Dear fellow councilors

 

Council has a lot on its plate regarding policy work, and I am mindful of a recent posting by Ross Rader that reminds us that Council needs to set priorities that drives its work, and thus our supporting staff.

I think we will all probably agree that the monthly Council calls should
ideally be left primarily to the task of policy management; yet there
is a need for Council to be able to better organize itself and its
policy-support needs, and for a constructive and ongoing interaction between
Council and staff regarding Council's priorities; addressing administrative
challenges they face in their policy support work, such as competing
priorities, lack of clarity in a Council request, additional participation
by councilors with background expertise to contribute, discussion of whether
other external resources are needed, etc.

I am proposing a trial approach of "planning and coordination" sessions via
conference call with the Council chair and any Council members who wished to
participate and supported by the GNSO support staff : (Olaf, Maria, Glen,
plus any temporary consultant such as Liz Williams). I suggest that we trial
the approach of a 45 minute call every two weeks/fortnightly for the period between now and Vancouver. The outcome of these calls would be reported to the full Council in the usual monthly progress report we currently receive on the monthly Council calls.  The planning and coordination calls would not address policy development work, but administrative management and coordination.

Right now, we have a number of significant policy issues to work on as Council.  This approach would ensure that we can focus on the monthly Council calls on those issues, yet have an effective way to better manage ourselves and provide administrative input to the supporting staff.


I welcome feedback on this idea.

Marilyn Cade