The Board Governance Committee would like the LSE's recommendations (and recommendations made 2 years ago as part of the GNSO Council review) to be a subject for informal conversation between members of the Board and the GNSO Council at tonight's Board/GNSO Council dinner. As you know, the LSE review, along with a previous review of the GNSO Council and public input, will be used to inform ICANN's effort to develop detailed proposals for improving the GNSO's structures and processes. The Board Governance Committee (BGC) is considering how to follow-up on these reviews and move forward with GNSO improvements. The BGC discussed this issue at their meeting this morning and will meet again tomorrow to continue their discussions. BGC members have not yet agreed upon a specific approach for GNSO improvements to discuss with the GNSO Council. For your information, included below is a brief summary of the LSE GNSO Review Recommendations, and the Patrick Sharry GNSO Council Review Recommendations. Regards, Denise Denise Michel Vice President, Policy Development ICANN denise.michel@icann.org LSE GNSO Review Recommendations 15 September 2006 (In this list the paragraph number given in parentheses at the end of each recommendation refers to the specific point in the main LSE Review text <http://www.icann.org/announcements/gnso-review-report-sep06.pdf> where the full recommendation is explained.) • Recommendation 1: A centralized register of all GNSO stakeholders should be established, which is up-to date and publicly accessible. It should include the members of Constituencies and others involved in the GNSO task forces. (Paragraph 2.5) • Recommendation 2: GNSO Constituencies should be required to show how many members have participated in developing the policy positions they adopt. (Paragraph 2.14) • Recommendation 3: There needs to be greater coherence and standardization across Constituency operations. For this to work effectively, more ICANN staff support would be needed for constituencies. (Paragraph 2.22) • Recommendation 4: A GNSO Constituency support officer should be appointed to help Constituencies develop their operations, websites and outreach activity. (Paragraph 2.23) • Recommendation 5: Constituencies should focus on growing balanced representation and active participation broadly proportional to wider global distributions for relevant indicators. (Paragraph 2.39) • Recommendation 6: The basis for participation in GNSO activities needs to be revised, from Constituency-based membership to one deriving from direct ICANN stakeholder participation. (Paragraph 2.44) • Recommendation 7: The GNSO should improve the design and organization of the current website, develop a website strategy for continual improvement and growth over the next three years, and review usage statistics on a regular basis to check that traffic to the website is growing over time and understand more fully what external audiences are interested in. (Paragraph 3.10) • Recommendation 8: Document management within the GNSO needs to be improved and the presentation of policy development work made much more accessible. (Paragraph 3.14) • Recommendation 9: The GNSO should develop and publish annually a Policy Development Plan for the next two years, to act both as a strategy document for current and upcoming policy work, and as a communications and marketing tool for general consumption outside of the ICANN community. It should dovetail with ICANN‘s budget and strategy documents. (Paragraph 3.16) • Recommendation 10: The GNSO and ICANN should work proactively to provide information-based incentives for stakeholder organizations to monitor and participate in GNSO issues. (Paragraph 3.19) • Recommendation 11: The position of the GNSO Council Chair needs to become much more visible within ICANN and to carry more institutional weight. (Paragraph 3.26) • Recommendation 12: The policies on GNSO Councilors declaring interests should be strengthened. Provision for a vote of ”no confidence‘ leading to resignation should be introduced for noncompliance. (Paragraph 3.28) • Recommendation 13 Fixed term limits should be introduced for GNSO Councilors either of two two-year terms (as applied in some Constituencies already) or perhaps of a single three-year term. (Paragraph 3.30) • Recommendation 14: The GNSO Council and related policy staff should work more closely together to grow the use of project-management methodologies in policy development work, particularly focusing on how targeted issue analysis can drive data collection from stakeholders (rather than vice versa). (Paragraph 4.14) • Recommendation 15: The GNSO Council should rely more on face-to-face meetings supplemented by online collaborative methods of working. The Chair should seek to reduce the use of whole-Council teleconferencing. (Paragraph 4.19) • Recommendation 16: The GNSO Councilors should have access to a fund for reasonable travel and accommodation expenses to attend designated Council meetings, instead of having to meet such costs from their own resources as at present. (Paragraph 4.21) • Recommendation 17: The GNSO Council should make more use of Task Forces. Task Force participants should be more diverse and should be drawn from a wider range of people in the Internet community, and national and international policy-making communities. (Paragraph 4.26) • Recommendation 18: An ICANN Associate stakeholder category of participation should be created, so as to create a pool of readily available external expertise, which can be drawn upon to populate Task Forces where relevant. (Paragraph 4.27) • Recommendation 19: The current GNSO Constituency structure should be radically simplified so as to be more capable of responding to rapid changes in the Internet. The Constituency structure should be clear, comprehensive (covering all potential stakeholders) and flexible, allowing the GNSO to respond easily to the rapid changes in the make-up of Internet stakeholders. We suggest a set of three larger Constituencies to represent respectively Registration interests, Businesses and Civil Society. (Paragraph 4.35) • Recommendation 20: A reorganization of GNSO Constituencies would also allow the Council to be made somewhat smaller (we suggest 16 members) and hence easier to manage. (Paragraph 4.36) • Recommendation 21: The definition of achieving a consensus should be raised to 75 per cent. Weighted voting should be abolished. Both measures could help to create more incentives for different Constituencies to engage constructively with each other, rather than simply reiterating a ”bloc‘ position in hopes of picking up enough uncommitted votes so as to win. (Paragraph 4.38) • Recommendation 22: The way in which the GNSO Council votes to elect two Directors to the ICANN Board should be changed to use the Supplementary Vote system. (Paragraph 4.40) • Recommendation 23: The amount of detailed prescriptive provision in the ICANN Bylaws relating to the operations of the GNSO should be reduced. ICANN Bylaws should outline broad principles and objectives for the GNSO but the detailed operational provision (including the section on the PDP) should be transferred to the GNSO Rules of Procedure. This would allow the GNSO to agree amendments and to introduce new innovations in its working methods and timelines in a more realistic and flexible way, while operating within ICANN‘s guiding principles. (Paragraph 5.7) • Recommendation 24: Both ICANN and the GNSO Council should periodically (say once every five years) compile or commission a formal (quantitative and qualitative) assessment of the influence of the GNSO‘s work on developing policy for generic names. This should include an analysis of how the GNSO‘s influence with national governments, international bodies and the commercial sector might be extended. (Paragraph 5.12) Patrick Sharry GNSO Council Review Recommendations 22 December 2004 (The full review is linked at <http://gnso.icann.org/announcements/announcement-22dec04.htm >) • Recommendation 1: The Council has made a significant contribution to other ICANN core values such as outreach, bottom-up consensus based policy development, geographical diversity and transparency. It has endeavored to make good use of the ICANN meetings to conduct outreach activities with other ICANN organizations and with the broader internet community. The Council should plan to expand and enhance these activities. • Recommendation 2: The appointment of liaisons is a good step in building links with other parts of the ICANN structure. Again consideration needs to be given to the best way that these liaisons can be used to raise awareness of Council issues. The crafting of a “role description” or “partnership agreement” may assist with setting clear expectations and maximizing outcomes. • Recommendation 3: While it is healthy that the Council has representation from four of the ICANN regions, the Council should develop a plan for increasing representation so that all regions are covered. • Recommendation 4: Furthermore, consideration needs to be given to ways in which people from non-English speaking backgrounds can participate more actively in Council. This may involve making greater use of face to face time at ICANN meetings (where communication is easier) in addition to telephone conferences. The availability of translations of key documents would also assist, but this would need careful consideration as it could easily become a very expensive exercise. • Recommendation 5: The Council should seek approval from the Board for a revised policy Development Process. The alternative process should have the following elements: o Scoping phase (history of the issue, key questions, contractual issues, terms of reference, timelines, milestones including deliverables and check points for legal opinion) which should be done as quickly as feasible, probably within the timeframe of the current issues report o Policy work (including research, consultation with constituencies, periods for public comment) with timelines set in the scoping phase according to the complexity of the task o Regular reporting to Council on milestones as established in the scooping phase o A final report and public comment period as in the current PDP o A Council vote as in the current PDP • Recommendation 6: The Council should develop a formal process for seeking input from other ICANN organizations for each of the policies it is developing. • Recommendation 7: In addition to these changes, the Council should consider other measures to speed up the consensus process, including the greater use of time at ICANN meetings to discuss issues face to face, and possibly the use of facilitators to move more quickly to understanding of issues and building of consensus. • Recommendation 8: ICANN should move to put in place a high caliber staff policy support person at the earliest possible opportunity. • Recommendation 9: The Chair of the GNSO Council and VP Supporting Organizations should oversee an effective handover from the current staff support person to ensure that lessons learnt over the past year are not lost. • Recommendation 10: The Chair of the GNSO Council and the VP Supporting Organizations should establish a service level agreement between the GNSO Council and ICANN management that specifies the amount and type of support that is to be provided. Where possible, this should include measures (eg turnaround times for legal opinion, delivery of reports by agreed dates, minutes posted within a certain number of days) The Chair should consult the Council to ensure the targets meet the needs of the Council and its task forces. The VP Supporting Organizations and Chair of GNSO Council should meet quarterly to review performance measures and report these to the President. • Recommendation 11: The Council should work with the ICANN General Counsel to establish clear communication channels for the request for and provision of legal opinion. At a minimum this should include detailed legal input at the scoping phase of each PDP. Wherever possible, “check points” for further legal input should be established as part of the scoping study. • Recommendation 12: The Council needs to ensure the viability of implementation of each of the policy recommendations that it makes to the Board. • Recommendation 13: ICANN needs to put in place a compliance function to monitor compliance with policies. • Recommendation 14: The Council needs to work with ICANN operational staff to develop a compliance policy with graded penalties. • Recommendation 15: Council needs to have a built in review of the effectiveness of policies in the policy recommendations that it makes to the Board . • Recommendation 16: The GNSO Council should utilize the Ombudsman and any reports produced by the Ombudsman as source of systematic analysis of complaints and therefore of issues that may need to be addressed through the PDP.