Hello All, Following the work we have done so far at the Council level on defining a strategic plan for the GNSO, I have had discussion with Chris Disspain, Chair, of the ccNSO, and Patrick Sharry to suggest replicating our process across the other SO's and AC's. The process that we are following is basically: (1) Define what the GNSO should be achieving by 2009 in each of 7 areas (2) Identify what our current level of achievement is in each of those areas (3) Identify what initiatives we need to move from our current level to our desired level in 2009 (4) Identify the budget/resources required to do the initiatives to achieve the goals by 2009 Naturally the next step after the strategic planning cycle is to define the operating plan, which would prioritise the initiatives for the next 12 months with a further level of planning details, and also ensure that there is sufficient revenue to carry out the operating plan. The GNSO operating plan also needs to cope with issues that arise during the course of the year. With respect to the GNSO as we don't have either an operating plan or strategic plan, we are working on initial drafts in parallel, and have arranged a meeting with the ICANN Board on Monday afternoon 28 Nov 2005 to go through those plans. We will also need to be communicating with our respective constituencies both before and after this meeting to get more input. Chris Disspain and I are going to try to get together with the chairs of the other SOs, and ACs, along with the chair of the ICANN Board to discuss using this approach more broadly on Sunday 27 Nov. We believe that the SOs and ACs need more time to complete their planning work as input to the overall ICANN strategic plan, and that the ICANN staff should aim to have a consolidated strategic plan for review at the ICANN meeting in Wellington. I have been told that the ICANN staff have scheduled a strategic planning session on Friday morning 2 Dec prior to the GNSO Public Forum. I hope at that session we can take a bottom up approach, with of each of the SO's, and AC's providing an update on their strategic planning work, and getting input from the ICANN community. The GNSO will be able to use the material it is planning to present to the Board on Monday 28 Nov, along with any changes from discussions within the GNSO community during that week, for that session. Regards, Bruce Tonkin