[council] Proposed Amendments to JAS motion

[Neuman, Jeff]

All,

I have given this motion a good deal of thought and am still waiting feedback from my stakeholder group.  Given the attention that the JAS working group has gotten from the GAC and Board and the desire of all of us to ensure that all economies have access to the new round of gTLDs, a number of people and groups have been afraid politically to state anything that could in any way be perceived by anyone as being negative towards the work that is underway.  Although the work has been tremendous to date especially given the tight timing, and the cause is certainly a worthy one, I do believe that we cannot compromise our processes and set bad precedent simply because we afraid of how we may be perceived politically by those that are not following everything going on at the GNSO.

Therefore, I wanted to draft an e-mail explaining the issues I have personally with the motion and suggest some amendments that may alleviate some of the issues for me.   The motion, as it currently stands now, is based on a milestone report and therefore is not by definition final.  The report contains some good principles and ideas that need to be flushed out more (as the report admits).  The motion asks the GNSO to do a few things:


1.        Putting the report out for public comment

2.       Forwarding the report to the Board for review and approval

3.       Having ICANN staff begin implementation

4.       Having the JAS WG deal with issues that arise in community review

5.       Having the JAS Group publish the final report after the review process

Numbers 1, 4 and 5 certainly make a lot of sense to me and are in line with what normally happens with policy groups.  However, I have issues with 2 and 3.  I do not understand the notion of forwarding a non-final report to the board for approval.  Nor do I understand the notion of having staff begin implementation of a non-final report prior to GNSO approval of the final recommendations much less Board approval of the final recommendations.   Therefore, I would propose that the following amendments be made to the resolved clauses so it now reads:

Resolved:
The GNSO Council thanks the members of the Joint SO/AC Working Group for its efforts and its dedication to completing the work on such a tight schedule, and
The GNSO Council request that the report be put out for community review as soon as possible, and
The JAS Working Group continues working to deal with any issues that may arise in the upcoming review by the community, and
That the JAS Working group publish their final report after this review process.
Resolved further, that the GNSO Council instructs the GNSO Chair to communicate its decision to the ALAC Chair.

I know I run the risk of being criticized on the Council list and the JAS WG list as being obstructionist or not caring about the needs of the developing communities.  I have also seen on the JAS WG list that incumbents are trying to keep out competition or that we are trying to delay the process.   All I can say is that this could not be further from the truth.  I want the new gTLD process to happen immediately and also want the needs of developing economies to be taken care of.  I just cannot allow us to set bad precedent for future policy groups.

I hope you all take these comments as they are intended to be - constructive with a desire to move forward.

Thanks.

Jeffrey J. Neuman
Neustar, Inc. / Vice President, Law & Policy
21575 Ridgetop Circle, Sterling, VA 20166
Office: +1.571.434.5772  Mobile: +1.202.549.5079  Fax: +1.703.738.7965 / jeff.neuman at neustar.biz<mailto:jeff.neuman at neustar.biz>  / www.neustar.biz<http://www.neustar.biz/>
Please note new address:  21575 Ridgetop Circle, Sterling VA 20166
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