Hello All, At the meeting today it was agreed that: - the ICANN staff associated with gtld issues (operational and policy) will work together with the GNSO Council to plan GNSO related work on a 4 month, 12 month (GNSO Operational Plan), and 3 year basis (GNSO strategic plan) The GNSO planning process will feed into the overall ICANN planning process. At each ICANN meeting, time will be devoted to planning work. For this meeting, Sunday morning from 10am to 1pm has been allocated for this task. The independent external reviews of the GNSO Council and GNSO-as-a-whole will form input into the operational and strategic planning process. With respect to policy development work, the final policy agreed by the Council should include: - policy aims - text for registry and registrar contracts - metrics to measure the effectiveness of the new policy At the beginning of policy development work, ICANN staff will assist in establishing a benchmark for the current operating environment (which could be done by surveying the activities of s sample of registrars representing at least 75% of the registrations - comprising of some large, some small, and some in a range of countries). For example if the policy was about transfers, ICANN would establish the current number of successful, and rejected transfers, or the current numbers of transfers that fail for some particular reason. ICANN staff legal advice is required to assist in translating the policy aims/recommendations into contractual text. ICANN operational staff will assist in defining metrics, carrying out measurements, and reporting measurements to the GNSO community. Regards, Bruce Tonkin