Dear Council Members: I and my RySG Councillor colleagues are writing to propose an agenda item for the May 2021 Council meeting: Next Steps for IDN Operational Track The purpose of this discussion is to reconsider the Council recommended approach for proceeding with the Operational Track vis-à-vis the adoption of the IDN Implementation Guidelines v4.0. The current approach calls for the formation or “reconstituting” of an IDN Guidelines Working Group to review the issues related to its implementation (raised by RySG) and assess a path forward. In the meantime, the Council has spun up the IDN EPDP (i.e., the Policy Track), whose charter is nearing completion. The IDN EPDP will consider some of the same issues that the IDN Implementation Guidelines version 4.0 is addressing. Similarly, the SubPro PDP also considered some of the same issues, and there is a likelihood that the SubPro IRT and IDN EPDP will approach these issues from a different perspective and develop what might be contradicting results. In both of these cases (overlap with the Guidelines Operational Track and with the SubPro IRT), some of the issues require policy considerations rather than operational implementation and are better suited for discussion in a policy development process. These issues are the principle and implementation of the same entity at the second level, and the harmonization of IDN tables (i.e., the creation of a consistent set of variant rules in a given registry TLD). Therefore, I recommend a briefing during the next meeting so that we can better understand these issues, consider our approach, and make a recommendation to the Board. Dennis Tanaka, chair of the IDN EPDP, could lead that presentation. As I understand it so far, a preferable approach would be to continue deferring the adoption of the IDN Implementation Guidelines 4.0 until the issues overlapping with the SubPro PDP and IDN EPDP can be fully deliberated and implemented by the corresponding Implementation Review Teams. Conditions for such a deferral might include: a. a security / stability check to ensure we are not deferring implementation of IDN Guidelines v4.0 that address stability / security issues, b. a provision that the IDN EPDP could forward to the Council IDN Guideline-specific recommendations as they are created, rather than waiting for the final report, and c. coordination with the SubPro IRT so that the SubPro implementation work will not be delayed in any way. In addition to the overlapping efforts between the IDN Guidelines, the SubPro PDP, and the IDN EPDP, the ccNSO is also undertaking an IDN Policy re-write for ccTLDs. While GNSO and ccNSO policies are separable in the ICANN world, differences in outcomes can lead to confusing results for domain registrants and users. Therefore, I think we should take advantage of the timing coincidence between the GNSO and ccNSO efforts to normalize results between the two wherever possible. As described above, there are now several IDN-related efforts for the purpose of enhancing their availability, ease of use and security. I think we should take advantage of the timing of this EPDP to reconcile the various approaches so that there is a coherent approach to IDN policy making and ensuring a good user experience. Thanks for taking the time to read and consider this. Best regards, Maxim Alzoba Sebastien Ducos Kurt Pritz