[council] GNSO reviews and recommended changes - for informal discussion at tonight's dinner
Denise Michel
denise.michel at icann.org
Sun Dec 3 16:08:39 UTC 2006
The Board Governance Committee would like the LSE's recommendations (and
recommendations made 2 years ago as part of the GNSO Council review) to
be a subject for informal conversation between members of the Board and
the GNSO Council at tonight's Board/GNSO Council dinner.
As you know, the LSE review, along with a previous review of the GNSO
Council and public input, will be used to inform ICANN's effort to
develop detailed proposals for improving the GNSO's structures and
processes. The Board Governance Committee (BGC) is considering how to
follow-up on these reviews and move forward with GNSO improvements. The
BGC discussed this issue at their meeting this morning and will meet
again tomorrow to continue their discussions. BGC members have not yet
agreed upon a specific approach for GNSO improvements to discuss with
the GNSO Council.
For your information, included below is a brief summary of the LSE GNSO
Review Recommendations, and the Patrick Sharry GNSO Council Review
Recommendations.
Regards,
Denise
Denise Michel
Vice President, Policy Development
ICANN
denise.michel at icann.org
LSE GNSO Review Recommendations
15 September 2006
(In this list the paragraph number given in parentheses at the end of
each recommendation refers to the specific point in the main LSE Review
text <http://www.icann.org/announcements/gnso-review-report-sep06.pdf>
where the full recommendation is explained.)
• Recommendation 1: A centralized register of all GNSO stakeholders
should be established, which is up-to date and publicly accessible. It
should include the members of Constituencies and others involved in the
GNSO task forces. (Paragraph 2.5)
• Recommendation 2: GNSO Constituencies should be required to show
how many members have participated in developing the policy positions
they adopt. (Paragraph 2.14)
• Recommendation 3: There needs to be greater coherence and
standardization across Constituency operations. For this to work
effectively, more ICANN staff support would be needed for
constituencies. (Paragraph 2.22)
• Recommendation 4: A GNSO Constituency support officer should be
appointed to help Constituencies develop their operations, websites and
outreach activity. (Paragraph 2.23)
• Recommendation 5: Constituencies should focus on growing balanced
representation and active participation broadly proportional to wider
global distributions for relevant indicators. (Paragraph 2.39)
• Recommendation 6: The basis for participation in GNSO activities
needs to be revised, from Constituency-based membership to one deriving
from direct ICANN stakeholder participation. (Paragraph 2.44)
• Recommendation 7: The GNSO should improve the design and
organization of the current website, develop a website strategy for
continual improvement and growth over the next three years, and review
usage statistics on a regular basis to check that traffic to the website
is growing over time and understand more fully what external audiences
are interested in. (Paragraph 3.10)
• Recommendation 8: Document management within the GNSO needs to be
improved and the presentation of policy development work made much more
accessible. (Paragraph 3.14)
• Recommendation 9: The GNSO should develop and publish annually a
Policy Development Plan for the next two years, to act both as a
strategy document for current and upcoming policy work, and as a
communications and marketing tool for general consumption outside of the
ICANN community. It should dovetail with ICANN‘s budget and strategy
documents. (Paragraph 3.16)
• Recommendation 10: The GNSO and ICANN should work proactively to
provide information-based incentives for stakeholder organizations to
monitor and participate in GNSO issues. (Paragraph 3.19)
• Recommendation 11: The position of the GNSO Council Chair needs to
become much more visible within ICANN and to carry more institutional
weight. (Paragraph 3.26)
• Recommendation 12: The policies on GNSO Councilors declaring
interests should be strengthened. Provision for a vote of ”no
confidence‘ leading to resignation should be introduced for
noncompliance. (Paragraph 3.28)
• Recommendation 13 Fixed term limits should be introduced for GNSO
Councilors either of two two-year terms (as applied in some
Constituencies already) or perhaps of a single three-year term.
(Paragraph 3.30)
• Recommendation 14: The GNSO Council and related policy staff
should work more closely together to grow the use of project-management
methodologies in policy development work, particularly focusing on how
targeted issue analysis can drive data collection from stakeholders
(rather than vice versa). (Paragraph 4.14)
• Recommendation 15: The GNSO Council should rely more on
face-to-face meetings supplemented by online collaborative methods of
working. The Chair should seek to reduce the use of whole-Council
teleconferencing. (Paragraph 4.19)
• Recommendation 16: The GNSO Councilors should have access to a
fund for reasonable travel and accommodation expenses to attend
designated Council meetings, instead of having to meet such costs from
their own resources as at present. (Paragraph 4.21)
• Recommendation 17: The GNSO Council should make more use of Task
Forces. Task Force participants should be more diverse and should be
drawn from a wider range of people in the Internet community, and
national and international policy-making communities. (Paragraph 4.26)
• Recommendation 18: An ICANN Associate stakeholder category of
participation should be created, so as to create a pool of readily
available external expertise, which can be drawn upon to populate Task
Forces where relevant. (Paragraph 4.27)
• Recommendation 19: The current GNSO Constituency structure should
be radically simplified so as to be more capable of responding to rapid
changes in the Internet. The Constituency structure should be clear,
comprehensive (covering all potential stakeholders) and flexible,
allowing the GNSO to respond easily to the rapid changes in the make-up
of Internet stakeholders. We suggest a set of three larger
Constituencies to represent respectively Registration interests,
Businesses and Civil Society. (Paragraph 4.35)
• Recommendation 20: A reorganization of GNSO Constituencies would
also allow the Council to be made somewhat smaller (we suggest 16
members) and hence easier to manage. (Paragraph 4.36)
• Recommendation 21: The definition of achieving a consensus should
be raised to 75 per cent. Weighted voting should be abolished. Both
measures could help to create more incentives for different
Constituencies to engage constructively with each other, rather than
simply reiterating a ”bloc‘ position in hopes of picking up enough
uncommitted votes so as to win. (Paragraph 4.38)
• Recommendation 22: The way in which the GNSO Council votes to
elect two Directors to the ICANN Board should be changed to use the
Supplementary Vote system. (Paragraph 4.40)
• Recommendation 23: The amount of detailed prescriptive provision
in the ICANN Bylaws relating to the operations of the GNSO should be
reduced. ICANN Bylaws should outline broad principles and objectives for
the GNSO but the detailed operational provision (including the section
on the PDP) should be transferred to the GNSO Rules of Procedure. This
would allow the GNSO to agree amendments and to introduce new
innovations in its working methods and timelines in a more realistic and
flexible way, while operating within ICANN‘s guiding principles.
(Paragraph 5.7)
• Recommendation 24: Both ICANN and the GNSO Council should
periodically (say once every five years) compile or commission a formal
(quantitative and qualitative) assessment of the influence of the GNSO‘s
work on developing policy for generic names. This should include an
analysis of how the GNSO‘s influence with national governments,
international bodies and the commercial sector might be extended.
(Paragraph 5.12)
Patrick Sharry GNSO Council Review Recommendations
22 December 2004
(The full review is linked at
<http://gnso.icann.org/announcements/announcement-22dec04.htm >)
• Recommendation 1: The Council has made a significant contribution
to other ICANN core values such as outreach, bottom-up consensus based
policy development, geographical diversity and transparency. It has
endeavored to make good use of the ICANN meetings to conduct outreach
activities with other ICANN organizations and with the broader internet
community. The Council should plan to expand and enhance these activities.
• Recommendation 2: The appointment of liaisons is a good step in
building links with other parts of the ICANN structure. Again
consideration needs to be given to the best way that these liaisons can
be used to raise awareness of Council issues. The crafting of a “role
description” or “partnership agreement” may assist with setting clear
expectations and maximizing outcomes.
• Recommendation 3: While it is healthy that the Council has
representation from four of the ICANN regions, the Council should
develop a plan for increasing representation so that all regions are
covered.
• Recommendation 4: Furthermore, consideration needs to be given to
ways in which people from non-English speaking backgrounds can
participate more actively in Council. This may involve making greater
use of face to face time at ICANN meetings (where communication is
easier) in addition to telephone conferences. The availability of
translations of key documents would also assist, but this would need
careful consideration as it could easily become a very expensive exercise.
• Recommendation 5: The Council should seek approval from the Board
for a revised policy Development Process. The alternative process should
have the following elements:
o Scoping phase (history of the issue, key questions, contractual
issues, terms of reference, timelines, milestones including deliverables
and check points for legal opinion) which should be done as quickly as
feasible, probably within the timeframe of the current issues report
o Policy work (including research, consultation with constituencies,
periods for public comment) with timelines set in the scoping phase
according to the complexity of the task
o Regular reporting to Council on milestones as established in the
scooping phase
o A final report and public comment period as in the current PDP
o A Council vote as in the current PDP
• Recommendation 6: The Council should develop a formal process for
seeking input from other ICANN organizations for each of the policies it
is developing.
• Recommendation 7: In addition to these changes, the Council should
consider other measures to speed up the consensus process, including the
greater use of time at ICANN meetings to discuss issues face to face,
and possibly the use of facilitators to move more quickly to
understanding of issues and building of consensus.
• Recommendation 8: ICANN should move to put in place a high caliber
staff policy support person at the earliest possible opportunity.
• Recommendation 9: The Chair of the GNSO Council and VP Supporting
Organizations should oversee an effective handover from the current
staff support person to ensure that lessons learnt over the past year
are not lost.
• Recommendation 10: The Chair of the GNSO Council and the VP
Supporting Organizations should establish a service level agreement
between the GNSO Council and ICANN management that specifies the amount
and type of support that is to be provided. Where possible, this should
include measures (eg turnaround times for legal opinion, delivery of
reports by agreed dates, minutes posted within a certain number of days)
The Chair should consult the Council to ensure the targets meet the
needs of the Council and its task forces. The VP Supporting
Organizations and Chair of GNSO Council should meet quarterly to review
performance measures and report these to the President.
• Recommendation 11: The Council should work with the ICANN General
Counsel to establish clear communication channels for the request for
and provision of legal opinion. At a minimum this should include
detailed legal input at the scoping phase of each PDP. Wherever
possible, “check points” for further legal input should be established
as part of the scoping study.
• Recommendation 12: The Council needs to ensure the viability of
implementation of each of the policy recommendations that it makes to
the Board.
• Recommendation 13: ICANN needs to put in place a compliance
function to monitor compliance with policies.
• Recommendation 14: The Council needs to work with ICANN operational
staff to develop a compliance policy with graded penalties.
• Recommendation 15: Council needs to have a built in review of the
effectiveness of policies in the policy recommendations that it makes to
the Board .
• Recommendation 16: The GNSO Council should utilize the Ombudsman
and any reports produced by the Ombudsman as source of systematic
analysis of complaints and therefore of issues that may need to be
addressed through the PDP.
More information about the council
mailing list