I would like to understand your position better Adrian and also explain mine. Do you not think that the GNSO should try to work together with the GAC on their concerns regarding the implementation of new gTLD Recommendation 6? The GAC has an important advisory role to the ICANN community regarding issues of public policy and it seems to me that this issue involves public policy, albeit public policy that may vary from government to government. The ICANN Bylaws require the Board to not only listen to GAC advice on public policy matters but also respond to it and in recent years they have shown that they have tried to do that. So it seems reasonable in my opinion that at some point the Board will respond to the GAC's request to form a community working group. They could reject the request or they could honor it and ask community members to participate; if the latter happens, the GNSO would be asked to participate. My concern as Council Chair is that this is occurring extremely late in the game and I have communicated that to Heather. But the reality is that the GAC has made a request. I could have waited until the Board responds, but if recent history is any indication, that could take weeks or even months. Then if they decide to form a community WG, the chances of further delays in the introduction of new gTLDs could be further delayed, a possibility that I think the GNSO should try to minimize. Therefore, I decided that I would try to take steps to respond to the GAC request in cooperation with the ALAC who also had concerns on this topic and see if we could get the process moving as quickly as possible to hopefully avoid further delays or at least minimize them. You did not miss anything. There was not a vote by the Council saying we would assist the GAC in doing this. The only thing that happened in the Council happened in our Wrap-Up meeting in Brussels when Bill Drake raised the issue and requested that interested GNSO participants should participate in the discussions that were going on in the GAC and ALAC. In that meeting several people volunteered and after that meeting others from the GNSO volunteered to participate as well. There was no opposition expressed at that time or since then until your message was received. Do you oppose members of the GNSO community participating in this group? I believe it was made clear in our Wrap-Up meeting that any volunteers would be participating in their individual capacity. Of course, to the extent that their SGs or Constituencies, want them to represent their groups' views, nothing would prevent them from doing that. But the intent has never been that anyone would be representing the GNSO or Council as a whole. If the Council does not want to work cooperatively with the GAC and the ALAC and other ICANN organizations on this topic, I suppose it could decide to do that, but I don't think there would be any basis for preventing individual GNSO members from participating or even SGs or Constituencies if they so desired. My question to you in that regard is this: what message would that send to the community as a whole and more particularly to the GAC and to governments in general? Regarding process, the ideal way for this to come about would have first of all been for the GAC to raise their concerns much earlier in the process. Heather says that they did but someone I was not aware of it until fairly recently. The reality is that the concerns have been raised now. Should we ignore them because it is so late or should we make a best effort to cooperate and see what can be done in a timely manner? I made the latter choice. If the timing was different, the ideal approach would have been for me to wait until the GNSO received a request from the Board and then present the request to the Council to decide how to respond, and only then start to work on a formal charter with the other groups involved if the Council so decided. If I took that approach in the current circumstances, we probably would have had to wait at least until after the Board retreat the end of September to receive a request from the Board and maybe until after the October Board meeting. Then we would have had to decide how to respond in our October or November meetings whether to participate. The we would have had to work with the other organizations to develop and ultimately approve the joint charter. So maybe we could have started the work group by the end of the year. One more thought: I personally believe that it is important for the GNSO to work cooperatively with all ICANN organizations that are impacted by issues of common concern and I also believe that this situation provides an opportunity for us to try doing that with the GAC, one of the organizations with whom we have not had much success in doing that in the past. Whether we like it or not, ICANN processes are supposed to bottom-up and inclusive of all stakeholders. Unfortunately, bottom-up, inclusive processes are slow. At the same time, where possible, I would like to speed them up if we can and that is what I tried to do in this case because I sincerely believe that we have a responsibility to try and bring closure to the new gTLD process in an effective manner but also in a timely manner. Chuck From: Adrian Kinderis [mailto:adrian@ausregistry.com.au] Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 8:48 PM To: Gomes, Chuck; Council GNSO Subject: RE: New gTLD Recommendation 6 Community Working Group I reject the notion of a WG at all. IMO it is unnecessary and will not provide any useful, tactile benefits. Did I miss something here Chuck. Was there a vote by the Council saying we would assist the GAC in doing this? Is there a mechanism by which we could stop GNSO participation and support? Adrian Kinderis From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Gomes, Chuck Sent: Friday, August 20, 2010 12:32 AM To: Council GNSO Subject: [council] New gTLD Recommendation 6 Community Working Group Importance: High Hopefully all of you are aware that the GAC requested a community working group to discuss the implementation of the GNSO New gTLD Recommendation 6. To accommodate that request, the list that the GNSO established in follow-up to Bill Drake's request in our Brussels Wrap-Up session to participate in the discussions on this topic going on within the GAC an ALAC will be used for the community working group discussions. Considering how late this is happening relative to the new gTLD process, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, chair of the ALAC, and Heather Dryden, Chair of the GAC, and I have been discussing how to go about accommodating the GAC request in a timely manner. To expedite discussions, we decided to prepare an initial draft Terms of Reference (ToR) for discussion by those who have volunteered to participate in the group. The hope is to very quickly finalize the ToR so that discussion of the issues may begin and thereby have a chance of developing recommendations for improving the implementation plan for Recommendation 6 in the Draft Application Guidebook, version 4. As you can see in the draft ToR, this is not a PDP. The GNSO Council already approved Recommendation 6 by a super-majority vote. There is no intent to undo the intent of that recommendation; to do that would require a PDP because it would be materially changing an already approved policy recommendation. Rather, the intent is to explore whether the implementation process in version 4 of the Guidebook could be improved in a way that addresses any of the GAC and ALAC concerns. As all of you know, there is no established process for community working groups. In drafting the initial ToR for discussion, we tried to accommodate the needs of all three organizations especially in terms of how they operate, which are different in certain respects. Please note that the group is open to all community participants from all SOs and ACs and for that matter any who are not SO or AC participants. I believe that this could be the first significant effort of the GNSO and GAC working together in a WG and I am hopeful that it will provide some lessons for how we can to that better on other issues in the future, just like the GNSO Council discussed with the GAC in Brussels. The GAC has an important advisory role in ICANN policy processes as they relate to public policy issues and we all know that the Board will listen intently to the GAC advice on the implementation of Recommendation 6. Therefore, it seemed wise to try to do that sooner rather than later to minimize any further delays. I will add this topic to the agenda for 26 August but would really appreciate it if we can discuss it on the list in advance. Thanks for your cooperation, Chuck <<New gTLD Recommendation 6 Community Discussion Group Terms of Reference v3.docx>>