Dear RDRS Standing Committee Members,

Please find the notes and action items from the RDRS Standing Committee Meeting on Monday, 30 June 2025.

Thank you.

Best regards,

Caitlin

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RDRS Standing Committee Call 

Monday, 30 June @ 17:30 UTC

Action Items

1. Standing Committee members to continue commenting on Chapter 4 in before Monday, 7 July (our next meeting). Reminder: Chapter 4 must represent recommendations and observations that can reach consensus of the Standing Committee. Accordingly, this requires SC members to respond to other members’ proposed additional text, comments, and questions and noting if you cannot support the proposed text or edits. 
2. RDRS Support Staff to update Chapter 4 based on today’s discussion, including providing requested financial estimates, where possible. 
3. Following Wednesday, 9 July, RDRS Support Staff to compile the full draft Findings Report, including removing duplicative text, moving the recommendations to the beginning of the report, etc., for presentation and provision to the Standing Committee during its meeting on Monday, 14 July. 

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Notes 

1. Welcome
2. Discussion of Draft Chapter 4

· Intro text re: cost of SSAD

· The intro text to Chapter 4 includes proposed text from Gabe and Sarah for discussion.

· There was an email discussion between Sebastien, ICANN org, and other members of the SC. Based on the email exchange, it seems the cost of the pilot was approximately 50% staff. Seb specifically requested more granularity with respect to the staff costs. 

· Gabe noted he added text with the goal of trying to make clear that this is talking about the development work and servicer operation - this text attempts to differentiate between one time costs and recurring costs on a monthly basis.

· Consider adding future development costs from additional recommendations. It’s important to call out that the incremental cost per request is essentially 0 - in other words, if we receive 5 requests next month or 5,000 requests next month, the cost of operating the system will still be the same. It is important to clarify these three categories and make fact-based statements. 

· In response to Sarah’s proposed text - do not favor this text, and not sure this is something the group can get consensus on.

· For the cost per request to be 0, that assumes that we are not adding any humans in the process.

· Fair to flag that - ICANN’s process is currently automated; if that were to change, then the assumption that each request costs 0 would also change.

· Chapter 3 provides a breakdown of costs for the RDRS pilot. The numbers go through December of 2024, where the one-time development cost was totaling $1,646,835. It also includes operational costs from December 2023 - December 2024 at $856,471 with a project-to-date cost overall of $2,502,306.

· The one-time cost in development occurred before the pilot launched the recommended enhancements from this group. The costs after the pilot are assumed at $856,000.

· ICANN org is working to get an updated chart for Chapter 3 that includes more recent calculations (through June 2025, for example)

· In Chapter 3, we broke everything down to a per request cost, including development and without development. 

· We note that in item 2, Gabe has requested a per month cost of maintaining the system indefinitely. ICANN staff can provide a general figure for operational maintenance post-pilot (which will still be inclusive of some support for the ongoing policy discussions, promoting the service, etc.)

· It is important to distinguish (i) an estimated cost to keep the system running while the Board and GNSO Council discuss the findings of the RDRS report and how to proceed with the SSAD recommendations vs. (ii) an estimated cost to keep the system running and concurrently introducing the proposed enhancements. Because the enhancements are still under discussion and will continue to be discussed at the Council and Board level, that is not something ICANN org could provide at this time since no final decision has been made on what enhancements or changes are accepted. 

· The personnel cost of $856,471 is calculated based on ICANN staff overall efforts for RDRS operations, including time dedicated to the SC (as it is part of overall RDRS pilot operations). Time dedicated to the SC isn’t tracked separately, as staff support for RDRS operations is recorded based on the percentage of time contributed to the project overall for each staff member.

· Request best cost estimate of staff supporting the RDRS as that appears to be the lion’s share of the cost. 

· Without the staff cost estimate, the SC is working blind. One of the problems with the original asset costing is, it was very difficult to separate out those costs and understand what part of the 100 million estimate and what part was actually operating the system.

· Number 3 should be “marginal cost per request”

· The numbers that are going to be meaningful are the ones that are going to come from the people who have to run the service and bear the costs. In other words, ask the people who will bear the cost to provide the numbers and avoid parsing the numbers too carefully ourselves.

· Suggest that whatever period we use be consistent throughout the entire document

· Believe this information is already laid out in Chapter 3 so find it confusing to repeat here. What Sarah tried to add with the proposed text is to include a discussion around the cost and value of the service. Hope to achieve consensus on affirming recommendation 14. 

· Request to have numbers through June 2025 (an even number).

· Need to make clear the sunk costs, the ongoing operational costs, and the marginal per request costs to avoid misinterpretation. There has been a push for some members to refer to the per request cost in the hundreds of dollars, which is not the best statement of fact. If a reader sees that a request costs $500, they may make a false assumption and this group needs to avoid that risk.

· Staff should supply these numbers to the Board to inform its decision. We can inform the board about the past, but we recommend that the board get a proposal from staff. Full stop.

· Would like to see lessons learned from staff incorporated into this report. 

· ICANN org would have a difficult time providing an estimate of how much the system would cost before this Board/Council discussion since the final enhancements or changes have not been decided, but Org could work on a cost estimate for RDRS following the delivery of the SC report to the Council/during the Council/Board discussion.

· There’s probably a way to do this, through some sort of finite budget, without knowing all of the final enhancements

· Recommendation 1 

· Comment to separate the concepts of continue the RDRS after the pilot phase and improve the RDRS after the pilot phase, as the improvements are discussed in Recommendation 2. 

· The recommendations should be in four categories: 

· 1. Continue the RDRS after the pilot concludes; 

· 2. Recommended system enhancements; 

· 3. Recommended areas for further policy work; 

· 4. Considerations for what to do with the SSAD recommendations

· Recommend avoiding duplicate text - for example, the enhancements are already included in Chapter 2 - why don’t we just refer to that?

· Comment on SSAD recommendation 5 in the table - this group should think about how to make the recommendations of fundamental rights balancing more universal and not just GDPR-oriented. Fundamental rights balancing should be global.

· The suggestions in response to Rec. 5 seem more appropriately place in response to Rec. 8.

· The idea behind these comments to Rec. 5 is to align RDRS more with the SSAD recs.

· If that is the goal, suggest getting more specific about how these suggestions could practically be implemented into RDRS.

3. Next Steps

· The support team is currently working on incorporating all chapters into the official report template. The Standing Committee will have ample time to review and comment on the complete draft in its final format.

· Please note the structure of the chapters might change slightly (reducing duplication, relocating recommendations to the beginning, etc.), but the substance will remain the same. 

4. AOB