Russ, Thank you for the note. I am obviously supportive of the SSR2 Review Team’s efforts to meet their schedule, however I am a bit confused as to why your message was sent to me. The Office of the CTO is not responsible for providing direct support to the SSR2 review, rather I and my team are subject matter experts for the subset of questions that are directly relevant to the work my team does. While it may be true that of the 11 ICANN departments to which the review team sent questions the bulk of questions to date were answered by OCTO (I haven’t looked into the statistics about who answered what), the work of my team was coordinated by the SSR2 Review team support staff and, as far as I understand, that support team should continue to coordinate interactions between the review team and staff SMEs. I will discuss with them to understand if the situation has changed. With regards to your request, while I understand the tight schedule the SSR2 team is under, it is difficult for me to make any sort of commitment without an understanding of the questions being asked or the resources required to address those questions, particularly given I assume OCTO is not the SME on all of the questions. Further, as I’m sure you’re aware, we have limited resources, both in OCTO and within staff generally, and the lead up to ICANN meetings tends to be exceptionally busy. When the SSR2 Review Team sends the questions to the SSR2-RT support team, I do hope the review team will understand if the staff SMEs make their own assessments as to how much time addressing those questions will take and accept the estimates we provide. Moving forward, I would request that similar requests be sent to the SSR Review Team support staff — they are in the best position to coordinate responses. Thanks, -drc
On Jan 31, 2019, at 12:03 PM, Russ Housley <housley@vigilsec.com> wrote:
David:
SSR2 will be sending two batches of questions. The first should arrive in the next few days, and the second should arrive in a week. I am writing to ask for prompt answers.
As you know, SSR2 has not gone smoothly, but the whole SSR2 Review Team is striving to produce a quality report in a timely manner. To do that, we need your help. In the pat, the bulk of our questions have been answered by OCTO, so I am wring to you. We recognize that some of the questions may require coordination with other parts of ICANN Org.
In the past, some of our questions have taken many months to receive responses. Worse, in some cases, it has taken months to be told that the question was not understood. Delay like this will put the SSR2 schedule in jeopardy.
If you look at the SSR2 Work Plan, you will see that we have a very tight schedule. For the team to meet the schedule, I ask the following:
1) If clarifications are needed to understand a question, please get back to the team in a few days after receiving the question.
2) Most of the questions can be answered with a pointer to a document or web page. For these questions, please respond to the team in one week.
3) A small number of the questions will require gathering information. For these questions, please respond to the team in two weeks.
The SSR2 Review Team understands that you and your staff are busy, but we cannot produce a quality report on schedule without your assistance in gathering this information.
Thanks in advance, Russ