Thanks Chuck and I wanted to respond to your question about carrying over funding for Whois studies beyond the current Fiscal Year.

After checking with the CFO on this, I want to share the following:

The bylaws provide for an annual budget. It is silent about multiyear budgeting.
The Board Budget Committee is looking at multiyear budgeting in the future.
The best approach is to use the FY 12 budget consultation process to identify funding needs for the Whois studies beyond FY 2011 which staff can then support. I do believe the intent is to begin the consultation process shortly.

Thank you for your attentiveness to this issue. Of course I am available to provide any information that might help support the budget process including details on the staff and Council analysis and review to-date and our anticipated implementation timetable going forward. As the Council well appreciates, there are many details regarding each of the studies that are worthy of careful analysis and review, and this process has not fit neatly into the budgeting cycle. Hopefully we can urge an approach that will accommodate this situation.

Liz

From: Gomes, Chuck [mailto:cgomes@verisign.com]
Sent: Wednesday, October 06, 2010 5:17 AM
To: Liz Gasster; council@gnso.icann.org
Subject: RE: [council] Staff analysis of WHOIS Proxy and Privacy Abuse Study RFP responses

Thank you very much Liz and thanks to the Staff members who cooperated to produce this analysis as well as the comparison of the bidders. . In this week’s Council meeting, a few minutes are allocated for a very brief mention of the analysis, but any major discussion regarding whether or not to do Study #3 will be planned for the 28 October Council meeting. In anticipation of that, has the question about use of the FY11 funds allocated for Whois studies been answered, i.e., do the $400,000+ budgeted funds have to be spent in FY2011 or may they be carried over and spent in FY2012?

Chuck

From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Liz Gasster
Sent: Tuesday, October 05, 2010 8:44 PM
To: council@gnso.icann.org
Subject: [council] Staff analysis of WHOIS Proxy and Privacy Abuse Study RFP responses

All,

Attached please find staff’s analysis of the Proxy and Privacy “Abuse” study based on responses received from independent researchers to the RFP we previously published.

We would be glad to answer any questions or provide additional information. The analysis will be posted tomorrow and may be found at: http://gnso.icann.org/issues/whois/.

Thanks, Liz