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
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