[council] Action Item related to Whois Service Requirements

[Tim Ruiz]

My concern is prioritizing at the Council level. Managing the policy
process should include some consideration of time and resource
management. That will naturally allow Staff to prioritize, or as Philip
suggested, allow us to direct Staff appropriately on priority of the
work we've asked for.

Tim  

  -------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [council] Action Item related to Whois Service
Requirements
From: Stéphane Van Gelder <stephane.vangelder at indom.com>
Date: Wed, April 08, 2009 3:52 am
To: Philip Sheppard <philip.sheppard at aim.be>, "'GNSO Council'"
<council at gnso.icann.org>


I'm in a kind of half-way house about all this.

On the one hand, I fully support Tim's comments that prioritising our
work
may lead to us actually getting things done.

On the other, I do feel that it's our responsibility as GNSO Council to
try
and tackle all the important issues that lie before us, not just some of
them.

There's been a great deal of talk about volunteer burn-out since Mexico,
and
the fact that we find ourselves at the limit of what we can handle
should be
of great worry to the ICANN community as a whole. That's certainly an
issue
there that needs to be addressed.

However, I do think Avri's motion on WHOIS is worthwhile having, just as
I
consider new gTLD work and GNSO improvement work crucial.

Having staff alert us when they can no longer cope may be one way of
dealing
with the sheer volume of issues to be tackled by the GNSO Council. It
implies that we rely on staff more and more to simplify our lives for
us,
which is no bad thing... Unless staff finds itself unable to cope with
that
(but they haven't sent us that signal so far I don't think).

But I agree that the order in which we should do things is for us to
initiate work on an issue, and then for staff to give us the timeframe
in
which they can reasonably be expected to handle that issue and the work
we
put their way on that issue. Checking with staff before we embark on
something seems like taking something away from our role as the people
responsible for setting things in motion as far as the issues the GNSO
handles is concerned.

Stéphane


Le 08/04/09 09:23, « Philip Sheppard » <philip.sheppard at aim.be> a
écrit :

> 
> Chuck wrote:
> "Maybe we should start by asking Staff whether they have the bandwidth to take
> this on at
> this time and if not request
> an estimate as to when they think they would be able to do so".
> 
> ---------------------
> Chuck, this seems a little backwards and implies every current issue occupying
> staff time
> has greater priority than future ideas such as this.
> A better way to proceed is for Council to make as many requests of staff as we
> deem
> necessary.
> Staff management then respond and indicate resource constraints. They list the
> activities
> they are doing and request Council to prioritise the list.
> We prioritise.
> Staff act.
> 
> Philip
>