[council] Update

[Michael D. Palage]

Dear GNSO Council Members:

As part of my candidate statement, I recommitted to providing more effective
representative of the GNSO's views, as well as fulfilling my broader
responsibilities as a board member, during my second term. I would like to
share some occasion insight into my contributions to the Board . This way
you may get a better idea of how I am representing stakeholder perspectives
and concerns at the Board level. I know it remains very important to
understand that board members do not actually represent the bodies that
elect them, since they assume a broader responsibility for the organization
once elected, however, I believe it is possible to balance that
responsibility and also be in touch with the broad concerns of stakeholders
within the GNSO.

Recognizing how busy you all are, and that you may not have time to follow
all information sites continuously,  I published the Board agenda to the
Council list last week, and will continue to do so in the future.

In conjunction with some recent dialog in connection with gTLDs and
the expanse of the name space I made the following post to the Board list. I
will not show the distribution list since this would violate the privacy of
my fellow Board members. However, I wanted to share the general message with
the GNSO because it is directly relevant to your role and responsibility.

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Section II.C.8 of Amendment 6 to the MoU
(http://www.icann.org/general/amend6-jpamou-17sep03.htm) required the
following deliverables from ICANN . Specifically, to "define and implement a
predictable strategy for selecting new TLDs using straightforward,
transparent, and objective procedures that preserve the stability of the
Internet (strategy development to be completed by September 30, 2004 and
implementation to commence by December 31, 2004).

Currently staff through Olof Nordling is working on (sic) this gTLD
process. Unfortunately, at no time during the past two years to my knowledge
has ICANN Board and/or staff made a formal request to the GNSO on this
issue, notwithstanding the fact that Article X of the ICANN bylaws state
that the "Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), ... shall be
responsible for developing and recommending to the ICANN Board substantive
policies relating to generic top-level domains."


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I am very interested in feedback from the Council on your views on the best
way for Council to begin to address policy development in this important
area.

Best regards,

Michael


P.S. I am also working on a summary of yesterday's Board teleconference
which included a resolution in connection with ICANN's Strategic Plan. It
was also decided yesterday that the Board should have another teleconference
in approximately two weeks time. When this agenda is made available, I will
publish it to the list again.