[IOT] Agenda item #3 - thoughts for our call tomorrow at 19:00 UTC

Malcolm Hutty malcolm at linx.net
Thu Dec 7 16:33:15 UTC 2017


On 06/12/2017 19:58, McAuley, David via IOT wrote:
> I have been of the mind that we may not need another round of public
> comment. On further reflection, while much of what we are doing is
> “tweaking” the draft rules (at least in my opinion as a participant), we
> have made what can reasonably be considered a material change on timing,
> and perhaps will in other areas.
>  
> It seems to me that we will need to allow the public to weigh in on
> those changes that we deem material – but not other changes we recommend
> in our report.

On the issue of whether we need another round of public comment, I think
there are two different ways of approaching this.

One way, as you suggest, is to ask whether we have made "material"
changes, and to consult on those.

Another approach is to ask whether the changes were *foreseeable*, and
to only consult on approaches that were.

If we take the former approach, the change on timing is the most
significant we have made.

However if we take the latter approach, it looks rather different.

Some of the changes that we have made, perhaps arising from individual
comments, may not have foreseeable: if we've picked up an idea raised in
one response to the last comment round, nobody else would have had
reason to address that. We don't know what people might think about an
issue we didn't consult on last time.

By contrast, the timing issue was not only available for comment in the
last round, it was by far the most popular topic that people chose to
address. Having considered those replies, we changed our proposal to
bring it into line with what people asked of us.

Is there anything about the change that we have made that is actually
novel, rather than simply the opposite of our initial proposal? Do we
really expect that there might be some point raised we haven't
considered already, or are we just going round in circles?

To my mind, a big part of the point of a consultation is to give people
a chance to raise a point we have not properly considered. That would
suggest we should focus on the new ideas we've adopted, rather than
those have already attracted the most attention.

-- 
            Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523
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