Good evening: I must say that I could not possibly accept that GNSO Council would have the authority to decide and/or to overrule the recommendations of the SPIRIT. GNSO is but one of the SO/AC in play here. GNSO Council is not "FINAL" anything. Lacking time to go into this at length, I rest that this is a critical issue for the multistakeholder ICANN community. Regards Christopher Wilkinson Begin forwarded message: From: "Aikman-Scalese, Anne" <AAikman@lrrc.com> Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg] Proposed Agenda - New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP WG - Thursday, 21 May at 03:00 UTC for 90 Minutes Date: 21 May 2020 at 21:11:44 CEST To: Steve Chan <steve.chan@icann.org>, Julie Hedlund <julie.hedlund@icann.org>, "gnso-newgtld-wg@icann.org" <gnso-newgtld-wg@icann.org> Jeff, Cheryl, Steve et al, Regarding the process chart, and as discussed on last night’s call, the language in the middle of the chart does not seem accurate. It says that issues “identified” as fitting in A or B are expected to be decided by ICANN staff. The issue raised in the call last night was who gets to “identify” what bucket the issue falls in. I see staff working with the SPIRT to make those recommendations. SPIRT may agree with staff that an issue falls into A or B, but Staff should not itself have the final call if there’s an issue. In all cases, buckets A, B, C, D, and E, GNSO Council has the FINAL call. SPIRT is there to discuss and try to classify which bucket the issue goes in and NOT to make policy if it believes that a policy issue is involved. It’s not at all workable to have one person on the SPIRT be able to kick an issue up to GNSO as policy if the majority believe it can be handled by staff or handled with GNSO Input or Guidance (rather than through policy-making). (Remember that any GNSO action always takes precedence over the SPIRT .) This “sorting into buckets” function is why it is so important for the SPIRT to have members from all parts of the community (which is supposed to be the case for regular IRTs as per the section I pasted in chat last night – see Section C of IRT Recruitment in the attachment). It Is clearly NOT working at all to pick and choose different parts of the IRT Guidelines to try to structure the SPIRT as we have done in the current draft. When you do that, you get “the SPIRT may not be representative” and you leave out FOUNDATIONAL language like “SPIRT recruiting must be very broad and invitations should go to all former regular attending members of the PDP Working Group” which is in Item C of the IRT Guidelines. For some reason, the draft we have now says the SPIRT team should include at least ONE member of the PDP WG. Why would there be such emphasis on getting just ONE member of the PDP for this Standing IRT? And why do we want to emphasize that the SPIRT may not be representative rather than emphasizing that recruitment should be broad as shown in the attached IRT Principles and Guidelines? (Last night Paul asked to see the IRT Guidelines. They are attached for your consideration before the next call.) Donna mentioned that staff runs the IRT process. The Guidelines for IRTs state that the staff member is the GDD Project Manager. Every IRT appoints among its members a GNSO Council Liaison. I’m not sure why we have to call the person heading the SPIRT team a “Chair”. What is wrong with GNSO Council Liaison? THE SPIRIT DOES NOT DECIDE ANYTHING, IT SHOULD CONSIDER ANY ISSUE WITH STAFF AND RECOMMEND WHICH BUCKET THE ISSUE BELONGS IN – A, B, C, D, or E. Staff should not be telling the SPIRT that something that comes up as an issue in the implementation phase will not be coming to the SPIRT because staff believes it fits in A or B. Staff should be bringing that issue to the SPIRT to see whether the SPIRT agrees that it is in Bucket A or B. Similarly, Issues that the SPIRT believes fall in C, D, or E, are opportunities for the SPIRT to identify issues, recommend a method of resolving, e.g. use GNSO Input, GNSO Guidance, GNSO EPDP, or even GNSO PDP and send that recommendation to the GNSO Council. The SPIRT DOES NOT MAKE POLICY. It’s a Standing IRT. It works with staff to make recommendations to process issues in an efficient manner within GNSO guidelines and processes. All IRT Principles and Guidelines should apply unless there is a clear reason to deviate and so far, I don’t see why we are trying to create a different animal when the Public Comment was – yes, give us a Standing IRT because we know issues arise at later stages. Thank you, Anne From: Gnso-newgtld-wg <gnso-newgtld-wg-bounces@icann.org mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-bounces@icann.org > On Behalf Of Steve Chan Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2020 2:07 PM To: Julie Hedlund <julie.hedlund@icann.org mailto:julie.hedlund@icann.org >; gnso-newgtld-wg@icann.org mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg@icann.org Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg] Proposed Agenda - New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP WG - Thursday, 21 May at 03:00 UTC for 90 Minutes Dear WG Members, One of the action items from the 18 May WG call was to develop a process flow chart to help illustrate how the SPIRT may operate. Attached, please find a draft prepared by staff and WG leadership. Note, we try to share documents at a minimum, 24 hours ahead of the call, but there was a short turnaround between calls in this instance. Hopefully this document is still helpful to the discussions for the upcoming call. Best. Steve