[council] Reconfiguring the URS?

[Alan Greenberg]

The current URS was developed by a GNSO STI 
"Review Team" at the explicit request of the 
Board 
(http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-2-17dec09-en.htm) 
has a quick summary of the process). It was 
tweaked in a number of ways by Staff during 
implementation, and once unilaterally by the 
Board (presumably in response to pressure from one group).

It does not sound as if the current planned 
revision would be considered a "tweak". As such, 
I don't see how the GNSO could be excluded from 
the process (and being lumped into "and community members".

The satisfactory outcome of the STI group was not 
pre-destined. Given the strongly differing views 
of those going into the process, the outcome was 
remarkable and at least partially attributable to 
the good will of those involved and their 
willingness to take a fresh look at the issues.

Given the nature of the problem, the history, and 
the tight timing there is a great potential to 
come out of the described consultative process 
with a plan that meets the desired price point 
but not the needs of the various groups. I 
appreciate that the timing might not allow for a 
traditional GNSO policy development process (just 
as the STI effort didn't), but the GNSO should ne 
be placed on the periphery of the discussions.

If special "summits" are deemed necessary due to 
timing constraints, the GNSO must be a prominent 
player (probably through a balanced group of 
participants as with the STI). As such, the GNSO 
team should be funded for this participation at the summits.

Alan

At 03/05/2012 02:09 PM, Neuman, Jeff wrote:
>All,
>
>Thanks to Phil Corwin for catching this, but 
>buried in the new budget document 
>(<http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/op-budget-fy13-01may12-en.htm>http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/op-budget-fy13-01may12-en.htm) 
>just put out for comment is a note on 
>“reconfiguring” the URS.  Excerpt provided 
>below.   I guess they could not find any URS 
>providers that could do it for the costs that 
>they had projected, so ICANN is holding 2 
>summits to work on a new model.  My question for 
>the Council, is whether this is really a policy 
>issue that should be referred back to the GNSO 
>Community as opposed to having  ICANN on its own 
>resolving after holding 2 summits.  Given the 
>controversy around this over the past few years, 
>any tweaks to the URS should probably go back to the community in my opinion.
>
>++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>Uniform Rapid Suspension (URS) – $175K
>At present there is a significant gap between 
>the features specified for the URS procedure and 
>the desired cost. In order to bridge this gap we 
>will: hold two summit sessions to reconfigure 
>the URS to arrive at a lower cost model (one 
>session in FY12 budget and another in this FY13 
>plan), conduct a process to develop and finalize 
>URS Model in consultation with current UDRP 
>providers and community members; and conduct RFP 
>based on URS Model and select URS providers. The 
>goal is have a URS program in place and 
>providers contracted and onboard by June 2013.
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