[council] Draft message to the Board

[Tim Ruiz]

I am all for process, I argue its benefits and necessity often. But this
is going too far even for me. If the Chair wants to make a statement of
clear fact to the Board, one that does NOT include opinion or views,
even if some deem it redundant, it seems overkill that the Council as a
whole has to approve. If we assume that, then the Chair would not be
able to speak at all, ever. 

Tim
 
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [council] Draft message to the Board
From: Stéphane_Van_Gelder <stephane.vangelder at indom.com>
Date: Wed, May 11, 2011 4:36 am
To: William Drake <william.drake at uzh.ch>
Cc: GNSO Council List <council at gnso.icann.org>

Thanks Bill.

There's been so much email traffic on this during what was, for me at
any rate, the night, that I may not be able to address all the points
raised. I apologise in advance and would ask anyone who feels that I
have missed something important to put me straight.


On the statement itself, the reason as I have understood it from the
comments made is that the report as sent by ALAC does not indicate in a
way that is sufficiently clear that this report has neither been
approved by ALAC or the GNSO. My understanding is that people thought
this situation (a joint WG report is sent but has not been approved by
either charters) to be weird enough to warrant a statement from us to
the Board.


So I drafted the statement to try and move things forward. Although now
there is clearly no full consensus on the statement as it stands, I do
sense majority support for it. The WG guidelines talk of Rough Consensus
(a position where a small minority disagrees but most agree) and my
sense is that this is what we have here.


The Council has at times made statements with the caveat that some
groups did not support, and this could be a way forward here. So far, if
my count is correct (and once again please put me straight if it's not),
we have support for the statement from Council reps of the IPC, the ISP,
the BC, the RySG and the RrSG. So if the NCUC opposes (is that the
case?), we could send a statement saying the NCUC opposes, and that
there is Rough Consensus on the Council for this statement.


Does this sound reasonable?


On your comments to the current draft, I understand the dates
discrepancy you highlight. It does pose a problem however, as the date I
had put in the draft was the one on which the JAS sent us the report. As
you correctly point out, ALAC sent it on May 6, while we only got it on
May 9. That in itself is a problem, as it begs the question as to why
one chartering entity got the report before the other did. As Jeff
stated, this looks a lot like the situation we've just had with the
ccNSO and the JIG. So trying to learn from our mistakes here, I had not
wanted to get into that with our Board statement, but if you think we
should, we can...


Stéphane





Le 11 mai 2011 à 09:16, William Drake a écrit :

Hello


On May 11, 2011, at 12:25 AM, Adrian Kinderis wrote:

We have to rush because I assume the Board is reviewing the report
having been sent it directly from the WG.




Not true

 
It is important that they understand the report has not been reviewed
not approved by the Council.
 
These are facts. Why can’t they be stated?




Haven't they been already, more or less?  Olivier's cover texts says 




This Report is submitted [BY ALAC] for consideration to the ICANN Board
and ICANN community. It was received by the At‐Large Advisory
Committee (ALAC) and the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) on
6 May 2011 and is currently undergoing evaluation. Comments from the
At‐ Large Community are currently being gathered until 13 May 2011 and
will be transmitted to the Board in a separate document. ALAC
ratification will follow.
Note that GNSO approval of this document is independent and has not
reached approval stage.



Whereas Stephane's proposed note says


On May 10, the Board was sent the Joint SO/AC New gTLD Applicant Support
Working Group ( JAS WG)'s Second Milestone Report by ALAC. We understand
that this report has not yet been approved by ALAC.
 
The GNSO Council wishes to highlight the fact that it has not approved
this report yet either. In fact, the Council has only just received it.
The report was sent to us by the co-chairs of the JAS working group on
May 9, 2011.




Aside from the discrepancy on the receipt date, the letter seems
redundant with what they've already been told.  So what exactly is the
point of repeating it: to double check that board are able to correctly
read plain English, or rather to implicitly flag the general disposition
of some councilors toward the work of the group we chartered, and toward
CWGs more generally?


NCUC at least would like to understand what we'd be doing here and why
so that we can consult and reach a position per normal procedures.  As
is, there's no consensus to send this text now.


Thanks,


Bil;