Dear Farzi, the SPIRT as a body of experts have been chartered through a process approved by the GNSO Council to deliver on its mandate as spelt out in its charter. The council has a role as an arbiter between the SPIRT and ICANN Org whenever there is a diffrence in opinions between both parties - as such inserting the Council as the validator of any decision made by SPIRT makes us an interested party and may cause for the process flow of the Council task to be moved to the Board.
A coordination group or small team seating with SPIRIT cannot substitute for receiving approval from the GNSO Council neither can the body refer a Type-3 issue to the Council - hence cannot serve this process.
Dear Anne, Once the Council refers an issue to the SPIRT as per the charter, the SPIRT would have to first determine and confirm that it is a Type 2 issue and after collaboration with the GNSO Council, if appropriate, inform ICANN org of a needed change to the program. ICANN org will then determine if a change to the ongoing round is needed and if contrary to the SPIRT’s position ICANN Org determines that No change is needed the SPIRT comes back to confer with the GNSO Council and on determining that a change is needed, the Council engages with the Board, allowing the ICANN Board to ultimately decide if a change is needed, and were they do direct ICANN Org to apply the Predictability framework.
I am not aware that ICANN Org. asked that the issue identified around RSP applications be brought as a council belief, rather ICANN staff were approached to see if there was merit refering it to the SPIRT and were advised to use the SPIRT membership route to introduce it as a topic to nurge Council to have referred to SPIRT. Leadership went ahead to review and ask members if they objected to having the issue passed on to Council for referral to SPIRT. Whilst the SPIRT is expected to collaborate with Council, I am not sure they are designed to come back to council for a Solution, otherwise why have them assembled?
LOR.
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Lawrence Olawale-Roberts
Global President & Managing Director
Mobile: +234 8070892705, (0)8056 3333 97
Lawrence@microboss.org
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From: Lawrence O. Olawale-Roberts via council <council@icann.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2026 7:01 PM
To: farzaneh badii <farzaneh.badii@gmail.com>; Anne ICANN <anneicanngnso@gmail.com>
Cc: GNSO council <council@icann.org>
Subject: [council] Re: GNSO Council Motion for SPIRT AlertsFrankly Farzaneh, this is not how the SPIRT is chartered to work. Your proposal would require re-drafting the SPIRT charter and basically resetting the group without even allowing them or ICANN test the current process.
The SPIRT other path through which the can mitigate issues referred to them through ICANN Org. Does not require SPIRT coming back to Council for concurrence or consultations as long as the issue is not determined to be Type 3 - hence over engineering this process of just getting to secure council's approval to look into a matter might subsequently push dependence on staff to initiate issues for the SPIRT to act on.
LOR
-----
Lawrence Olawale-Roberts
Global President & Managing Director
Mobile: +234 8070892705, (0)8056 3333 97
Lawrence@microboss.org
…collaboration to enhance communication.
This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may be protected by legal, professional or other privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not store it, copy it, re-transmit it,
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From: farzaneh badii via council <council@icann.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 12, 2026 6:41:01 PM
To: Anne ICANN <anneicanngnso@gmail.com>
Cc: Lawrence O. Olawale-Roberts <lawrence@microboss.org>; GNSO council <council@icann.org>
Subject: [council] Re: GNSO Council Motion for SPIRT AlertsHi Anne
I said a coordination group. And they only coordinate, they provide briefing, they provide background. If all council members want to focus on it, they can. And I didn’t say don’t bring back to the council. From the beginning I have been insiting council involvement through all the process. I think this is better than having a liaison have to do it and be the messenger, this workload is going to get heavy.
Another way is, a stakeholder group provide an issue to their council member, we discuss with the whole council and having SPIRT come to the council and discuss further and come up with a solution.
Farzaneh
On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 1:06 PM Anne ICANN <anneicanngnso@gmail.com> wrote:Hi Farzaneh. I'm a bit surprised that you suggest a "small team" of Councilors that want to work with SPIRT to develop the analysis and work on solutions? If the issue is assigned to the SPIRT due to their expertise, I would favor having them bring a proposal back to the full Council.Anne
Anne Aikman-ScaleseGNSO CouncilorNomCom Non-Voting 2022-2026
On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 9:04 AM farzaneh badii <farzaneh.badii@gmail.com> wrote:Well if we have a group of council members that are more active and monitor SPIRT issues and in touch with their stakeholders and they can bring the issue to the council and then the Council in collaboration with SPIRT sorts it out, I think that’s for the better. For now I can’t say yes to this motion there are too many unknowns and not much clarification and the more I look into it the more complicated it looks. And it will get more complicated. One stakeholder nor SPIRT should bring the issue to the council. This should be in a collaborative way. The more collaborative, the more efficient too!
But to address the problem Jeff has submitted on behalf of the registry stakeholder group, I think we can just discuss the issue during next week meeting and ask the council members that want to work with SPIRT to come up with a solution to do so and bring back the result to the council.
Farzaneh
On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 11:18 AM Anne ICANN via council <council@icann.org> wrote:P.S. I should explain again that the Category 2 issue on RSP was actually raised by a SPIRT member on behalf of the RySG. To the extent that we are authorizing the SPIRT to raise an issue itself, It does not seem to me that the logic of just letting the SPIRT proceed to resolve on its own without conferring with Council still applies. (This comment is limited to Category 2 issues raised by the SPIRT itself or one of its members.)
Reminder again that the Charter actually prohibits the SPIRT from raising issues. During Charter drafting, it was assumed the SG or C would raise the issue at the Council level if it was not raised by Board, ICANN, or the Council in some other way. So this mechanism for allowing the SPIRT (or in this case an RySG member of the SPIRT) to raise an issue was not contemplated by the Charter. Again, it may be more efficient to allow the SPIRT to do this, if only because it presumably meets more often than Council, but that does not mean that the SPIRT should be authorized to resolve an issue it has raised on its own (either by consensus or by Leadership team of the SPIRT or by an individual member) without coming back to the Council with the proposed solution. The very notion that the SPIRT can raise an issue itself is a new one and we need to be especially careful with a 7 day non-objection/consent process.Anne
Anne Aikman-ScaleseGNSO CouncilorNomCom Non-Voting 2022-2026
On Tue, May 12, 2026 at 6:29 AM Anne ICANN <anneicanngnso@gmail.com> wrote:Thanks Lawrence. Re the third issue, the RSP issue is a Categroy 2 issue - non-minor operational with material impact on applicants - but apparently ICANN has asked that this issue be briefed to the Council. Some members of SPIRT thought they could deal with it alone without talking to us. ICANN Org did not agree - presumably because of the nature of the material impact on RSP Qualification. So how is it that Council can agree with you that a Category 2 issue brought to the Council in this manner does not need to come back to Council for the proposed solution?
Anne
Anne Aikman-ScaleseGNSO CouncilorNomCom Non-Voting 2022-2026
On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 1:04 PM Lawrence O. Olawale-Roberts via council <council@icann.org> wrote:Dear Susan and Anne,
Thank you for your inputs and contribution to the subject matter.
@Susan your submission is spot on and am sure it provides some further clarity. where the Council adopts a 7 day timeframe in providing its consent over referring an issue to SPIRT, on a case-by-case basis I am hopeful the Council can beat this deadline in providing its conscent where needed.
@ Anne i consider your first two proposals friendly and have gone ahead to update the motion before the Council in line with your suggestions - That the time for a consent be extended to 7 days and that Council leadership make the call for an objection.Motion:
On your third request, the SPIRT charter explicitly recommends they come back to council on an issue that revolves around developing new policy (Type 3 Process)- Note that the SPIRT is a team of experts that are deemed to have the required competence to work along ICANN Org. In resolving any Type 2 issue that may arise. Mandating that they revert back to council at every point a decision needs to be made nullifies the intent behind how they are currently chatered, saddles the council with the same task they are to resolve and i believe isn’t the spirt behind the Predictability framework. I would urge that the council aligns with the PF and SPIRT Charther.
Hopefully, this gets us all moving towards a consensus on the issue.
Lawrence.
-----
Lawrence Olawale-Roberts
Global President & Managing Director
Mobile: +234 8070892705, (0)8056 3333 97
Lawrence@microboss.org
…collaboration to enhance communication.
This e-mail and any attachments are confidential and may be protected by legal, professional or other privilege. If you are not the intended recipient, you should not store it, copy it, re-transmit it,
use it or disclose its contents, but should return it to the sender immediately and delete your copy from your system. The views expressed are those of the sender and his company MicroBoss.
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From: Susan Payne via council <council@icann.org>
Sent: Monday, May 11, 2026 5:44:15 PM
To: GNSO council <council@icann.org>
Subject: [council] Re: GNSO Council Motion for SPIRT AlertsThanks to Lawrence for bringing this to Council in his capacity as the liaison to the SPIRT, and to Anne and Farzi for their comments.
I wanted to just make a couple of comments, for the benefit of Councillors, particularly those who perhaps are not so familiar with the detail as yet.
As a reminder, the SPIRT operates under the oversight of Council. Where an issue comes to the attention of the SPIRT which may require a change to the New gTLD Program, the SPIRT cannot consider that issue of its own volition, since the SPIRT cannot refer an issue to itself. Council may refer the issue to the SPIRT, however, and ask the SPIRT to look at it. What we are doing here is trying to set out a process for how that happens, including some timing expectations since such issues may be quite time-sensitive.
Under the SPIRT Charter, the first task of the SPIRT is to determine whether the issue can be resolved in a manner that is consistent with existing policy recommendations. If SPIRT concludes that it cannot (in other words, that a policy change would be needed), then the SPIRT is already required under its Charter to confer with the Council on a path forward. But, with an issue that the SPIRT is aware of (but which has not been referred to it) it cannot even make that assessment because it is not empowered to act. By this process, Council will only be giving the SPIRT permission to evaluate the issue, we are not signing off on a proposed solution.
Nothing in this process supersedes the SPIRT Charter. It is merely a pathway that allows the SPIRT to put something on Council’s radar and get permission from Council to look at it.
I hope that we can work collaboratively to agree a timeline that allows Councillors time to confer with their groups, and allows the SPIRT to be put to work, where appropriate, as quickly as possible in time-sensitive situations. Input from others on what that timing might be – whether 72 hours, 7 days, or other – would be welcome.
Susan Payne
Head of Legal Policy
Com Laude
T +44 (0) 20 7421 8250
D +44 (0) 20 74218 255
From: Anne ICANN via council <council@icann.org>
Sent: 11 May 2026 15:51
To: Terri Agnew <terri.agnew@icann.org>
Cc: GNSO council <council@icann.org>
Subject: [council] Re: GNSO Council Motion for SPIRT Alerts
Thank you, Terri. For consideration by Lawrence as the maker of the Motion, I would propose a friendly amendment (specifically in relation to the time sensitive issues raised by SPIRT) along the following lines:
- 7 day non-objection period yields consent (rather than 72 hours) and all Councilors are copied (gives some time for Councilors to consult SGs and Cs if needed.)
- Council Leadership has the Objection authority if needed (Councilors provide input to Leadership and lets them call it.)
- SPIRT agrees to make recommendation back to Council before proceeding to resolve the issue
If accepted by Lawrence, I am prepared to second the Motion.
Anne
Anne Aikman-Scalese
GNSO Councilor
NomCom Non-Voting 2022-2026
On Mon, May 11, 2026 at 6:31 AM Terri Agnew via council <council@icann.org> wrote:
Hello all,
This motion has been added on the wiki page: https://icann-community.atlassian.net/wiki/x/kgA3J
Thank you.
Kind regards,
Terri
Policy Team Supporting the GNSO
From: "Lawrence O. Olawale-Roberts via council" <council@icann.org>
Reply-To: "lawrence@microboss.org" <lawrence@microboss.org>
Date: Saturday, May 9, 2026 at 6:26 AM
To: GNSO council <council@icann.org>
Subject: [council] GNSO Council Motion for SPIRT Alerts
Dear Councilors,
I submit for your approval and secondment a motion for the GNSO Council Consideration of SPIRT Alert Request process at our meeting for the 21st May, 2026.
Motion:
On Council's approval of the Consideration Request for SPIRT Alerts in the motion above, the SPIRT would like to be permitted by the GNSO Council to discuss a matter on RSP Applications brought before the SPIRT by the Registry Stakeholder Group through a member.
Link to SPIRT Issue Submission Form:
The GNSO Council approval sort aligns with the SPIRT charter and adopted process.
Brief of Issue - RSP APPLICATIONS
The Registry Service Provider (RSP) Handbook sets out the evaluation process for providers seeking qualification to offer services to new generic top-level domain (gTLD) applicants in the New gTLD Program and currently mandates prospective RSP's to attest that all Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP) extensions they intend to use are registered with IANA in accordance with RFC 7451 and indicate whether they do, or will, refrain from using any EPP extensions that are not registered with IANA pursuant to RFC 7451.
As ICANN agreed to remove the requirement that Registry Operators limit their use to EPP extensions reflected in the IANA registry, the RSP Handbook has not updated to reflect this change and as a result, pre-evaluated RSPs are still required to commit to using only IANA-registered EPP extensions in order to pass evaluation. Thus RSPs must make commitments that their Registry Operators are no longer required to make under the Base Registry Agreement. Accordingly, the RySG requests that SPIRT and ICANN org consider revising the RSP Handbook to align it with the Base Registry Agreement.
-----
Lawrence Olawale-Roberts
Global President & Managing Director
Mobile: +234 8070892705, (0)8056 3333 97
Lawrence@microboss.org
…collaboration to enhance communication.
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