[council] Purpose of public comments in GNSO

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello All,

There has been some debate recently over how to report public comments.

I think there is a danger in turning the public comment forum into a
voting environment (e.g counting how many votes for and against a
particular policy).

It is the GNSO Council that votes according to its formal procedure on
whether to recommend a particular policy to the ICANN Board.

GNSO Council members should vote according to what they believe is in
the best interests of the GNSO and ICANN, in accordance with the ICANN
mission and core values, based on the information that have available.

The policy development process involves collecting input from
constituencies that represent different perspectives.   Some of these
perspectives may be conflicting.  The purpose of task force and
committee meetings is to try to understand the various perspectives, and
identify a compromise that is acceptable to all.   The public comment
process should be used to gain new perspectives that we have not
otherwise obtained from the constituency input.

Thus the staff reporting of public comments should focus on identifying
new perspectives not already covered in the constituency inputs, that
should be considered prior to any decision.

It is reasonable from a factual point of view to summarise all the
comments.  Where many parties express the same view, it would be
appropriate to summarise the view once and identify the parties that
supported that view.

There is not much value in having individual constituency members submit
exactly the same view as a constituency statement.  However some
constituency members may have a different or additional view to what was
expressed in the constituency statement, and it is worthwhile this being
submitted separately via the public comment process.

Ideally all public comments would clearly relate their views with
respect to ICANN's mission and core values.   E.g a third party may be
concerned that a new policy would affect their business.  While this is
a valid view, it would not on its own be relevant unless it could be
explained that competition in the market as a whole would be affected.


Regards,
Bruce Tonkin