Hello SubPro IRT members, 

Attached please find the preliminary working draft of the Next Round Base RA for your review. 

Using the current Base RA as a template, this preliminary working draft in PDF contains many, though not all, of the proposed terms currently under discussion for the Next Round Base RA and is subject to additional review and comment by ICANN org. Some sections or provisions are still under consideration and will require further alignment before those proposed terms will be made available to the IRT.  A Word version of the draft RA will be added to the Working Documents page by Tuesday, 05 November.

As communicated in our 19 September 2024 meeting, the proposed Next Round Base RA includes proposed terms that reflect recommendations from the Subsequent Procedures Final Report and opportunities the team identified to 1) incorporate recommendations or advice approved by the ICANN Board that have not yet been incorporated in the RA, 2) adjust for newly implemented Consensus Policy, and 3) update the agreement based on operational experience designed to lower the costs to operate for ICANN and the industry. The overall philosophy was to minimize changes unless a good reason existed to create a change, as ICANN and some registries will have to manage multiple versions of Base RAs for a period time, and consistency across these agreements will aid in both compliance and servicing the registries.  

Also attached is a summary of the proposed provisions to aid in your review. This summary includes the source of the recommendation, topic area, reference in the RA, and the rationale or questions we have for the SubPro IRT. For the two meetings on 09 November 2024 at ICANN81 we will begin the review focusing on the proposed terms coming out of the SubPro Final Report (items #1-18). The current plan is to evaluate the proposed terms in the order they are listed in the summary during upcoming meetings.

I look forward to meeting with you in Istanbul. Until then, safe travels.  

Karla Hakansson