[council] Letter to GNSO council

[Rafik Dammak]

hi all,

I am relaying the letter from EPDP leadership team to GNSO Council giving a
quick update regarding the publication of the initial report.
I will be happy to answer questions and will keep the council updated on
the EPDP team progress.

Best Regards,

Rafik
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Kurt Pritz <kurt at kjpritz.com>
Date: mar. 20 nov. 2018 à 12:31
Subject: Letter to council and others
To: Keith Drazek
Cc: GNSO EPDP , Rafik Dammak


Dear Keith:

Rafik and I are writing to let you know that the EPDP Team studying the
processing of registration data will not release its initial report today,
19 November. This date had been previously identified as a likely date for
publication, mostly based upon the timeline and process requirements for
getting to the finish line on 25 May 2019 .

However, the Team has made considerable progress and we anticipate
publishing the report as early as Wednesday, 21 November and are making
plans to hit that date. In the event that certain issues remain unresolved,
publication might be delayed (partially due to the US holiday) until early
the following week. These issues include complex topics regarding whether
ICANN and contracted parties are “joint controllers” where new information
has become available only in the past few days and we need team agreement
to move forward. We are striving to meet the 21 November date so that the
comment period does not end in the midst of the year-end holiday week. In
the case of either scenario, careful planning can still ensure closure by
25 May.

While this is an apparent “delay,” I would not characterize the current
schedule as that. It is important to understand that the delivery schedule
for the Initial Report was set by the time left after all other “required”
processes such as comment period, GNSO and Board consideration periods and
other steps were taken into account. Also remember that the EPDP Team is
dealing with a myriad of complex policy and legal issues that have
flummoxed attempts at progress on this topic for 20 years. It is difficult
to schedule an effort that is simultaneously addressing report objectives
to: review the Temporary Specification, create new policy, and answer 50+
charter questions.

Concessions, compromises and thoughtful solutions are in many instances
developed by the hour.

As late as this past weekend, the Team reviewed drafts and raised
substantive issues that required difficult and contentious discussion, but
they have got through most of them with suitable language. The full Team
met for multi-hour meetings on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday last week and
has set the same schedule for Monday and Tuesday this week. We’ve had 28
teleconferences and 40+ hours of face-to-face meeting time in 3 ½ months

When published, the Initial Report will not reflect agreement on all issues
but there has been apparent unanimity on many important issues and the
report describes areas of difference in sufficient detail so that the
public can adequately understand and opine on them. The report will be
overly wordy in spots and provide much detail as it seeks to adequately
describe a significant level of complexity to its audience. Remember that
this report started with a blank sheet of paper, the EPDP Team, and not
much time.

We will also be launching a new type of comment forum, designed to: clearly
link comments to specific sections of the Initial Report, encourage
commenters to provide reasoning or rationale for their opinions, enable the
sorting of comments so that the EPDP Team can more easily read all the
comments on any one topic.

We look forward to more communication on this topic to you in the near
future.

Sincerely,

Kurt and Rafik
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