GNSO Council/ICANN Board Teleconference Minutes

8 September 2005

Proposed agenda and related documents

List of attendees:
Philip Sheppard - Commercial & Business Users C.
Marilyn Cade - Commercial & Business Users C.
Grant Forsyth - Commercial & Business Users C
Greg Ruth - ISCPC - absent - apologies - proxy to Tony Holmes/Tony Harris
Antonio Harris - ISCPC
Tony Holmes - ISCPC - absent - apologies - proxy to Tony Harris/Greg Ruth
Thomas Keller- Registrars - absent - apologies - proxy to Ross Rader/Bruce Tonkin
Ross Rader - Registrars
Bruce Tonkin - Registrars
Ken Stubbs - gTLD registries
Philip Colebrook - gTLD registries
Cary Karp - gTLD registries
Lucy Nichols - Intellectual Property Interests C absent - apologies
Niklas Lagergren - Intellectual Property Interests C
Kiyoshi Tsuru - Intellectual Property Interests C. - absent
Robin Gross - Non Commercial Users C.- absent
Norbert Klein - Non Commercial Users C. - absent
Alick Wilson - Nominating Committee appointee - absent - apologies
Maureen Cubberley - Nominating Committee appointee - absent - apologies - proxy to Ross Rader/Bruce Tonkin
Avri Doria - Nominating Committee appointee
(10 Council Members)

ICANN Board
Raimundo Beca – appointed by the Address Supporting Organisation ( ASO )
Vinton G. Cerf (Chair) - apologies
Steve Crocker, Security and Stability Advisory Committee Liaison
Hagen Hultzsch - apologies
Veni Markovski – appointed by Nominating Committee
Thomas Narten, IETF Liaison
Michael D. Palage – appointed by the GNSO
Alejandro Pisanty (Vice-Chair) – appointed by the GNSO
Hualin Qian - apologies
Njeri Rionge – appointed by Nominating Committee
Vanda Scartezini – appointed by Nominating Committee
Peter Dengate Thrush – appointed by ccNSO
(12 Board Members and liaisons)

ICANN Staff
Dr. Paul Twomey -ICANN President and CEO
John Jeffrey - ICANN General Counsel
Olof Nordling - Manager, Policy Development Coordination
Maria Farrell - ICANN GNSO Policy Support Officer
Liz Williams - Senior Policy Counsellor
Glen de Saint G�ry - GNSO Secretariat


MP3 Recording

Quorum present at 14:05 CET.

Bruce Tonkin chaired this teleconference.

Item 1: Review the background, goals and expected outcomes of the GNSO
review, at both the Council and constituency level
- respond to any questions on background from ICANN Board members
present
- receive input on expected outcomes from ICANN Board members present

(* note of clarification “expected outcomes” was not intended to pre-judge the results of the review or seek input for the review itself, but was intended to the understand what the outcomes of the review should be in general terms – e.g does the board simply want a yes/no answer on whether the GNSO should continue, or does the Board want to see some pragmatic recommendations for how to improve the GNSO”)

Bruce Tonkin introduced himself and stated that receiving early input from ICANN board members on the expected outcomes of the GNSO Review process was important.
Article IV, Section 4 of the ICANN bylaws required the ICANN Board to review the Supporting Organisations on an ongoing 3 year cycle and the GNSO, previously DNSO, being the supporting organisation in existence the longest, came up first. The review was broken into two parts: the first part, the GNSO Council review, was conducted by Patrick Sharry in 2004 and it was the second part, which involved the six constituencies within the GNSO, that was currently being conducted.
The GNSO Review was breaking new ground and could form a precedent for reviews of other parts of the ICANN organisation.

Steve Crocker, Security and Stability Advisory Committee Liaison to the ICANN Board, asked whether the GNSO was structured to accommodate and take into account the end users and the broad community of Internet users as opposed to the commercial or vested interests of the component parts. In other words was it possible that policies through the GNSO could reflect the business interests of the people who were participating and so compromise the best interests of the smoothly functioning internet for the broad population?
End users were qualified as those who were involved in the domain name system as opposed to the addressing system. Although the issues were essentially the same, there were many organisations that were involved in providing, managing and operating the system such as registrars. Then there were two broad classes, less well represented in the ICANN processes, the registrants and everybody dependent upon looking up information, whether an individual or and organisation.
In summary, the review should indicate how the requirements of end users were taken into account in the GNSO.

Bruce Tonkin explained that the structure of the GNSO that was divided into the supply side, registries and registrars, and the users, currently considered to be Internet Service Providers as users of the DNS, the Intellectual Property community, business users, non commercial users, and nominating committee appointees who may consider themselves to represent "others", which were a smaller subset of the user as defined above.
Michael Palage elaborated on end users commenting that "representativeness" was not being questioned but rather that when recommendations were submitted to the board, multiple view points gave depth and facilitated Board decisions.

Peter Dengate Thrush commented that the nature of the review was to examine the quality of the Council, its work output and representation, then having established the purpose, whether changes in the structure itself were required. Representation issues were referred to in the terms of reference sections 4.3.1 and 5.6.1 while work output issues, about staffing and the relationship between council and staff were raised in the Council review.
Effectiveness was dependent on the staff and the quality of the input to the policy process
Bruce Tonkin clarified that in the Council structure, the GNSO constituencies were required to produce position statements in particular policy areas as the starting point for the policy development process (PDP). Effectiveness was partly related to constituency input and the changes that occurred to the positions of constituencies based on the interaction with other constituencies.
Philip Sheppard asked whether the Board members had a timeline expectation for completing the GNSO review and the recommended items.
What should happen to the output of the review?
Marilyn Cade commented on dependencies and the tools available to the GNSO. Built into the policy development process, which underlay the advice the GNSO Council gave the ICANN Board, was a dependency on staff resources in preparing an issues report, and then gathering input.
Ken Stubbs commented that in order for ICANN to effectively serve the communities it represented it had to be inclusive in developing and implementing policies and have a blueprint to continue evolving.
Peter Dengate Thrush commented that resourcing should be a high priority taking into account the size and policy range of the GNSO.
Bruce Tonkin commented that rules of procedure should be dealt with at the same time as advancing core policy work.
Njeri Rionge commented that it was important to prioritise in line with the ICANN strategic plan at the same time as creating terms of reference and timelines.
Bruce Tonkin clarified that the ICANN bylaws defined a process for bringing issues to the GNSO Council that developed the Council's work items. The GNSO planned to identify major issues over the next 3 years which would become part of the ICANN strategic plan.
Ken Stubbs commented that ICANN would be measured on the ability to effectively execute the policies that it created in the future as well as execute and manage the functions it had been assigned.
Michael Palage followed up on the importance of linking up the GNSO and the ICANN Strategic plan for making the organisation more proactive.
Alejandro Pisanty commented that good clear Terms of Reference should be the main focus of the meeting rather than starting the review process.
Dr. Paul Twomey commented that there was already expertise in each constituency and asked what the GNSO Council or ICANN's expectations were in terms of the expert output from the constituencies, particularly drawing on the idea that the constituencies were representative of particular ideas and could bring expertise to the table.
Raimundo Beca commented that the review should consider the role the expertise in the GNSO constituencies could play outside the GNSO in other ICANN Supporting Organisations and outside ICANN, particularly in the Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) and World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) context. A number of private sector and the civil society bodies would be a part of the multi stakeholder organizations that had been proposed to deal with subjects out of ICANN's scope, but it was not so clear who would represent the private sector and the civil society in those bodies. Raimundo suggested that the review inquire whether the GNSO constituencies would be willing to play a role in such bodies and what kind of support would they need from the ICANN staff to perform these new activities
Marilyn Cade suggested that it could be further explored under the draft terms of reference in the
paragraph 5.5.2 relating to:
External relationships – with the broader Internet using community including the public and private sector.
Peter Dengate Thrush asked how the argument of effectiveness could be measured with particular reference to possibly merging certain constituencies, to which Grant Forsyth responded that a group should demonstrate a clearly definable and sustainable interest in ICANN's work.
Liz Williams added, quoting from the draft terms of reference, page 2
"Each Constituency shall maintain its recognition, and thus its ability to select GNSO Council representatives, only so long as it in fact represents the interests globally of the stakeholder communities it purports to represent, and shall operate to the maximum extent feasible in an open and transparent manner and consistent with procedures designed to ensure fairness. "
that "effectiveness" could possibly be measured by the questions found in paragraph 4.3.1. "Representativeness: Analysis in this part of the Review could include the questions outlined in the box below".
Peter Dengate Thrush expressed concern with "represents the interests globally of the stakeholder communities it purports to represent", as the interest could be so small and even though the group would be thoroughly represented it would not merit creating an entire constituency.
Grant Forsyth, further commented that there had to be a recognition of the relevance and nexus of a particular constituency and the business of ICANN before such could be created.

Ideas were called for on the principles, the analysis and the measure of arguments around the petitioning for new constituencies or for changing the existing structure of the current ones.

Thomas Narten, the IETF Liaison to the ICANN Board, commented on the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) review experience. The review results were successful in some cases as it used its own process development for revision, but in other cases, changing the process was hard and it was unclear whether the reason was the lack of true intentions to make changes or whether some of the powers in place did not want change. Usually changes and new policies were made through a proposal being openly discussed or by creating a working group, reaching general consensus and approval. When there was a clear intention to do something often the change was made before official ratification was received. Certain changes pertained to cultural and operating practices which did not require formally changing the existing rules while with other changes there was less flexibility.


Item 2: Discuss the current draft document
- receive input from ICANN Board members present that have read the
terms of reference
- receive input from GNSO Council members

Marilyn Cade commented that additional tools or resources should be used that would better support broader participation.
Philip Sheppard stated that any review, in terms of the mix of the constituencies had immediate implications for the public interest objectives of ICANN bylaws.
Avri Doria noted that the overlap of constituencies should be considered.
Michael Palage commented that the internal dynamics of the constituencies should be examined. A key benchmark should be whether a group of people wanted to participate in the ICANN process and if they did, it would be incumbent on the GNSO to provide a place to meaningfully participate.
Bruce Tonkin asked for ideas on how it could be framed in the Terms of Reference.

Liz Williams following up on Marilyn Cade' s remark on the use of technology to facilitate participation and inclusiveness suggested that it could be one of the questions in the focus area and the other in analysis and measures area.
Michael Palage emphasised the importance of targeted focused questions on the internal interaction and dynamics of the constituency.
Bruce Tonkin suggested also capturing the degree of diversity in constituencies and adding it to the terms of reference 4.3.1
Representativeness : Analysis in this part of the Review could include the questions outlined in the box below.
"whether the Constituencies, on a global basis, represent the stakeholders they claim to represent "
Liz Williams commented that in the Terms of Reference section 5. 3: under baseline statistics that each constituency would provide, nuances could possibly be captured.
Representativeness and the recommendations from the GNSO Council review could be captured in the
effectiveness work of the quality and output level of expertise in constituencies.
Njeri Rionge's remark on the strategic planning issues could be captured in the degree to which issues were anticipated the prioritisation of proactive issues management.
Peter Dengate Thrush commenting on the criteria priorities for forming a group, said that representation was about access, reporting and information sharing.
Representativeness, in the paper focused on the constituencies, and it should be made clear that effectiveness, transparency and compliance issued applied to each of the constituencies.
The ICANN bylaws provide a mechanism for the Board to request the creation of a constituency and the output of the GNSO review could be the process by which the Board would receive information to consider the options and any action required.
Steve Crocker noted that certain issues, such as deleted names and testing of names under a grace period, resulted in an extraordinary load on the registries and could be viewed as a security and stability issues that needed a prompt policy response.

Bruce Tonkin commented at high level, on the difference between rules and policies that took a long time to put in place, and the Registry /Registrar market environment which moved very fast. The GNSO was not structured to deal with immediate problem situations which were better taken up and stopped in other fora and then referred to the GNSO for a considered process such as creating future rules.
Marilyn Cade added that certain situations called for convening a fast track process to address an immediate problem and when that happened user community representation was necessary.
Did the GNSO essentially forestall quick track processes, and how could such processes be stimulated when needed?
What was the mechanism in ICANN to deal rapidly with security and stability issues?
Steve Crocker added that some issues could be viewed as security and stability but involved economic incentives that implied contractual and other matters not associated with the technical aspects of security and stability.
Bruce Tonkin proposed that the GNSO Council focus on email input to the following sections in the draft Terms of Reference
- Representativeness
- Effectiveness
- Transparency
- Compliance

Output of the teleconference plus further comments for another draft to be discussed on the GNSO Council call on 22 September 2005.

Bruce Tonkin declared the GNSO meeting closed and thanked the ICANN Board for their participation.
The meeting ended: 16: 00 CET.

• Next GNSO Council Teleconference Thursday 22 September 2005 at 12:00 UTC.
  see: Calendar