Dear James: The GNSO Council has formed a small group to study the “Board Readiness” of Council policy recommendations, with the aim to adjust our policy development processes in a way that will increase the likelihood that GNSO policy recommendations will be readily adopted by the ICANN Board. On behalf of that team, I am writing to solicit your participation in an interview conducted by that small team. The information coming from the interviews with you, other PDP chairs and members, and ICANN staff and Board members will be used to build a set of hypotheses that, once tested, will guide the development of improvements in the GNSO’s Policy Development Process (PDP) practices. We plan for the interviews to be conducted in informal, one-on-one formats. Questions can be provided in advance, but initial responses might take interviews in different directions. The team will develop questionnaires based on the considerations such as: ● Were PDP working group members surprised (or unsurprised) by Board rejection of certain, specific policy recommendations? Why? ● During the policy-making discussion, did the PDP working group consider Board reaction to potential recommendations (as indicated either by the Board liaison, the public comment process, or otherwise)? ● In the opinion of PDP working group members did the PDP working group have the sufficient expertise, resources and information to develop a “Board-ready” set of recommendations? ● What were the PDP team’s expectations of the Board liaison role? ● How did Board members receive information regarding PDP working group progress, during the Policy Development Process and after recommendations were approved by the Council? ● Did the PDP structure (e.g., open vs representative), time constraints, meeting frequency, or other administrative aspects foster or deter the development of Board-ready recommendations? The small team will aggregate the interview responses into a set of findings and either, create a set of follow-up inquiries or, use the findings to synthesize a set of recommendations intended to inform GNSO Council’s work on improving Board readiness. Participants will have the opportunity to review the planned set of questions (although the conversation might suggest additional questions) as well as their input as documented by the interviewer prior to publication. The small team participants believe this will be a valuable and informative approach and hope you will be willing to participate in this effort. Thanks for taking the time to consider this. We stand by to answer any questions. Sincerely, Kurt Pritz on behalf of my GNSO Board Readiness Team colleagues