[RDS-WHOIS2-RT] Public Comment on Short Term Options

[Alan Greenberg]

Just a note to say that at the meeting today, we had 9 of the 10 RT 
members present. Only Dmitry could not attend.

Alan

At 28/05/2018 10:43 PM, Alan Greenberg wrote:
>During today's plenary call, the RT decided to accept Theresa 
>Swineheart's offer and request that the RDS-WHOIS2 Review be removed 
>from the Public Comment on Short-Term Options to Adjust the Timeline 
>for Specific Reviews. Although I am not sure that the decision can 
>be viewed as consensus using the rule-of-thumb of 80%, it was 
>definitely a majority decision.
>
>The group did consider the issue raised by Chris. Specifically to 
>what extent would we be viewed in a bad light for cutting off 
>comment on our work. There was a strong belief that we are doing 
>this for good reasons and that presuming the team members go back to 
>our home constituencies and explain what we are doing, in balance, 
>this is the right decision.
>
>This is not in final form, but and identification of the major 
>points to get review team closure. I am not looking for 
>word-smithing but rather any issues misstated of missing.
>
>I would like to have a draft ready by Wednesday, so please review 
>this as soon as possible.
>
>-----------
>
>Letter sent to Theresa Swineheart on beheld of the RDS-WHOIS2-RT and 
>also posted to the Public Comment.
>
>The rationale that we will use to make this request is based on our 
>belief that once a number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations are 
>corrected, there is little to be gained at this point from altering 
>the scope or pausing the review.
>
>There are some review team members and others in the community who 
>believed that this review should have been deferred, or its scope 
>restricted to just a review of the first WHOIS RT's Recommendations. 
>That was thoroughly discussed prior to the review and during the 
>scoping phase. Ultimately, it was decided that the review must 
>continue and should not be restricted. That was many months ago and 
>we cannot turn back the clock but must look at today's situation, 
>and where we will be when the Public Comment (PC) completes in July.
>
>= The Review Terms of Reference (ToR) does state that due to GDPR, 
>we MAY defer some aspects of the review which we did not believe 
>would substantially alter our completion target. In fact, we have 
>not deferred anything at this point and now believe that GDPR will 
>have a significant impact on our work. The full implementation of 
>GDPR may or may not be understood by the time we deliver our report, 
>but we will certainly understand the overall direction and that will 
>be a factor in our report. It is clear that the real impact will not 
>be well understood by then nor even a few months later, so the 
>analysis of that will have to wait for a subsequent review.
>
>= The document implies that because there are only ten RT members, 
>there are insufficient people to do the work. In fact there are just 
>ten members, but all are working together and the number of active 
>workers may well exceed the number of active workers on previous larger teams.
>
>= The PC document says that $460k will be saved in FY19 by 
>restricting the scope of the review and that $590k will be saved by 
>pausing the review. The review team has not been involved in 
>estimating any of these budgets and does not believe that they are accurate.
>
>   [Financial Analysis here]
>
>= The public comment is due to close on 06 July 2018 with the staff 
>report due on 23 Jul7 2018. According to the current Review Team 
>work plan, the Review Team is scheduled to have a face to face 
>meeting 19-20 July 2018. Our intent is that we finalize the content 
>of our draft report at that time. Moreover, unlike some draft 
>reports which are comprised of many questions to the community, we 
>believe that this will really be a draft report looking for 
>community comment before finalizing it. It makes little sense for 
>the group to reduce its scope or completely pause just at the point 
>when it is ready to deliver its draft report. By that time, the bulk 
>of the work will have been done, and to scrap part of it or pause 
>for a year implies much of that work will have to largely be 
>repeated again later. The RT specifically notes that Option C, to 
>have the Review paused in April (a date that had long past when the 
>PC was issued) made no sense whatsoever given that the community 
>input to make that decision would only be available in late July.
>
>The Review Team believes that if it had been consulted when this 
>Public Comment was being contemplated and developed, the RDS-WHOIS2 
>Review would never have been included. Moreover, the Review Team 
>strongly believes that if a RT is to be held accountable for keeping 
>to its "budget" (as is the current practice), the RT MUST be 
>involved in developing that overall budget and the annual FY budgets 
>that it must operationally adhere to.