Dear Co-chairs, Eric and Denis,

It is my hope that this email will find you doing fine and very sorry for what we are going as a team concerning on ICANN SSR2 Specific Review and the "pause" status from the ICANN Board.

As I expressed my feeling during our yesterday's meeting and decide also to the same in the mailing list for the records.

First, what we are going through any one would have expected the same as this is the first specific review after IANA transition. What we are practicing is an outcome of the Interpretation and mandate ICANN Bylaws. However, I have tried to go through the Bylaws to find out on the procedure for the Board to "Pause" a specific review and was not able to find one in the Bylaw.

Second, the pause status of the ICANN Board and the critical input that was expected from ICANN60 by this RT contradict with the intention of better managing ICANN Resources. I have seen that we have almost received few inputs related to SSR activities rather than many questions and comments on the suspension of the SSR2 RT by the ICANN Board. The pause was good BUT I think the timing was not good considering the critical input that the team was expecting from ICANN60 community.

Third, the pause status to the time should give the SSR2 RT to possibly thinks on where we want wrong and possible ways of addressing our mistakes. I have been going through the ICANN announcement to the community to express their interest to participate to SSR2 RT: https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-3-2016-06-30-en and noted that it was our responsibility to participate in creating Scope, Term of Reference, etc as stated below: "Participate in creation of review team governance documents, such as the terms of reference, scope of the review and the timeline". We are all aware how this was a challenge to the team to finally deliver the required "procedure documents as it was stipulated in the announcement. We deliver ToR and Scope and the same was communicated to ICANN Board. I am also aware in almost all of our meeting since our first Copenhagen meeting whenever a team member ask and/or propose some issues to be included in the scope ICANN Staff would comment that is not withing ICANN Remit and therefore it is out of scope. If you go further asking "yes" or "no" question ICANN Staff would stay in between and leave that to RT to discuss and decide. It has been real difficult to reach consensus in such situation. I have a feeling that if the submitted scope is falling out of the scope then it is better to have a required scope in place to guide this team. Otherwise we creating a room for the Board to control what should be included in the scope.

Fourth, I have also noted that Board is concern on the skills set and the procedure used to nominate SSR2 RT from other constituency. I am only aware that I submitted my application to express my interest to be nominated to SSR2 RT with my CV explaining my experience and professional capability and without any influency I was selected through ALAC to be in the team. BUT questioning the skills set and composition of SSR2 RT at this point after almost nine months after the selection I don't see if make sense to me.

Fifth, We are working in a condition that ICANN Board would be that much concern on the community resources that are dedicated to ICANN SSR2 RT without even acknowledging the substantial amount of time and personal resources that this RT has dedicated so far in this SSR2 activities. We are working days and night due to time zone difference for the better of ICANN and the community at large to make sure we deliver helpful report regardless of broadband challenges some of us we are going through. I have a feeling that flight cost and token paid to travel to some of the face to face meeting can not compensated with the risks associated with traveling all these long distances just to make sure that we deliver a helpful report that will benefit the community.

I wish I could keep writing to this matter BUT it is enough to say that the "pause" status will give us a better start.

Lastly, As you might be aware I failed yesterday to participate to SSAC meeting with a note that it is a "private meeting" this is even confusing. Probably the same would happen during the today's Board meeting. If that happen I would request you convey this message and feeling as we are looking for the better start.

Regards,

MATOGORO Jabhera
Assistant Lecturer & Coordinator - Microsoft Innovation Center, Tanzania
College of Informatics and Virtual Education
The University of Dodoma (www.udom.ac.tz)