Dear SSC and Council Leadership, First, I would like to thank you for the adjustments that were made in the recent selection process — including holding the SSC call in public, publishing the survey results, seeking candidate consent to release the EOIs, and making the Council guidance available. I appreciate the willingness to revisit aspects of the process and increase transparency. It is in light of those positive steps that I am writing. I am writing as an active member of the community and the SSC to respectfully offer an observation and proposal for your consideration. This is provided in my personal capacity. Based on my review of the materials and discussions over the past week — and recognizing that I may not have every fact or historical detail exactly right — it appears that some of the recent concerns I have had in the selection process for the chair of the DNS Abuse PDP 1 Working Group may have stemmed from legacy template language used in certain PDP Working Group charters and in EOI documents for the selection of Working Group Chairs. That template language references Council Leadership involvement in the selection process (with matters referred to the SSC) and states that EOI submissions will remain confidential. In practice, that language can have the effect of requiring the SSC process to be conducted privately. From what I can see, that templated approach may have been used in a relativelt small number of earlier instances (for example, in 2018 and 2020), but not in the vast majority of SSC-led selections, which have generally followed the SSC Charter process — conducted transparently and without Council Leadership involvement in the selection decision itself. Again, I may not have the full historical context, but it seems possible that the closed-process language and confidentiality expectations in this instance resulted from reliance on legacy template provisions rather than from a specific, affirmative policy determination by the Council. I also want to be clear that I am *not* suggesting that all Working Group Chair selections should go through the SSC. In many PDPs, the Working Group itself selects its leadership team, and that model has worked well. My suggestion applies only in circumstances where the Council determines that the SSC will be used for a particular selection. With that in mind, I respectfully suggest that the SSC and Council Leadership consider asking staff to review and, if appropriate, update: - The PDP Charter template language addressing Chair selection; and - The standard EOI template used for Working Group Chair selections. The aim would be to ensure that transparency is the default approach when the SSC process is used, consistent with the SSC Charter and established SSC practice, while preserving flexibility to conduct deliberations in private* where a clear and articulated rationale supports doing so.* I offer this simply as a constructive proposal from a community perspective, and in the spirit of the transparency improvements already demonstrated in this recent process. Thank you again for your leadership and for considering this suggestion. Sincerely, Jeff