[Gnso-epdp-team] A note from the CPH reps

[Matt Serlin]

Please note the below is being sent on behalf of the CPH (RrSG and RySG) reps…thank you.

With less than four weeks until our face-to-face meeting, the CPH is increasingly concerned with the lack of meaningful progress towards a first draft of policy recommendations. We attribute this lack of movement in part to the shortcomings of our approach to evaluating use cases. In our view, the success of this exercise depends on EPDP team members producing focused and specific use cases that, when viewed together, illustrate procedural commonalities and insights necessary to inform our recommendations. Instead, the use cases and our discussions so far are so broad or generalized that it is no longer clear how our review will ultimately lead to policy recommendation or actionable outcomes. Without an immediate correction to refocus our efforts, we are concerned about the EPDP team’s ability to meet deadlines and ultimately succeed in delivering a timely Initial Report for Phase II.

The CPH proposes the following reasonable steps to help improve the utility of the use cases and the efficiency of our deliberations:

  *   ●  Use cases must be more specific, detailed, and focused on procedure in order to help us make observations and reach agreement. Use cases should be illustrative of a discrete set of procedural, legal, and policy considerations, rather than focused on validating a broad range of outcomes.
  *   ●  Our approach should not only consider use cases where access/disclosure is appropriate, but also examine circumstances where access/disclosure would not be granted. Our analysis of use cases is not intended to make value judgments about “deserving” users or interests. Our policy must focus on what is compliant, not what is merely desired.
  *   ●  We must prioritize and document agreement as we proceed through each use case. The Next Gen RDS implemented a “tentative agreements” document maintained by ICANN Staff to capture a list of non-binding, informal agreements that the group built upon as deliberations progressed. The document served as a transparent reference for all parties to help avoid re-litigating issues. This approach would also help solve a significant pain point from Phase I where the CPH found it difficult to track the source of agreements that ended up in the draft recommendations. We recommend adopting the same procedure.

The CPH remains committed to the success of the EPDP and offers these suggestions in the spirit of achieving our shared goal of timely completion of a Final Report for Phase II.

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