Hi,

Thanks for the work on the document, Lars, Chris and everyone involved in bringing it together. I still feel that a consensus level should be determined on each set of alternative recommendations, and included in the draft report. Part of reporting a working group’s progress at this stage should be reporting to the public where the WG participants stand. So again, I ask that we determine these consensus levels and replace the findings with the observation made on page 14 under “Current state of discussion”. Although this section is not technically inaccurate, it is only because a consensus call on the sets of recommendations hasn’t been requested by the WG chairs. That could be remedied.

Some more comments in line below:

On Sep 30, 2014, at 5:58 PM, Lars Hoffmann <lars.hoffmann@icann.org> wrote:

Hi Amr, Emily, all

 

Thank your for your thoughts! And before I respond, please let me point out that I have attached a first version of the Draft Initial Report.

 

Just a quick note clarifying my ‘roadmap’ from my original email and also addressing the important points that have been raised.

 

Please note that this is a draft Initial Report. As such it is not yet ready to go for public comment and it is not intended to go out before (nor during) ICANN 51. The document is produced now so that WG members have a substantial draft to present and discuss in LA. The Group will continue discussing the draft on Thursday's call and in LA during its face-to-face meeting. Potentially, further feedback from the community might come forward and feed into further amendments following LA. Only then would it the Initial Report be put out for public comment.

Thanks. That sounds great.

Because the Group is faced with a binary question, the idea was to provide clearly to the community both sides of the argument that have been discussed (for an against mandatory transformation) and also provide the two logical recommendations that flow from these different sides of the arguments:  mandatory transformation; no mandatory transformation. This would be done to help encourage community feedback during the public comment period that follows the finalized Initial Report post ICANN51.


Presenting the pros and cons of policy findings in a WG report does not preclude defining a current consensus level. This was done, for example, with the initial and final reports of the “thick” WHOIS PDP WG (http://gnso.icann.org/en/group-activities/active/thick-whois).

Also, the PDP Manual does not prescribe a mandatory formal consensus level call be conducted for an Initial Report - though it is of course an option. This is to allow for differences among WGs depending on each group’s deliberations to date, such that the WG and its co–Chairs could decide not to determine consensus level at this stage, including on the basis that community feedback is important for informing the Final Report and the formal Consensus Call that will need to be done. In this way, relevant input from the public comment period will be assessed and fed into the Final Report that will only contain one set of recommendations, to be determined after the formal Consensus Call takes place. At that point, Minority Statement(s), if needed, can still be produced and attached to the Final Report. You may be interested to know that this approach was also recently followed for the IRTP-D and IGO-INGO PDP WGs.


True. A consensus level at this stage is not required and only a tentative one, which may change following the public comment period. Still, it is informative and helpful to the community on where the WG members stand as a result of the work that has been done. Like I said, this was included in both reports of the “thick” WHOIS PDP WG referred to above.

In any case, the Draft Initial Report is an amalgamation of Chris’ straw man and Petter’s modified version and so maybe a decision on which way to move forward could be taken on Thursday when everybody had the chance to read though the document? I would be able to amend the document very quickly after Thursday’s call - based on the way forwarded decided by the WG membership.


Thanks again to the drafters, and thanks to you, Lars, for your willingness to accommodate our shifting requests. :)

Amr