[Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1] [EXTERNAL] Work Track 1 Agenda for 8 August 2017 @ 3:00 UTC

Tue Aug 8 17:05:15 UTC 2017

Dear Jim, all,

You may recall that in 2008, ICANN performed an analysis of the cost considerations of the new gTLD program (and later updated in 2009), which discussed the historical/development costs (available here: https://archive.icann.org/en/topics/new-gtlds/cost-considerations-04oct09-en.pdf). See section 3.1 of the paper, where it provides a summary of the development costs. It also discusses the appropriate starting point for accruing costs. Hopefully this is helpful, at least as a starting point.

Best,

Steve

From: <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1-bounces at icann.org> on behalf of Jim Prendergast <jim at GALWAYSG.COM>
Date: Tuesday, August 8, 2017 at 9:51 AM
To: Ashley Roberts <ashley.roberts at valideus.com>, "Austin, Donna" <Donna.Austin at team.neustar>, Rubens Kuhl <rubensk at nic.br>, "vanda at scartezini.org" <vanda at scartezini.org>
Cc: "gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 at icann.org" <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 at icann.org>
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1] [EXTERNAL] Work Track 1 Agenda for 8 August 2017 @ 3:00 UTC

To Ashely’s last point and something I mentioned on the call last night.  Is it possible to get from the Finance team at ICANN an accounting of everything that went into the “historical costs” to help us assess what might feed into a “cost recovery model” for this next process?  

Thanks

Jim Prendergast

The Galway Strategy Group

+1 202 285 3699

@jimpren

From: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1-bounces at icann.org [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Ashley Roberts
Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2017 12:45 PM
To: Austin, Donna <Donna.Austin at team.neustar>; Rubens Kuhl <rubensk at nic.br>; vanda at scartezini.org
Cc: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 at icann.org
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1] [EXTERNAL] Work Track 1 Agenda for 8 August 2017 @ 3:00 UTC

Hi Donna,

Thanks for getting the ball rolling on this. I agree that the general trend from the CC2 comments and from our work track seems to support application fees being based on cost recovery. I also agree that the CC2 comments don’t seem to support maintaining the fee of $185,000, so I don’t think we should be making a recommendation for a fee of $185,000 for future application windows. Aside from the CC2 comments not seeming to support such a fee, the fact that there was such a large fee surplus from the 2012 round ($96 mil) coupled with the likelihood of improved efficiencies in the evaluation process (e.g. through aggregating back-end evaluation, as Rubens pointed out, and lower development costs, etc.) suggests a cost-recovery based estimate would be lower than $185,000. 

I also agree with Rubens that we don’t need to tie ourselves to the same fee out of a concern over competition and fairness. The first mover advantage for 2012 applicants was significant (as much as 4 years and counting), plus I don’t think anything in the original policy suggested the fee couldn’t or wouldn’t change in future rounds. 

While we are probably not currently in a position to put forward a specific amount for the fee, we could recommend that ICANN carry out a fresh cost estimate based upon parameters that we could help define, and upon the information they have from the 2012 costs.

Thanks,

Ashley

Ashley Roberts

Senior Manager | Valideus Ltd

E: ashley.roberts at valideus.com 

D: +44 20 7421 8264

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From: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1-bounces at icann.org [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Austin, Donna via Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1
Sent: 07 August 2017 19:10
To: Rubens Kuhl <rubensk at nic.br>; vanda at scartezini.org
Cc: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 at icann.org
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1] [EXTERNAL] Work Track 1 Agenda for 8 August 2017 @ 3:00 UTC

Hi Rubens and Vanda, comments inline below.

From: Rubens Kuhl [mailto:rubensk at nic.br] 
Sent: Sunday, August 06, 2017 3:23 PM
To: Austin, Donna <Donna.Austin at team.neustar>
Cc: Sara Bockey <sbockey at godaddy.com>; gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 at icann.org
Subject: Re: [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1] [EXTERNAL] Work Track 1 Agenda for 8 August 2017 @ 3:00 UTC

Donna,

I believe the data points you mentioned do exist, in the form of the actual expenses incurred by ICANN in the 2012-round. And considering the gains of scale foreseen by aggregating technical evaluation per back-end, with or without RSP program, the actual cost for further rounds is clearly expected to be lower. 

DA: I agree that there is data available from 2012 that could be helpful to our discussion and to that end, we should ask Trang if she can provide an overview of the costs associated with the 2012 round, but we would need to define the cost parameters. I agree that an RSP program could reduce the costs associated with the technical evaluation, but current discussions suggest that the technical evaluation could still occur during the application process.

But we could adopt something in between specifying a new application fee and the reimbursement idea, like this:

- Application fee will be no less than 50% of the 2012-round fee, and designed to be of a cost-recovery target; in the event it generates more surplus than expected, the reimbursement will be available either as credit towards registry fees for successful applicants or reimbursement for non-approved or drop-out applicants. 

DA: I have no objection to the concept, but 50% seems to be a large reduction in terms of fairness and competition for 2012 applicants, but I accept your note below that 2012 applicants will have a time-to-market advantage over future entrants. Any number we come up will largely be arbitrary at this point so the challenge is to come up with a reasoned rationale. We should also look for options to address Vanda’s point about not making the upfront fee too prohibitive, or finding a mechanism that would allow applicants from underserved regions to pay post-evaluation. This would become complicated where there is contention for the string, but if there was no competition for the string then perhaps this would be a little easier.

It’s also important to decide whether the application fee would change over time. I must admit that when I was thinking about this, it was only from the perspective of the next application window and not beyond that. It would be fair to assume that a lot of the setup costs for the next application window will not be repeated for processes beyond that, particularly as it relates to infrastructure or software development. The outcome of the rounds v first-come-first-serve discussion will be important to this one.

One issue to calculate the reimbursement is how much does the legal reserves need to be; the 2012-round proved that litigation either thru internal accountability or legal courts will happen, but how much ? If someone from the work track, or someone from ICANN Board risk committee, could provide an actuary's point of view would be interesting. 

DA: Agree that a % of the application fee should be set aside for legal reserves, on the condition that the reserves are set aside for a designated period of time.

We should note that 2012-round applicants got a 4 to 6 years time-to-market advantage, and that could be worth much more than the application fee difference. 

Rubens

On Aug 4, 2017, at 7:13 PM, Austin, Donna via Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 <gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 at icann.org> wrote:

Hi Sara, all

I’ve had a look at the responses to the CC2 responses as they relate to Application Fees and believe that the responses are largely consistent with the discussions we have already had within the working group on this topic. 

My rudimentary analysis of the comments suggest the following:

Based on the CC2 responses it would appear that most of the respondents support the principle of an application fee that is cost neutral or break even, which is consistent with the cost-recovery model that was developed for the 2012 round. However, many of the responses acknowledge that the assumptions of the 2012 round was off the mark because the number of applications exceeded expectations and resulted in a considerable surplus of funds (approximately $100M).

It would appear from the responses that there is little support for maintaining the $185,000 application fee into the future, with many responses suggesting a reduction, with the exception of John Poole who recommended that each applicant require a $1m deposit. However, there was support for the principle that the application fee should maintain a bar sufficient to ensure that applications are worth dedicating resources to evaluation and processing; and fees should not be too low as to be detrimental to security and stability and competition between rounds.

It would also appear that there is support for the WG providing direction on the use of excess funds, in the event that future rounds result in a surplus of funds.

Some suggested considerations for moving this conversation forward:

·        While it appears that there is consensus around the concept of an application that achieves the principle of cost-recovery, it is impossible for this group to come up with an actual number for any future round because we have no way to predict how many applications there will be.

·        The number of applications for a future application window will depend on a range of factors, including the amount of the application fee.

·        We could ask ICANN to provide estimates for costs associated with preparing for the next application window, but I don’t believe we are far along in deciding some of the core issues to provide them with enough guidance on which to base any estimates or predictions.

·        What we do have from the 2012 application round is an application fee of $185,000 that resulted in 1930 applications—some 1400 more than was predicted.

The policy for the WG could potentially be something along the lines of:

·        The application fee should be based on the principle of cost recovery.

·        Based on the principles of fairness and competition to 2012 new gTLD applications, $185,000 will be the application fee for any future application window.

·        In the event of surplus application fees, ICANN will provide all applicants (successful/unsuccessful?) with a reimbursement of an equal share of the surplus application fees; or

·        In the event of surplus applications fees, ICANN will provide all applicants a reimbursement up to an amount of $50,000/$80,000/$100,000 (successful applicants may choose this reimbursement as a contribution to ICANN’s annual fee); and

·        The remainder of the surplus application fees will be used to support ICANN’s efforts in Universal Awareness and Universal Acceptance (or some other designated activity)

Some exemptions/exceptions:

·        Applications from underserved regions would/could (depending on the policy) have the application fee waived so that it is not considered a barrier to entry.

·        There may be other exclusions or exemptions from the application fee that could be developed to remove other possible barriers to entry perceived by some as being too high.

Rationale:

·        We have a principle of cost recovery, but rather than requiring complex economic modelling (or somebody’s best guess) to arrive at the amount of the application fee, we achieve the principle in an order of reverse by providing a reimbursement of a portion of the application fee equal to the distribution of excess funds.

I don’t believe we can solve this problem absent a considerable amount of data that at this point in time simply doesn’t exist, so I offer this as a possible way to enable us to move forward and certainly to encourage discussion.

Donna

From: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1-bounces at icann.org [mailto:gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Sara Bockey
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2017 9:31 AM
To: gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1 at icann.org
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [Gnso-newgtld-wg-wt1] Work Track 1 Agenda for 8 August 2017 @ 3:00 UTC

Dear All,

The next call for the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Sub Team – Track 1 - Overall Process/Support/Outreach Issue will take place on Tuesday, 8 August 2017 at 3:00 UTC.

The proposed agenda is as follows:

Welcome & Agenda Overview
SOIs
Review of CC2 responses to WT1 questions
Application Fees
Systems
AOB

The CC2 responses we will be covering may be review in the google document:   https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1427pgTCkguOj2NZZzMnz_H_lPe54dtvUErSJd9uhkZw/edit#gid=1442059046. 

Chat soon!

Sara

sara bockey

policy manager | GoDaddy™

sbockey at godaddy.com  480-366-3616

skype: sbockey

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