new tools or approaches been developed (such as new mechanisms to apply the Global Public Interest framework or the Board Caucus engagement with the recent Council small team) that the Council or PDP working groups might also apply?

The small team will aggregate the interview responses into a set of findings and either, create a set of follow-up inquiries or, use the findings to synthesize a set of recommendations intended to inform GNSO Council’s work on improving Board readiness. The participating Board members will have the opportunity to review their input as documented by the interviewer and also the impact of their input on the results and recommendations prior to publication.

We think this approach might enable us to eliminate some gaps or disconnects in the mechanics of the process and help us fashion a smoother running process.

The small team participants believe this will be a valuable and informative approach and hope you and the Board will be willing to participate in this effort.

Thanks for taking the time to consider this. We stand by to answer any questions.

Sincerely, 

Kurt Pritz on behalf of my GNSO Board Readiness Team colleagues