Hi Christabel,

Thank you for your question.

Several ASP-related recommendations from the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (SubPro) Final Report envisioned a “dedicated Implementation Review Team” (IRT) making certain decisions about the Applicant Support Program, including decisions related to outreach activities, metrics to evaluate success, and allocation of limited financial resources. My own observation is that the SubPro working group had difficulty coming to agreement on these finer points, and so they were essentially pushed out for a future IRT to resolve.

ICANN org expressed concern that implementing these ASP recommendations would entail empowering an IRT to make policy decisions, which is not the role of an IRT (rather, they are responsible for helping ICANN org interpret approved community recommendations). So, the GNSO Council decided to initiate the GNSO Guidance Process (GGP) for the first (and so far only) time in order to provide guidance on these unclear ASP elements so ICANN org and the IRT group are not misinterpreting or dictating policy. The GGP working group took on the tasks of clarifying these ASP elements and providing guidance regarding expertise, metrics, outreach, and financial allocation.

I hope this clarification helps. For more specifics, I would encourage you to check out the hyperlinks included above and in Module 3A, otherwise please feel free to reach out if you have any more questions!

Kind regards,

Christian Wheeler

Policy Development Support Specialist

ICANN