Dear SPIRT Council,

In the spirit of transparency, I am sharing the attached Alert that I submitted for consideration on 12 May. In hindsight, I noticed this submission was not shared with the full Council in the same manner as previous alerts, though it was acknowledged by Andrew Chen and the SPIRT Leadership Team (LT). For context, our Chair, Jeff Neuman, responded to the submission by stating that, for openness and transparency, he would recuse himself from offering opinions due to a client conflict. He ultimately deferred handling of the issue to Cheryl and Segunfunmi.

Receiving no follow-up questions from Cheryl or Segunfunmi, I anticipated—consistent with our prior submission process—that the group would be openly informed and that we would discuss the matter during our upcoming call on 21 May.

However, yesterday I received the following email from Andrew Chen:

Thank you for your patience as the SPIRT leadership team (SPIRT LT) deliberated on your submission regarding the Prohibition on Private Resolution of New gTLD Contention Sets.

Given the recent GNSO Council discussions on the mailing list concerning the SPIRT alert process, the SPIRT LT believes that this submission should be submitted to the GNSO Council through a GNSO Councilor for further discussion. The SPIRT LT notes that it may be more expedient to request a GNSO Councilor to submit this issue to the GNSO Council for consideration.

We apologize for any inconveniences this may have caused. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Sincerely, 

Andrew

Exactly 22 minutes after receiving this email, a cancellation notice was issued for our 21 May Council call, stating it was no longer required.

I find it disappointing and concerning that this submission was not treated with the same openness and transparency as the one preceding it. Allowing submissions to be handled exclusively by the LT without visibility or clear rationale provided to the full Council undermines our collaborative process. Furthermore, this lack of transparency appears inconsistent with ICANN Bylaws, which require an explicit rationale for decisions to ensure fairness and procedural integrity across all supporting committees, including the SPIRT.

As echoed in previous correspondence on this list, we should seek to further formalize the operations of this group—especially around submission handling and communications regarding LT decisions—to ensure we operate with the highest possible level of openness and transparency.

Best regards,