BACKGROUND
In January 2018, the GNSO Council held an inaugural three-day Strategic Planning Session during which it, amongst other activities, reviewed the workload for the year ahead and identified potential milestones, noting that the current average timeline for delivery of an Initial Report has increased at least 2-4 times compared to previous PDPs.
The GNSO Council began identifying challenges being encountered in PDPs, informed by a staff discussion paper on optimizing increased engagement and participation while ensuring efficient and effective policy development.
In order to engage the broader GNSO community in this discussion, the GNSO Council organized a collaborative session involving the members of the current PDP Leadership Teams as well as the broader community to summarize key points from the Strategic Planning Session, elaborate on the challenges that PDPs presently face and identified, and begin to brainstorm possible solutions.
As a result of these discussions, staff was tasked to publish a discussion paper that synthesizes the challenges that were identified as part of these discussions as well as possible improvements — both immediate and longer term — that the Council and PDP Working Groups could consider implementing to enhance efficiency and effectiveness of GNSO policy development activities. This discussion paper was published on 8 May 2018 (see https://gnso.icann.org/en/drafts/pdp-discussion-paper-11may18-en.pdf).
GNSO Stakeholder Groups, Constituencies as well as other SO/ACs were invited to provide their input and feedback on the discussion paper. A summary report of the feedback received was shared with the Council on 10 September 2018 (see https://gnso.icann.org/en/drafts/pdp-summary-feedback-10sep18-en.pdf) followed by a dedicated webinar on 11 September 2018 to further review and discuss the input received (see https://participate.icann.org/p1s5rcio69b/).
Based on the input received as well as the subsequent webinar, Council leadership developed a proposed GNSO PDP 3.0 Final Report and Recommendations for Council consideration (see (https://gnso.icann.org/sites/default/files/file/field-file-attach/pdp-increase-effectiveness-efficiency-23oct18-en.pdf).
The GNSO Council and broader community reviewed and discussed the GNSO PDP 3.0 Final Report and Recommendations during the GNSO Weekend Session at ICANN63 (Oct 2018).
During the Council meeting at ICANN63, the GNSO Council adopted the GNSO PDP 3.0 Final Report and Recommendations and instructed GNSO Support Staff to work with the incoming Council leadership on the roll out of the Implementation Plan. A first draft of the GNSO PDP 3.0 Implementation Plan was shared with the Council for review in December 2018 (see https://gnso.icann.org/en/drafts/pdp-implementation-plan-10dec18-en.pdf).
RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
Per the Implementation Plan, the GNSO Council commenced its deliberations on a number of improvements during the 2019 GNSO Council Strategic Planning Session (see https://gnso.icann.org/en/meetings/council-strategic-planning-session-final-25jan19-en.pdf). It was proposed that a small team of Council volunteers would collaborate with staff and oversee the development of the implementation plan for each of the improvements. This is the work space of the small team of Council volunteers.
Recent space activity
