GNSO Review: Council Meeting Thursday 25 August, 12:00 UTC
Dear All Further to yesterday's Council meeting, please find attached an updated version of the GNSO Review: Phase One Paper. This paper has already been distributed to all Council members, the Board Governance Committee and to ICANN staff. The paper reflects input from each of those three groups. I have also distributed this paper to the Constituency Chairs (where those chairs are not Council members) so they can also provide early input. Please note the amended timeline in the document which now reflects this conference call and the one proposed between the Board and Council on Thursday 8 September. We need to have all consultations completed by 30 October to meet the Company Secretary's deadlines for submissions to the Board for the December meeting. After the 25 August meeting, I will send a notice to the Board List with an updated copy of the paper asking for interested board members to attend the call. The proposed agenda for the Council call (lasting for approx one hour?) will cover three main areas: 1. Confirmation of the rationale and background for the review 2. Confirmation of the question sets and analysis tools 3. Confirmation of the proposed timeline I would be grateful if, between now and Thursday 25 August, you could provide substantive commentary to me and I will collate this input. I am also developing an operational plan for the completion of the work as early in 2006 as possible. Feel free to either post your comments to the Council list or send them directly to me. If you wish to speak to me by telephone, the office number can be found below. Glen will send out call dial-in numbers and passcodes shortly. Kind regards. Liz Liz Williams Senior Policy Counselor ICANN - Brussels Tel: +32 2 234 7874 Fax: +32 2 234 7848 Mob: +61 414 26 9000
Liz, fellow Council members, this is an excellent start to defining the TOR. A few comments to help with our discussion on 25 August 2005. 1. Call. I would imagine we will need at least 2 hours for the call. 2. A: rationale - Excellent. 3. B. Background Documents: I feel a more explicit list of the actions outstanding from the GNSO Council review is required. Maria circulated a useful chart on this (6 June 2005).What needs to be included in the TOR (under each relevant category) from this chart are: - just the actions identified but not yet completed (eg PDP timelines review) - who is expected to do the uncompleted actions (staff, Council, Board?) Without this analysis we duplicate. 4. C: Operational Objectives. This is a useful subset of relevance to the GNSO. 5. D: Scope. It would be useful to number the bullet points for ease of reference. 6. D1. Representativeness. - The sub question about constituencies being open to individuals seems irrelevant, as does the phrase "who wishes to participate". Is a wish to participate sufficient reason for an individual? More importantly, that does not seem to me to be a condition for the stated representativeness of a constituency. Most constituency members are organisations and provide representation that way. The ALAC is the home for individual perspectives. - additional constituencies for more input: perhaps this should be phrased would add value? There will always be unhelpful input! - barriers: does this refer to barriers to entry or internal barriers to communication? - ALAC, GAC: does this point belong under representativeness of the constituencies? - no mention of the role and effect of the nom comm Councillors. 7. D2 Authority/ Effectiveness. It is difficult to understand the distinction of these two categories when read in conjunction with the sub-points under each category. Maybe room to remove one category? 8.D2 Authority - Is it always Council that should have implemented the outstanding GNSO Council review items? - fairness: this is a challenge to define and judge. Propose deletion. - double voting. This should be expanded to cover questions of rationale, merit, skewed outcomes, and anti-trust implications, - The GNSO Council bylaws DO need amending re PDP - no need to ask the question! (this is a good example of potential duplication). - I don't understand the point about constituency structure here. Does this not duplicate Representativeness? 9. D3 Effectiveness. - point two about "benefits to all parties" seems too wide for this review - unless there is a USD10m budget for the review!!! - PDP - the GNSO Council Review has already said it needs changing. Duplication again. - "ICANN is satisfied". Need to define ICANN - board, staff, community? If community, remember there will be parts of the community who are never satisfied! Also need to define satisfied. Board disagreement may lead to Board dissatisfaction with a policy but nevertheless the GNSO process and outcome could have been the model of effectiveness! 10. Transparency. - It will be useful to completely separate the points about participation / accountability of affected parties and conflicts of interest. - The GNSO Council review already identified the website as in need of improvement. 11. Measures. - I agree this is important but also the most challenging part of the proposal! The section is not of course separate but actually a methodology for all the other sections. Maybe we should seek to capture this in some way. - Point 4a about defining open, fairness, bottom up will be key. Unless these items are defined for the purpose of the review, certain of the proposed questions of the review, will be impossible to answer objectively. Propose therefore that this should be a point nearer the top of the TORs. Philip
participants (2)
-
Liz Williams -
Philip Sheppard