Thanks for the observations Philip. I strongly support your intent to make our meetings more efficient and have added my comments to your observations below. Chuck -----Original Message----- From: owner-council@gnso.icann.org [mailto:owner-council@gnso.icann.org] On Behalf Of Philip Sheppard Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 3:35 AM To: 'Council GNSO' Subject: [council] Council work Avri, fellow Council members I am becoming increasingly concerned about the bureaucratisation of Council work. We seem to have slipped into Council meetings every 14 days whereas since Council's inception under Bruce and previous chairman, we always managed calls every month. Do we have a significantly increased workload now than before ? No Are we producing more output and more implemented policy than before ? No. Instead I fear we are wasting time on calls with work that should be done on the list and adding unnecessary duplication. Examples: - talking through the agenda at the start of the call - surely we can all read ? CG: I think your point is well taken and that a brief opportunity for members to suggest any changes in the agenda would suffice. I would add the following suggestion to yours: instead of requiring in-meeting approval of the minutes we could establish a procedure that allows for automatic approval of the minutes if there are no edits suggested within a certain period of time after they are distributed to the list. - talking through the work plan at the end of each call - surely this admin item is best left as a web page ? CG: We really do not spend much time on this item but we could probably handle it more quickly by restricting our discussion to any items where there is new information to share or there is concern about lack of progress. I personally believe that it is important to keep all action items in front of use because it is very easy to forget about some and let them slide unnecessarily. - seeing multiple motions on the same issue - surely the job of an efficient chair is to resolve these issues before a call, and present one motion to Council that has a good chance of success? CG: Not sure this is necessarily the Chair's job although I think it is fine if the Chair does it. I believe that any Council member should be able to propose motions that might have a good chance of success and I think that you also support that. But it may not always be possible to get enough sense of the full Council's views to be able to draft a motion with high chances of success so I think there needs to be some flexibility here. - voting on motions that fail - again more background work is needed CG: Not sure I know what you mean here? How do we know whether a motion fails if we do not vote? - voting on procedural motions - eg the time line for the WHOIS study - in the past this would have been proposed by the Chair on list and acted upon unless there was opposition - CG: Avri did this as I recall in the last meeting and I also support it whenever possible and as often as possible. - confusing Council with multiple duplicate mailings before a call - in the past this coordination was done off list between the chair and secretariat, and then one clear mail sent to the list by the secretariat with all proposed motions in full text. - use of non ICANN work spaces like Google - what is the value of this above a list e-mail ( I cannot edit it on Google) ? CG: I have actually found the use of Google docs to be helpful although I must confess I am still learning to use the tool. - discussion on admin matters such as establishing a new group to discuss an issue - surely this is best done on list ? CG: Maybe I am missing your point here, but it seems to me that deciding to form a new group is an acceptable outcome in a meeting and is consistent with your goal to make meetings for efficient. If that can be done on the list before the meeting, fine. But sometimes that may be the result of Council discussion in a meeting. In short, more focus on output than process, more focus on policy than admin and consequently calls every 30 days would be welcome. Philip