Draft Agenda for Council meeting - Thursday 7 June 2007
Hello All, Below is a draft agenda for the Council meeting next week. Note that this is a GNSO Council meeting to consider the current draft of the new gTLDs report. Those constituency representatives and observers that have attended new gTLD committee meetings are welcome to attend the teleconference as observers. Regards, Bruce Tonkin Coordinated Universal Time UTC 12:00 (5:00 LA, 8:00 Washington DC, 13:00 London, 14:00 Brussels, 22:00 Melbourne, 00:00 Auckland Draft Agenda for Council meeting - Thursday 7 June 2007 Item 0: Roll call of Council members present physically or available via teleconference Item 1: Update any statements of interest Item 2: Approval of minutes - minutes for 24 May 2007 Item 3: Ratify the result of the election for the GNSO Council chair Item 4: Review new gTLD recommendations The purpose of this discussion is to review any changes/updates to the draft recommendations since Lisbon. Item 5: Review options for voting on the recommendations (note a vote will not be conducted at this meeting, but the aim is to discuss the how such a vote would be managed): Options include: (a) Each Council member votes on recommendations as a whole (b) Each Council member votes on each individual recommendation (c) We separate recommendations that are "complete", versus those that need further work Item 6: Any other business
Bruce, allow me to respond to your questions about how we handle the gTLD report. 1. We treated this issue as a committee of the whole of Council. This process was explicitly to ensure incremental buy-in to recommendations by Council. It escapes all logic that Council would then vote on each recommendation. That process would seem suited to a task force report. Have we all been wasting our time? I trust not. 2. We also opened the group to observers and received excellent input. That was also a process designed to explicitly ensure incremental buy-in to recommendations by the wider community. 3. Staff have diligently drafted version upon version of the report so that we were all able to track emerging recommendations that achieved broad support. What was the point of all that if we now vote on each recommendation as if it came from nowhere ? 4. The recommendations were not made in glorious isolation. Many are inter-dependent. We will end up with a pigs breakfast if we assume the recommendations can operate in isolation. Conclusion We must vote on the report as a whole. Note Not all the recommendations please everyone. It is not appropriate for Council to revisit issues just because individuals wish to re-run arguments that earlier failed to persuade. If that's how we will play it then the BC will return with our original wish list, so may the IPC, so may the ISPs, so may ... etc. Further work There are a lot of issues that need further work or at least feedback to Council on their implementation. Indeed this applies to most recommendations ! It would be useful therefore to explicitly mark in the report where Council expects formal feedback from staff. That makes it clear for us, clear for staff. Link to the sub groups We also need to make explicit reference to the inclusion and support for these reports where appropriate. Philip
Good morning everyone I plan to release later this week some easy to read documentation and explanations for the Committee to consider. There is a whole lot of work going on that not everyone has been involved in and it would be good to get everyone back in parallel. I am preparing a consolidated text which sets out the draft recommendations and which also captures the work of the three working groups -- IDNs, PRO and RN. This will be in table form and will not include all the explanatory detail which is available in the full reports. Some of you may be aware that we are having another internal working session on 4 & 5 June in MdR to make more progress on the implementation planning and the Committee call is on 7 June. Shortly after that I will release an updated full draft of the Final Report which will be used at the San Juan meeting to complete the next tranche of work and I expect it would be helpful to have another version of the ICANN Staff Implementation Guidelines available. The Final Report for the GNSO Council to vote on as a completed piece of work will be available after the San Juan meeting. A reminder too that the PRO and RN WG will be presenting their final reports on 23 June in San Juan and that we have another GNSO GAC session on 24 June. Kind regards and, of course, any questions or clarifications, please ask. Liz ..................................................... Liz Williams Senior Policy Counselor ICANN - Brussels +32 2 234 7874 tel +32 2 234 7848 fax +32 497 07 4243 mob On 29 May 2007, at 10:22, Philip Sheppard wrote:
Bruce, allow me to respond to your questions about how we handle the gTLD report.
1. We treated this issue as a committee of the whole of Council. This process was explicitly to ensure incremental buy-in to recommendations by Council. It escapes all logic that Council would then vote on each recommendation. That process would seem suited to a task force report. Have we all been wasting our time? I trust not.
2. We also opened the group to observers and received excellent input. That was also a process designed to explicitly ensure incremental buy-in to recommendations by the wider community.
3. Staff have diligently drafted version upon version of the report so that we were all able to track emerging recommendations that achieved broad support. What was the point of all that if we now vote on each recommendation as if it came from nowhere ?
4. The recommendations were not made in glorious isolation. Many are inter-dependent. We will end up with a pigs breakfast if we assume the recommendations can operate in isolation.
Conclusion We must vote on the report as a whole.
Note Not all the recommendations please everyone. It is not appropriate for Council to revisit issues just because individuals wish to re-run arguments that earlier failed to persuade. If that's how we will play it then the BC will return with our original wish list, so may the IPC, so may the ISPs, so may ... etc.
Further work There are a lot of issues that need further work or at least feedback to Council on their implementation. Indeed this applies to most recommendations ! It would be useful therefore to explicitly mark in the report where Council expects formal feedback from staff. That makes it clear for us, clear for staff.
Link to the sub groups We also need to make explicit reference to the inclusion and support for these reports where appropriate.
Philip
[Bruce] it is better to proceed in such a way that minimises risk in the first round, but also allows flexibility to update the recommendations based on experience of the first round.
Do you have anything specific in mind? what and where are the provisions to ensure such flexibility? I think it is important to know concretely how this can be handled, should the need arise. I don't see any contradiction between the fact that a lot of work has been put into a PDP, and the possibility for the *Council* to determine in the end the level of support for each recommendation so that, as Bruce has put it, at least the recommendations that are capable of supermajority be secured and built on later on. The argument that the recommendations cannot be considered individually because they are inter-dependent is a fallacious one because i) most of the recommendations have been discussed separately during the process, and ii) if recommendations are so inter-related that it wouldn't make sense to adopt/implement one without the other, then clearly those who support one will support the other. Similarly, the idea of the committee having thoroughly discussed the issues raised by NCUC (for example) without any proponents of those ideas/issues being there to explain and respond is deceitful.
Note Not all the recommendations please everyone. It is not appropriate for Council to revisit issues just because individuals wish to re-run arguments that earlier failed to persuade. If that's how we will play it then the BC will return with our original wish list, so may the IPC, so may the ISPs, so may ... etc.
This is so bright! just that in such perspective, the PDP process is nothing but a merely political process governed by corporatism. (You may note, Liz, that this is not the best mindset and environment for dialogue between constituencies as you've been encouraging for.) If that's the case, then it should be no surprise that courts become (are?) the only place where some sense of higher norms and overall legitimacy is re-stablished in the ICANN's decisions. That shouldn't worry me, but I'm worried that this is the perspective of an aspirant chairman for the council. Mawaki --- Philip Sheppard <philip.sheppard@aim.be> wrote:
Bruce, allow me to respond to your questions about how we handle the gTLD report.
1. We treated this issue as a committee of the whole of Council. This process was explicitly to ensure incremental buy-in to recommendations by Council. It escapes all logic that Council would then vote on each recommendation. That process would seem suited to a task force report. Have we all been wasting our time? I trust not.
2. We also opened the group to observers and received excellent input. That was also a process designed to explicitly ensure incremental buy-in to recommendations by the wider community.
3. Staff have diligently drafted version upon version of the report so that we were all able to track emerging recommendations that achieved broad support. What was the point of all that if we now vote on each recommendation as if it came from nowhere ?
4. The recommendations were not made in glorious isolation. Many are inter-dependent. We will end up with a pigs breakfast if we assume the recommendations can operate in isolation.
Conclusion We must vote on the report as a whole.
Note Not all the recommendations please everyone. It is not appropriate for Council to revisit issues just because individuals wish to re-run arguments that earlier failed to persuade. If that's how we will play it then the BC will return with our original wish list, so may the IPC, so may the ISPs, so may ... etc.
Further work There are a lot of issues that need further work or at least feedback to Council on their implementation. Indeed this applies to most recommendations ! It would be useful therefore to explicitly mark in the report where Council expects formal feedback from staff. That makes it clear for us, clear for staff.
Link to the sub groups We also need to make explicit reference to the inclusion and support for these reports where appropriate.
Philip
Hello Mawaki,
Do you have anything specific in mind? what and where are the provisions to ensure such flexibility? I think it is important to know concretely how this can be handled, should the need arise.
I was referring to the PDP process. A PDP can be used at any time to update an existing policy. I had envisaged a process (which certainly should be clarified in the report) that involves a fast track review process after the first round (preferably against a clear set of measurable parameters), and then the Council could decide to initiate a PDP process (again hopefully of a duration of say 90 days) to make any policy adjustments needed, or the staff could simply improve the implementation of the existing policy. I recall some discussion of this in Marina Del Ray where we talked about the need to have some measures of success and set out a clear review process. We did actually build in such a review process for the transfers policy - but this has been a bit resource constrained (probably mostly from the volunteer side) and has not yet concluded. Regards, Bruce Tonkin
participants (4)
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Bruce Tonkin -
Liz Williams -
Mawaki Chango -
Philip Sheppard