Cheryl Langdon-Orr: As Heidi has informed us not everyone is in the Adobe Connect room but we do have at least a rep from each of the regions so we’ll get ourselves started. So, with the firm knowledge that a couple more people may join us I believe we have received some apologies. Nathalie, if you’d like to do a roll call and list our apologies?
Nathalie Peregrine: Of course, Cheryl. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. This is the At-Large Improvements Task Force call on the 13th of February, 2012. On the call today we have Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Olivier Crépin-Leblond and Beau Brendler. We have apologies from Yrjo Lansipuro and Salanieta Tamanikaiwaimaro.
From staff we have Heidi Ullrich, Silvia Vivanco, Seth Greene and myself, Nathalie Peregrine. I would like to remind all to please state your names when speaking for transcription purposes. Thank you very much and over to you, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Nathalie. The business of today’s meeting begins as usual with a quick review of the summary minutes which have been linked to the agenda page. And I’m sure you’ve spent the ensuing week up till now going over those indeed, but the good news is in regards to action items there was none noted. That is the case, isn’t it? Nobody else can remember that we had said we’d note an action item that we didn’t? Nobody’s disagreeing with that so we’ll let the record show that there are no new action items noted. And Heidi, thank you for putting up the link to the summary minutes in the chat as well.
In which case we will just dive right in and power on – we have a little bit of new work to show you from the Wiki pages as well before we get into the main part of the meeting. At today’s meeting which is the tenth we should all have a little bit of birthday cake along with Sebastien Bachollet for his birthday-birthday and our anniversary – ten meetings, congratulations everyone. We’ll be diving right into Recommendation #7.
Recommendation #7, which was from Work Team B, and the agenda has links to the Work Team B portal and of course the At-Large Improvements project milestone reports and project plan that we used for reference. Recommendation #7 is the following matter, that “The ALAC should be allowed to make its own choices of communication and other collaboration tools to best meet its needs, taking into account budgetary constraints and the technologies already used in other parts of the ICANN community.”
There’s only a couple of line items in this particular section which we’ll get to in a moment, but the first thing I’d like to do is have a look at what staff has been doing in terms of modifying the pages linked to each recommendation to tabulate a table and record that will be integrated into our reporting both in Costa Rica and the final report; and thank you to staff for putting up some examples of that for Recommendation #7 on our shared screens. If anyone is not on the Adobe Connect room and is in fact in the audio only, they will be able to see these pages linked from the agenda page that is listed on the Wiki.
First of all, the following pages we have slightly bolded but that’s only as a reflection of how we’ve type faced it. The page has been modified for each of the thirteen recommendations. If we drill down into any one of these recommendations, just pick one I suppose. Which one has got the most changes on it, Heidi? Would that be Recommendation perhaps…
Heidi Ullrich: Well Matt, are you on the call? I think maybe #1 through #4.
Matt Ashtiani: Yes I am.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Pick one and pop it up for us to have a look, and while you’re doing that, what we will then be doing for Recommendation #7 on is in fact working from these newly reorganized recommendation Wiki pages, individual recommendation Wiki pages I should say, rather than straight off the listing for the milestone [report]. So Matt, could you or someone just… Oh, the link is live, actually.
If anyone pushes the Improvements link in the Wiki you’ll be taken to the page for Recommendation #4, and if you’ll bear with us for the moment the screen will change to Recommendation #4 there. And thank you, Heidi, who’s also put the link in.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, Nathalie or Matt, can you please share the Recommendation #4 page?
Matt Ashtiani: It’ll be there in just one second.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Great, thanks Matt. Okay. Looking at the Recommendation #4 page as it comes up onscreen, what you will see is the now very familiar nomenclature for the recommendation sub-points – 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, etc. You’ll see the sub-tasks, titles again familiar but with the additional changes to what we started to do particularly from 4 on, and we used it quite extensively in the #5 Recommendation as well when we started to use As, Bs, and Cs to just subset out those individual sub-tasks.
The title of the task, the status – which at the moment on Recommendation #4 is unfortunately all “to be confirmed,” so perhaps this was not the very best choice for us to look at at all because a number of the other pages, when you go yourselves – we won’t spend the time on today’s call to do that, having indeed been updated by staff because I spent some time with Matt and Heidi on the phone last week doing this; and then there is the “Notes” section. And it is the Notes section we will be able to say, for example, “The job of the ongoing program development for the training academy, etc., etc. has been passed on to…”
So the outcome of where we have said the implementation job is being done, be it passed on to a particular work group, a work team or the ALAC itself or whether in fact it has been passed over to another part of ICANN will be listed in the notes section. Right, okay.
So as long as you’re all as excited as I am, from now on when we are working on our recommendations we will be updating these new tables, and we look forward to seeing these “TBCs” changed to something that reflects the work that the Implementation Task Force has already done.
So with that, if I can get you to take yourselves and indeed the screen – thank you, Nathalie, I think you’ve got it ready – to go back to Recommendation #7. For those of you who are not in the Adobe Connect room, simply select “Recommendation #7” in the Wiki space. And we’ll get on to something I’m pretty confident we’ll be able to fairly fast which is the review of communication/collaboration needs.
If I get through it very fast, we’re now into the part of the recommendations where the ALAC has already established actions that have taken us a fair way into having all of these tasks implemented, so it’ll be a matter of making sure we haven’t dropped any of the stitches in our knitting, if I can use that metaphor; and that we have in fact got all of the sub-tasks properly allocated.
So as you’ll see in the listing for Recommendation #7 in the traditional list, moving away for today’s call from the new workspace pages – but for next week’s call we will be just diving right back into those: “Introduction to the ALSes…” Sorry, let me start again.
The first line item is “Introduce to the ALSes selective information dissemination, communication and collaboration tools,” and there’s a listing of some that Work Team B were aware of at the time; “and provide training materials.” And this is something I think we can take beyond “in progress” and probably move to completed from the implementation point of view; but in the notes section say “This is now a task that has been taken over by the Technology Taskforce,” and I would assume, needs to be continually I guess… What terminology should we used – “supervised” by the At-Large staff?
And I suppose Heidi can help us to understand whether she’s going to allocate a particular staff member of if it’s going to be owned by a couple of her staff so that the actual needs of the ALSes and the regions are well integrated into this. So really what we need to decide is how we make our notes in this section. So I’ll open the floor, and obviously I would think Dev, as he is the lead on the Technology Taskforce, will have something to say on how he would like it notated here so it fits in with the time [cost] of work for him and his Taskforce sub-team.
Dev, how would you like us to allocate the status? I’m assuming complete from the implementation point of view and make the notes reflect the ongoing role of the TTF? Over to you, Dev.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thank you, are you hearing me?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: I am now, go ahead.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay. I think I agree with you, Cheryl. I think to mark this as complete because this task will fall under the Technology Taskforce. And the Technology Taskforce is looking at implementing those tools mentioned in that past recommendation, but obviously also looking at ways to add new services and new technologies as they come along, or possibly even retire something that technology has superseded or something has made obsolete these old technologies. So I would say I would agree to mark it as complete.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, but what I might ask, unless anyone objects of course to that very sensible proposal, I think it’d be a very brave Taskforce member to do so but they’ll end up with a job otherwise, is ask if you might assist staff. And I think here it will be Matt who will be updating this individual recommendation page table for the most appropriate short wording for us to put into that Notes column, and we’ll just have that I guess put to the meeting next week so we all understand and agree with the language.
I think it’s important that we ensure there’s a longevity in the role and the supervision; it’s almost a little bit like a line from what you’d expect the Technology Taskforce charter to be. So I think it needs some careful consideration to make sure that the language is exactly correct. Olivier, are you happy with that way forward? You’re muted again.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Hello, can you hear me? Excellent. Thank you, Cheryl, it’s Olivier for the transcript. I’m so used to using the computer to access, I unmuted myself on the computer but of course I was dialed out on my phone, which is a different thing which was muted. Anyway I’m fine with that. And sorry for the long answer but I’m fine with this, yes.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (laughing) And thank you for us all now understanding your Technology Taskforce challenges. It sounds like you also need to get really, really basic training in some of these materials you’ll be putting together, like “Please check what technology you are connected from.” (laughing)
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: (laughing) You are absolutely right, Cheryl.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Good enough. Okay, so the following items, we’re happy with the way forward on Line Item #1 – oh yes, it’s making me smile. Okay, moving quickly before I really get into the giggles to Line Item #2, which is the survey of ALSes regarding the communication and collaboration tools; yes, that is completed but what we do need to do is make sure that the outcomes of that excellent work, that the workspace and the results of that, are linked to that recommendation page. I think it’s important that these recommendation pages are also a portal to any background and support information.
So whilst we have it marked already as “completed,” what we will have in the notes section is live hyperlinking to the spaces and places that are associated with the work of that survey. Matt, are you able to do that or do you need Dev or someone else to point you to those actual pages?
Matt Ashtiani: I think it’s probably best if they sent me the links.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. So now, ladies and gentlemen of the Task Force, you’ll also see that the notes, as we develop the notes in that section there’ll also be a repository for linkage to other parts of the wonderful Wiki world we run, and indeed any supporting documentation in other places, documents on the internet, etc., etc. Good, no objections to that.
Let’s move quickly on to the next one which we can very immediately move from “must begin” to “completed.” We have indeed gotten our Technology Task Force and that is an action out of Dakar formal meeting, and it would probably be appropriate, Olivier, to link that activity of formation of the Technology Task Force or the acceptance of the proposal from Work Team B from an in-principle proposal to accepted by the ALAC with at least a link to those meeting minutes. Is that how you would like to proceed? And Olivier, you are on the phone so if you muted your phone you’ll need to unmute to answer us.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, and thank you for providing me with instructions because I was actually going to do the same mistake again. So there you go.
I’m absolutely fine with that. I think the way we’ll do it is to actually ratify it and get it all going in Dakar when we’re face-to-face, and we’ve set some time available for this. Heidi, if you can, can you confirm this to me please on the timing that we have for this?
Heidi Ullrich: I’m sorry, can you repeat that one more time?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: We are going to ratify the setting up of the Technology Taskforce while the ALAC meets in Dakar and therefore we can immediately start the work over there. Is that… And I just wanted confirmation from you.
Heidi Ullrich: I thought we were planning on having a discussion to confirm the new Outreach Working Group, and there will be a discussion in the afternoon on Sunday about the Technology Taskforce. So if you did want to discuss the possibility of creating that Work Group then yes, there is time for that.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Well I think that because we’re going to address the subject – it’s Olivier here. Because we’re going to address the subject and we have so many other things to do before having a vote and a discussion prior to Dakar, and why am I saying “Dakar” – to Costa Rica – is just a matter of a few weeks. So it probably would be better to just do it face-to-face and we’ll ratify everything whilst we’re meeting face-to-face, and therefore Dev can then get moving after that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, thank you Olivier. I think we should also just link to the previous discussions which were in Dakar, not Costa Rica where the ones you’re proposing will be on the agenda; and I’m assuming if it is on the agenda it’ll be somewhat more of a consented agenda when it comes to the formal ratification process for the ALAC in Costa Rica, because of course Dev is well underway with the Technology Taskforce. There’s been a call for membership and there’s even been a first meeting held.
And it was in Dakar that we put the in-principle establishment of the Technology Taskforce along with another couple of things such as the Metrics Work Group and the Rules of Procedure Review Work Group onto the ALAC table, and those were dealt with in-principle at least. Dev, go ahead – how would you advise us we make these notes of what has happened and what is going to happen? Go ahead, Dev.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Thank you, Cheryl, this is Dev. I agree with what you said, actually, but just to update you on the status. The call for members has not started as yet but I’m going to have a conference call with staff, particularly with Matt and Nathalie, and work on populating the workspace on the Wiki, get the topic areas down and come up with a charter; and then later I’ll do the call for members because I’ll obviously want to do that before Costa Rica, and before the Sunday sessions in Costa Rica.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, that makes it clearer in my mind. Thank you. It was a [pre-print] meeting; I must have been in a blur of meeting (inaudible).
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Correct. It was a [pre-cut] meeting on that.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, so your work – just to [kind of pass] to Olivier – your work between now and Costa Rica will provide material to actually go into that meeting schedule that Heidi has already put up on the Sunday session in Costa Rica. Is that correct, Dev?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Yeah, correct. That is correct.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you for that confirmation. Over to you, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, it’s Olivier and I was just having now the page for the Sunday tentative schedule that we have. Yes, the Rules of Procedure and ALAC Metrics Working Group discussion will be between 17:00 and 17:15, so that’s fifteen minutes on this – you’re going to have to speak fast, Cheryl, and I’m sure you’re very qualified to be able to do so. And then the technology Taskforce that Dev will be speaking to us about, and I think that’s the time when we’re going to have to ratify things, between 17:15 and 17:25. And we can launch it from that point on since we’re all face-to-face in the Sunday session. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Excellent, and I’m very happy with that. What we might make in our notes in our recommendations pages, however, is to make that clear, that ALAC ratification will be happening in Costa Rica. The appropriate teams, taskforces, etc. in a number of our recommendation implementation requirements will be ratified by the ALAC during that meeting; and that in the final report pre-June to the Structural Improvements Committee, the notes in each of those recommendation pages will also reflect a link to the work of those then-chartered sub-teams, work groups and taskforces. Does that sound like a nice generic piece of text for you to copy and paste everywhere, Matt?
Matt Ashtiani: Sure.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Olivier, you still have your hand raised? Nope, okay, that was a very quick [treat]. Thank you, Heidi, I appreciate you spending some time with us today. I trust your other call will be as entertaining as this one is obviously going to be and as productive, because we’ve actually finished Recommendation #7. Thank you for joining us, Heidi.
Okay, so Rec. #7, tick the boxes on all of those. A little bit of tidying up to do on the recommendation page and obviously some work to do between now and Costa Rica for Taskforce leads and those of us that are assisting Dev. And Dev, just call on me if you need me to give you a hand in any way, shape, or form because you’re very busy on several things at the moment and we don’t want you getting too overworked. I mean we are obviously overworking you but we don’t want you too overworked before Costa Rica.
Any other discussion on Recommendation #7? If not we will be able to move on to Recommendation #8. Recommendation #8 is a Work Team D – as opposed to B as Rec. #7 was – a Work Team D proposal. This is one which we are going to have to do some annotation on. Recommendation #8 is that “The public comment period should remain thirty days except in the case of special circumstances, for which ALAC may request an exception to 45 days.”
Now, that’s what the ALAC Review people said; that’s what went to the Board. Work Team D then did a huge amount of preparatory work with what I think was really a watershed moment in us using the flowchart technology or approach, I should say – the flowchart approach to looking at how our work processes and activities in ALAC and At-Large are done and recorded and discussed. And since the landmark workings and the figures prepared by Dev and the rest of his Work Team D group, we found this method of doing things has been picked up, I won’t say ICANN-wide but it’s certainly infiltrating all corners of ICANN. And I’m delighted to see that – it’s a very good way of working and it allows us who are not actually engineers to communicate with those of us who are engineers, which is always handy as well.
Now there is, as I say, a lot of work done here, a lot of imagery that we will be appending to reports, or final reports, or (inaudible) and appending, or just linking to the pages where they reside. But life, the universe, and the wonderful world of ICANN public comments has in fact shifted since Work Team D did its proposal to the ALAC, and so we are aware that there is a little bit of tweaking, a modification of these figures and what we all thought was a well-planned approach in terms of [time, costs and flowcharts], etc. with the new public comments system which gives two cycles.
We’re also aware from recent ALAC and regional discussions that there is a minimum amount of time that the pilot for the new public comments and then reply/respond period the Work Team put together. ALAC and At-Large were well represented in that and there were minimums which were allowing as little as 21 days for some of this double-cycling. We do note that it is a minimum and the advice coming out from senior staff in charge of public comments and the Public Participation Committee staff support, and I think parts of the Committee itself have tended to write down the minimum as opposed to noting that those days are a minimum number.
Olivier, you were going to follow up as ALAC Chair with Filiz and some of the others associated with this to see if we can clarify the advice from the community which was a 21-day minimum. Somehow it got enshrined as a hard minimum or were we going to have an argument between what are the recommendations of our review of ALAC and At-Large and the new way of ICANN working on public comments because we will need to note that in all of these following subsets for Recommendation #8. Over to you, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, it’s Olivier for the transcript. And yes, I was going to follow up and this is still on my to-do list. It’s something that is coming up. It looks as though one thing I have, one feedback I have had from discussing it with the Executive Committee is a reminder that the ALAC is able to comment on anything it wants to with no need to be within a comment period or on a subject that is currently in a comment period. So we do have the freedom to submit comments at any time.
With that said it is my personal view that our comments have probably more impact with the rest of the community if they are done during a comment period since we are able to publish them on the public comment board at that time; and it is good for other SOs and ACs and the rest of the community to be able to read through these comments in a location that is not an At-Large location as such. But it is something that I have to take up with the people in charge of the public comments because the shortening, certainly the shortening of the 21 days that was in use before the current period is not something that we can work with in a satisfactory way. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Absolutely, and the probability of us having to tweak these well thought-out and I think well gone-over in a number of face-to-face meetings where Work Team D presented to the ALAC and regional leadership pages without that sort of conversation having happened I’d hate to commit that sort of time and energy to that until it has happened. I see Tijani, however – go ahead, Tijani.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, Cheryl. I’d like to [say to] Olivier that we don’t need, we don’t want to shorten, to change the 21-day minimum. If we make them more than 21 days we may have problems because I want to remind you that for the New gTLD JAS Program, when we put the report of the JAS comments we were asking the staff if it is possible to reduce the comment period of 21 days and they said “No way.” So sometimes we need a short time for further comments, but we need to tell the staff that we don’t need to put the minimum period – we have to put more than the minimum period because it is not enough at this time. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: So noted, Tijani, and I think that’s very much what Olivier and the rest of the ALAC will be doing. Back again over to you, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl, it’s Olivier for the transcript. What I was going to suggest to the people in charge of the public comments is that the ALAC reserves the right to respond within its usual 31 days and there is a current premise in the system that if they receive no comments within the first 21 days then there is no extension for the second 21 days for replies, because the way they make it work now is it’s 21 days for the original comments and then another 21 days that will only accept replies.
Now the thing is, we want to be able, the ALAC wishes to be able commenting as a first comment, not only as a reply for the first 31 days and that’s the way that I shall be pitching it. So as far as reducing or making the comment period longer or shorter, that’s not something that we’re going to be asking for. What we will ask is just to keep our right to continue having first comments. And if there are no comments from other communities or other people then there is a note there which says then there will not be a reply period. What I wish to do is to say we can then send a first note that says “A comment will be coming from us, in which case please keep the reply period open as well so that others could provide replies.”
But this is something which I have just not had the time to deal with and it’s forthcoming. Thank you.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Thank you, Olivier, and there’s a couple of things coming out of that, the first of which is a question which I hope you will be brutally honest in your answering of: do you believe there is enough human bandwidth in your life and indeed in that of the people you’ll be talking to – Filiz, etc. – in ICANN to deal with this between now and Costa Rica? Or is this something that you might just manage to raise with them as an extremely important issue for ALAC and that we will discuss in Costa Rica? Which way do you want to put that forward?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, it’s Olivier for the transcript. I think that just an advanced note that this is something we’ll be discussing in Costa Rica will be helpful because if we don’t speak to Filiz and her crew until Costa Rica and come up with this in Costa Rica itself, without any advanced warning, I don’t think we will be given any kind of answer at the time since it’s something that she might wish to discuss with her colleagues. So an advanced warning that this is something we will be talking about is likely to yield more answers from Filiz and her crew in Costa Rica.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, I think that is probably the best way forward. It also means that we don’t have to find the time for the discussion to happen between now and Costa Rica. It’s just a matter of giving them their homework and saying “This is going to be a major agenda item for us and we look forward to resolving the issues.”
Okay, to that end would it be helpful, Olivier, if staff accumulated as a piece of sort of background paper or material for you to sling across to Filiz and her team the work of Work Team D on this? It may in fact help them if they look at the flowcharts and the current status quo that we already have. Would that be something of use to you?
Deathly silent, Olivier. If you’re responding you may have muted your phone, or I might not be on the call anymore – I guess that’s possible.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: No, no – you’re not, Cheryl. Sorry, but you cut out for this question so you’ll have to ask it again.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (laughing) I’ll happily put it to the table again. Olivier, I was asking would it be useful from your point of view as the person who’s going to pen this prep note to Filiz and her team for an AI for staff to accumulate links to a little preparatory paper which included the flowcharts and the work of Work Team D and that the ALAC has already more than in-principle accepted these flowcharts and timings so that they are very, very clear on the reason why the processes very rarely need to shrink to 21 days and certainly need the right to intervene in the reply cycle?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes please, that’s an excellent idea says Olivier.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: (laughing) Okay, thanks Olivier. I thought you might agree; I was just stunned by the silence that ensued. Okay. So with that, what I’m going to suggest we do as a taskforce here is we now need to look at how we do our reporting. All of the subsets of Recommendation #8 on the public comment period are listed as either “in progress” or “must begin.” If we can move to only the ones that are listed in the table as “in progress,” in other words those parts – we’re talking about 8.1, 8.2, and 8.3, and to some extent there is a crossover to Recommendation #13 as well. But there are parts that very much limit themselves to the public comments period discussions that Work Team D had done and proposals made to the ALAC.
If we can shift those to substantially completed instead of “in progress,” would the rest of you be comfortable with that nomenclature? In fact, we’ve done our work but ICANN has now shifted the goalposts. We’re certainly going to have to do a little bit of modification, or ALAC is going to have to do a little bit of modification but we’re in a position of just having to tweak it and debate the points rather than do much work as such. We have I think a very good baseline with the flowcharts.
Do you want to mark those as substantially completed and then the sentence perhaps in the notes column that goes something along the lines of “Subject to current and continuing discussions with the Public Participation Committee and the staff involved in the new public comment period processes, the previous workflow charts may or may not be modified blah, blah, blah.” Is that sort of how you’d like to go ahead with that? I’ll open the floor on that and perhaps ask Dev and Tijani in particular, but also Olivier, to have some input on that because it was a seriously large amount of community agreement and work that went into Work Team D’s activities and we just can’t overturn it without recognizing that.
So can I get an agreement from you all on the shift to substantially complete and then we will make some annotations? Perhaps, Olivier, you and I can help staff make sure they capture that accurately when we do our prep call or follow-up here? Good, I see most regions in agreement; I certainly am. Okay, we’ll do it that way.
That brings us then to the part of Recommendation #8 from Work Team D’s proposals to the ALAC that are about the policy scheduling and indeed that’s something that to some extent has also been overtaken by the ALAC was able to influence the Accountability and Transparency Review Team process; and there was very particular influence brought to bear on the recommendations from the ATRT on to ICANN in this matter of not just public comments, which is how the comment and reply/comment cycle came to be born in the first place – which I’ll hasten to add to the record the Review Team in no way suggested that would involve a shortening of any of the traditional comment periods from the 45 days. We in fact saw it as an optional extension to allow for more discussion and discourse in the community if indeed public comments had come in during the first normal cycle of 30 to 45 days.
So we weren’t trying to shorten it with our recommendations but we were quite influential in the ATRT, and in fact much of what Work Team D had proposed to the ALAC did fall on very receptive ears in the ATRT, and things like the policy scheduling and ability for ICANN to try and start to be proactive in giving us warning on a policy comment schedule has been adopted or will be adopted by ICANN itself. So we probably need to note here that this aspect of the recommendations from the Review Team and particularly those that involve a public comment schedule, etc. are now something that is an ICANN-wide issue, although we do certainly need to ensure that the regions and of course ALAC itself are well-integrated into that.
So how do you want to list that? My feeling is probably complete pending on modifications made to ICANN-wide processes, but what’s your feeling on that? And then we’ll get to whatever notes and nomenclature modifiers we want to put in. Who’d like to respond to that? Now don’t all put your hands up at once, ladies and gentlemen… And you know what happens if you don’t come forward – I actually start asking people.
In which case one of the delightful roles of Chair, Olivier, is that you’re usually first in line unless you’re actually running a meeting to be called on to respond. So hopefully I wasn’t cutting out this time. Do you want to have this listed as substantially complete subject to any modifications and further activities as it becomes an ICANN-wide cultural change? Is that what you’d like to see happen here? Over to you, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Ahh!! (laughing) Thanks, Cheryl, Olivier here for the transcript. Yeah, I think it sounds like the way to go. I mean Recommendation #8 has several things in there, and certainly the Policy Scheduling Team which I think you’ve alluded to in some way is something which we probably still need to do some work on. It’s something which we’re going to need to look at as a long-term development perhaps, and that’s just my own view; and by “long-term,” looking at the next few months and getting our things in order.
But because things are changing at ICANN as well, it’s difficult to cast something in stone today that we might have to change tomorrow. So the attitude of wait and see at least for the time being appears to be the one that we should follow somehow.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sure, well in which case let’s actually list this one – the establishment of a Policy Schedule Team consisting of ICANN staff to coordinate the opening of public comment periods. It is in fact then we’ve sort of gone on to be quite prescriptive with how the PST should be comprised, etc., etc. What we can note is that-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: If I can just say, Cheryl, that the problem that we’re faced with at the moment is the issue of bandwidth. So if this is something that could be tabled between Costa Rica and Prague or between Prague and Toronto, then maybe it would be worth putting it down as one of the things that needs to be done within that period of time so as to formalize what is currently in place. There are procedures now which I think are starting to pay off with Matt working and with Heidi, and with everyone basically knowing what they have to do. This needs basically to just be formalized and when we have the bandwidth to be able to formalize this that probably is the time to take it forward.
But as far as the recommendations of this Working Group are concerned I guess that you can say yes, it has made the recommendations so that’s now in progress. It’s just something that needs to be scheduled in our development schedule for the year.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. Dev noted to the chat that by that reasoning it should then stay “in progress.” Okay, fine, I’ll accept that – notice the hesitation in my voice, though, gentlemen. The reason I’m hesitating is that when Work Team D did this proposal for the ALAC, the Accountability and Transparency Review Team had made no very high-level recommendations involving exactly this sort of policy scheduling. It didn’t call it a PST but the principles of what this does say in our world is exactly what was argued and won and became recommendations from the ATRT on ICANN, ICANN-wide.
So let me propose this to you: if we note that the recommendation, and we can insert the appropriate recommendation – and I can help you find that, Matt, if you want later – of the ATRT has almost overtaken this aspect of this Recommendation #8; and therefore subject to the final processes and procedures being in place ICANN-wide, the ALAC is already well in progress with its abilities and processes to integrate with whatever the final outcome is for policy scheduling ICANN-wide. That way we can actually have it more complete rather than just in progress. How does that sit with you all?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, it’s Olivier.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Yes, go ahead Olivier. I didn’t see your hand, sorry.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you, Cheryl. No, I just stepped away from my computer. Yes, we can. I think that’s a good way forward. Certainly just having it “in progress” is not something I would favor because I think we’ve reached further than that, and certainly as far as this Working Group is concerned we’ve reached further than that. It would be something that the ALAC has to push forward if that was the case. But we have already moved in a certain direction and so yeah, we’re close to closing on this I guess. It’s not that much work that needs to be done.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: So I’m going to then suggest that we do in fact remain with a substantially completed classification and that the notes reflect that much of what was implementable here has become a recommendation from the ATRT to ICANN itself; that the ICANN Board has instructed staff to blah, blah, blah,” and we can insert the link to that resolution; and that therefore ALAC is ready to ensure its processes dovetail with those that are adopted ICANN-wide and will affect all the other ACs and SOs – something along those lines.
So can I have an indication if anyone disagrees with that? And in the absence of any of that, and noting that we now only have representation from four out of the five regions, oh no, we’re still at the five regions – my error. Okay, so I am happy to move on. Good. So that’s that; we’ve moved that one from a “must begin” to a “substantially completed” with the appropriate nomenclature.
The next one is one that I think ALAC has also gone a fair way into and we may also be able to move to substantially completed, and it may be one that this is what Olivier was outlining in terms of work to be done later on in this calendar year. We can put those time courses in here. The next sub-step is the establishment of a standing committee, the ALAC/At-Large Policy Review Committee. Now, this is our own internal ALAC/At-Large Policy Review Committee is responsible for advising the ALAC of actions needed regarding upcoming public comment and policy issues, as well as policy issues not on the public comment schedule but of At-Large interest.
We’ve currently listed this as… And then there’s a lot of subsets and detailed information in that recommendation. We’ve listed this currently as “must begin” when in fact I think with the various cross-regional meetings, the Secretariats’ Meeting, the monthly meetings sand mid-monthly meetings of the ALAC. The Executive Committee is still holding the lion’s share of the responsibility for this within the ALAC, but there is certainly by those regional meetings I’ve attended more and more attention to this.
And it might be Silvia, if I can ask you here, the best way to… I’d be putting this substantially completed, but the best way to make some notes on this might be that the ALAC as a whole and ALAC Executive own this on a month-to-month basis within the ALAC, but that most if not all of the regional leadership teams have now got or are about to have allocated responsibilities for people to work on the matters of not only public comments but areas of policy and discussion that the ALSes and regions want to raise.
Silvia, this is very much I guess your job description of what you do with the regions, so without wanting to ask you to perhaps edit something or create text here on the fly, what I might do is ask if between now and the prep call we might be able to come up with some text that will be appropriate notes in this field if we mark it as substantially complete; and that that then fits in with your six- to twelve-month plan for the regions as well. If you don’t mind taking that on as an AI and we might just discuss this further when we have our leadership meeting in preparation at the end of the week. I think that’s the best way of going forward here because there’s been considerable work done, and it is pretty much work done that’s been in keeping with the suggestions here from Work Team D.
Does anyone object to that?
Silvia Vivanco: And Cheryl, can you just summarize that because I was trying to follow this.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Sure, no problem. If we look to what 8.1.3 says, it says “Establish a standing committee between the ALAC and At-Large which would be called PRC – Policy Review Committee. And it’s responsible for advising ALAC of actions needed regarding upcoming public comment scheduling and policy issues, as well as policy issues not on the ICANN public comments schedule but that your ALSes or regions are finding of interest.”
So for example, in a new gTLD world, if we were suddenly aware of some effect on consumers or something that was of great concern, then the ability for that information to filter up for ALAC attention would also be going through this proposed committee. Now, whilst we haven’t established an ALAC standing committee as such for this purpose, you do have the Secretariats’ Meeting, you do have the work of the ALAC itself – the Committee as a whole but then also the ongoing public review and public comments review that the Executive Committee of the ALAC does each month. And I’m very aware that your regional meetings have been paying more and more attention to public comments – what’s happening and what needs to be responded to.
And in the last couple of months we’ve seen in fact regional comments go forward to become presented to the ALAC for consideration to be just adopted by ALAC as a statement or a comment in a public comment period. So what I was asking, Silvia, was is it possible for, rather than us try as a Committee here to come up with language that reflects those changes whether or not you could work on some language that reflects what’s happening in the regions; and that we note that it is substantially completed.
Silvia Vivanco: Okay. Well, my initial reaction would be that this is something that the RALOs themselves have to analyze, how they feel they have achieved this goal, right; rather than me having to create some wording. This is how I feel this can be handled in order to have a real view of what’s been done.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay, well that’s one way to do it if we want to make for a month of Sundays for it to happen. The other way of doing it, if that’s the case, Silvia, is we put onto the ALAC agenda for Costa Rica the establishment of the standing committee and we tell the regions that they need to populate it.
Silvia Vivanco: I guess, so this is my initial reaction; I don’t know if someone else here has other ideas – Dev or Tijani, or someone from the RALOs have any other ideas, or Olivier?
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Olivier has lost connectivity from the AC room; he’s probably still connected to-
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: It’s Olivier, I’m still here. Sorry, the reason why I’m on a dial out is because I actually have to run to the airport so I had to log off, basically. But yes, I think we have the chance of meeting in Costa Rica. There will also be a Secretariats’ Meeting I understand in Costa Rica; maybe this is something we need to discuss over there.
Silvia Vivanco: Right, yeah, I think that’s a good idea, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yeah, because doing things face-to-face we have the chance of being face-to-face and it’s a lot faster than initiating something that might take months over a mailing list, etc. This is something we can really push through and we can act on it with the ALAC immediately afterwards as well by just adding it to our agenda later on in the week.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay.
Silvia Vivanco: Very good idea. That’s more or less the feeling I had, that there was a need to have a face-to-face conversation and to have that exchange happen more smoothly.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. If I may at the top of the hour, let me take this and turn it on its head and see how you feel about it. Olivier, putting the very specific outlines and virtually a charter together for this PRC, I would like to suggest that what the ALAC does is have on its Costa Rica agenda the ratification of a PRC as outlined in the Work Team D proposals. It can be done in the same bunch of time as you’ve looked at earlier in today’s call on the Sunday meeting so it’ll be dealt with while the Technology Taskforce and other things are being dealt with.
And then at the Secretariats’ Meeting they can take that up as a “Here is the standing committee; now how are we going to integrate as regions?” I think to do it the other way would put us another six months behind. Are you comfortable with that approach – set up the standing work group and then during Costa Rica get the Secretariats, the At-Large and the ALAC to discuss it when and if they can?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Cheryl, yes, it’s Olivier here for the transcript. So you mean set it up and then populate it, ask the RALOs to populate it afterwards.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Well, the setup is very specific because Work Team D has said exactly how it is to be set up. It’ll be the Chair and Secretariat of each RALO, at least two additional representations, etc., etc. So let’s set it up and then during Costa Rica and beyond put the actual names to the seating arrangements.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Perfect, works for me.
Cheryl Langdon-Orr: Okay. And it works for me so that brings us slightly after the end of the hour to the end of Recommendation #8, and that was a personal objective for me today – to completely finish Recommendation #8. We can mark Recommendation #8 in the main as substantially completed. The last part, Recommendation 8.1.3, our note on “substantially completed” will be the completion of it during the Costa Rica meeting.
And if there’s any other business we don’t have time for it, so please let me know and we’ll make sure it is on the agenda for next week’s call. Bye for now. Thank you each and every one of you who talked to us today. Beau, I do note your question about not having enough people. You don’t have to have them from the regional leadership of course, Beau. They don’t have to be regional leaders; these can be ALS people that are put into this type of committee.
Thank you one and all, goodbye for now. Have a good day, good evening and safe travels to those of you who are traveling. Bye.
[End of Transcript]
