Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everyone. This is the ALAC call on the Financial Year ’13 Framework, and we have here today I believe Xavier Calvez who is going to be with us to speak to us about the budget framework. And I understand that there’s a presentation. The time is… I’m totally lost regarding the time. It’s ten minutes past the hour and so the first thing is for Gisella to give us the roll call, please?
Gisella Gruber: Thank you, yes, with pleasure. On today’s call we have Alan Greenberg, Allan Skuce, Avri Doria, Olivier Crépin-Leblond, Cheryl Langdon-Orr, Pastor Peters, Gareth Shearman, Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Jose Arcé, Thomas Lowenhaupt, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Wolf Ludwig, Siva Muthusamy. From staff we have Xavier Calvez, Aba Diakite, Juan Ojeda, Janice Douma, Matt Ashtiani, Heidi Ullrich, Silvia Vivanco and myself, Gisella Gruber. And I’m not sure if I’ve left anyone off the list? And if I could also please remind everyone to state their names when speaking for transcript purposes. Thank you, over to you, Olivier.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Thank you very much, Gisella. And so without any further delay, and apologies for this delay due to technical problems as we often have due to our being scattered all around the globe I’ll hand over the floor to Xavier Calvez for his presentation.
Xavier Calvez: Hello everyone. Thank you very much for taking the time to participate in this call. Just a quick few comments of introduction: this call is about the Framework. It’s meant to allow all of you to get into the document, be able to ask any questions or comments that you would want to make on this document. And we are having this call with the various organizations and we’ve had them closer usually to the date of publication of this document, which was January 17th so it’s been available on our website since then.
And it’s really meant to help you get into the document and spend maybe more valuable and detailed time looking at this document after this call to just enable your review of it, and of course we are expecting to receive questions and comments by email after this call. This is not the one opportunity to provide comments; this is just a kick start of your review and that we just want to help by having the call and allowing you to ask for any kind of questions or make any comments on this document that would let you work more efficiently over the next few days to be able to review and inform us of any questions and provide comments.
As a result, what I will do is I will scan through the document. I will comment on what each slide contains without necessarily going into the details of each slide. I will not necessarily read every line or comment on every piece of information that is on the slide; I will only comment on what the slides contain, maybe make one or two comments about assumptions if relevant and I will move on. But I do expect that anyone who has a question at any point in time, please interrupt me. I will then stop and we’ll address the question and then move on.
Gisella, if you don’t mind helping me, paying attention to whoever raises their hand on the Adobe Connect it would be helpful because as I speak I may not be doing that well all the time. But I will try to pay attention to it as well. Thank you. Any question at this stage from anyone?
Okay, Gisella, I suppose we are being recorded correct.
Gisella Gruber: Correct, Xavier.
Xavier Calvez: Thank you. So we do intend to share out of this call the questions and answers that pertain to matters that may be of interest of other reviewers of the framework. We do intend to gather these questions and answers and publish them unless anyone on the call would rather that we don’t do that; and please let us know, but otherwise we intend to publish those questions and answers.
I will right away go… And Gisella, I have a hand in the presentation, don’t I? Yes, I do. I will go right away to Page 2. This is just an overview and an explanation on where we currently fit into the budget process at the time of publication of the Framework; and just a little bit of setting the stage, basically – nothing very specific at this stage.
Page 4 is providing the reference to the Strategic Plan that we have been using as we will see further in this presentation to put the Framework together. Slide 4 is a quick reminder of the overall budget timeline, and indicating on the left-hand side where we fit into the process at this stage, at the time of publication of the Framework. No specific comment on my part on this slide, but I will pause for any questions or comments that may come from you guys; and of course we can come back to any slide if we pass one that you have a question on later.
Moving on, this slide and the next lay out priorities, the ICANN priorities. These are fiscal year 2013 priorities that are derived from the strategic planning and our strategic objectives, and we are explaining here how these priorities have been defined and what we are using them for. And the next slide has the list of those priorities. Though we have numbered them on the next slide they don’t appear by order of importance; they appear just in terms of the order that they were formulated and how they correspond to the strategic planning.
It is obviously important for us to obtain further feedback from all of you on these priorities to understand if there are priorities that you believe should be retained and are not there, or should be formulated differently. These are our headlines; they are not detailed nor do they mean to be. These are not meant to represent an action plan – it just means to formulate a direction of activity that then projects or core operations should fit into in the fiscal year 2013. So we are using these priorities more as a check that the activities that are carried out and included in the budget are effectively consistent with our Strategic Plan, and we felt it was useful to formulate those for the purpose of 2013 because our Strategic Plan, as you remember, covers three different years. So this is a focus on one year out of our Strategic Plan that we’re going to be using, and we’re going to be using those priorities continuously through the budget process.
Going further down, the next slide just presents those same priorities assigned by the strategic pillar to which they correspond as per our Strategic Plan, and I would assume most of you would recognize those four columns being the four pillars of our Strategic Plan. This just enables us to see the correspondence between the Strategic Plan and the priorities.
Slide 8 is aiming at providing an overview of the composite view of the budget that we presented also last year, aiming at distinguishing between the various sources of information and input for the budget at a high level. Just as a matter of precision, the core operations that appear there, we are providing a view of the list of activities that are a part of that on the next slide; but the core operations costs that are included in the blue box below the title “Core Operations” include all of the staffs’ costs even though a fair portion of the staffs’ time is spent on strategic projects that appear on the higher-left part of the chart. So the staffs’ cost is not allocated to projects; they appear entirely in the core operations with only exceptionally when staffs’ time is entirely dedicated to a given project, then their costs appear on the higher-left part of the chart.
The next slide is just providing similar information but just compared to the 2012 budget, and showing evolution there. And we will of course see these numbers slightly differently in relation to revenues in subsequent slides. We’re just providing a little bit of an overview of the core operations that are included on Page 10 of the…
Alan Greenberg: Xavier, it’s Alan Greenberg. I have a question on the previous slide.
Xavier Calvez: Yes? Sure, let me come back there. Yes.
Alan Greenberg: You’re showing gTLD application processing expenses there. Are you also showing the revenue associated with the… I thought those were being segregated into a separate budget.
Xavier Calvez: Yes. So because we’re just looking at expenses here you only see expenses. They’re both for core and new gTLD application process but further in the slides we will see revenue information as well.
Alan Greenberg: So you’re taking the revenue which you will get to a large extent in a lump sum and prorating it over multiple years?
Xavier Calvez: Yes. We are providing an overview of the assumptions that have been retained for that purpose, but from a revenue recognition perspective we will spread the revenues over… We will receive the cash as you know during the application period which closes on April 12th so we will have received the cash by then; but from a revenue recognition perspective the revenue will be recognized over a two-year period – a two-fiscal year period it will be recognized, 2012-2013, and we will have an overview of that on the next slides.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, thank you.
Xavier Calvez: No problem. Moving on, so these Slides 10 and 11 are just providing an overview of the core operations; there’ll be a bit more detail on Slide 11 than on Slide 10.
Slide 12 through 20 I think deal with or provide an overview of the projects, the strategic projects, and I will go over this Slide 12 in a little bit more detail. We want to show the roll forward of projects from the list of 2012 to the list of 2013. So you see on the left in blue the list of projects for 2012 that have been part of the fiscal year 2012 budget approval and that we are working on this year.
On the higher end of this column in blue you see projects that appear in the white area, not highlighted. These projects are the ones that are expected to be completed by the end of the fiscal year and therefore will not carry over into 2013. The lower end of that column in blue where you can see projects that are shaded in blue – those are projects that are part of 2012 and are expected to carry over as well in 2013. You can find them then also appearing on the higher end of the right red column for the 2013 list of projects.
In addition to those on the lower end of this red right column, not shaded, you see a list of new projects for 2013 and those projects are resulting from the input of a number of departments of the staff that have themselves formulated those as part of their work on putting together the Framework; of course resulting also from a number of discussions with the community. And we want to make sure by providing this list that all the community has the opportunity to review the existence of the new project and to be able to weigh in on providing whether the project is there or not there of course; and if there’s a project that doesn’t appear here that is considered important missing, obviously this is the type of input that we would like to receive not necessarily on this call but down the road.
And sorry – we also provide on the next slide an overview of these 2013 projects which provides an indication of an envelope, a dollar envelope for these projects which is at this stage more an indication than a very precise budget. The departments have attempted to formulate a high-level estimate of what the project would be, and we felt it was useful to provide that information in order for all of you to gain an understanding as to the level of complexity, the magnitude, the importance that are given to each of the projects so that you can formulate your own opinion as to whether you feel that it appears consistent with what you would expect for such a project.
It’s not meant to be at this stage… We’re not asking you to check the numbers or correct from an arithmetical point of view; we’re not providing all the assumptions that are below normal budget amounts and the departments have not yet done that either. They have tried to formulate an envelope at this stage based on their understanding of the stage of development of the project; so those are relatively high-level but we felt it was useful to provide that information so that we can all put a price tag, at least at this stage, behind each project.
You can see on this slide as well, Slide 13, the third column from the left indicates a slide number referring to a slide that’s in the next slides down of the presentation. And I will move on to an example of that page, so Page 15 for example shows that we have provided a number of comments on the selected list of the projects. We’ve basically taken the top ten projects of 2012 that carry over in 2013 and the top ten new projects of 2013. And for that series of twenty projects we have provided a box like the ones that you see on Slide 15 to provide a bit more comments on what those projects are.
So you can see the reference to those pages on Slide 13; the third column from the left refers to that. The very right column called “FY2013 Priority” is an attempt for us to provide which priority do the projects refer to. I indicated earlier in the presentation that we wanted to help ourselves, ensuring consistently that activities that are carried out in the fiscal year 2013 are consistent with our strategic objectives, and that for this purpose we formulated priorities for 2013. So in order to show this consistency, we are indicating in front of each of the projects the priority to which this project contribute, and thus resulting in consistency with the strategic objectives as well.
There may be sometimes projects that address two different priorities but for the sake of simplicity we have picked the main one when that was the case. And you can see the total attached to this list of projects as $11.5 million which you have seen on the previous slide of the composite view of the budget.
Moving on, the next slide provides a list of projects that is on our list of projects to look at that were slightly less advanced in terms of their formulation by the various departments of the staff in that we have indicated there, though we had a little bit less information on them but we thought it was useful for everyone to note that they’re on our list to work on. So those are the projects that appear on Slide 14.
So I am flying over Slide 15 through 20. All of those slides provide further comments on the projects, at least on the top ten of the two categories of projects.
Alan Greenberg: Xavier, it’s Alan. Could we have a chance to look in a little bit more detail on the “Engage new stakeholders” and “Compliance” ones? I think those are 16 and 19; I’m not sure, though.
Xavier Calvez: Sure. So it must be 16, let me go there. Neither, let me go back…
Alan Greenberg: No, compliance was there.
Xavier Calvez: Oh, you said compliance, sorry. Yes, go ahead.
Alan Greenberg: Yes, I just wanted to take a chance to look at what was in the box.
Xavier Calvez: Oh, we’re expecting you guys to do that, but of course also outside of this call as well, but please, take time. But this is not the time when we’re expecting to receive all your comments. We’re expecting you to take the time over the next days to be able to look at this Framework. We just wanted to make sure we get a chance to explain to you the Framework overall, so if you have any questions on compliance?
Alan Greenberg: No, no, I just wanted to see what was there as we were flying by now, thank you.
Xavier Calvez: Okay, sorry.
Alan Greenberg: Okay, you can go on.
Xavier Calvez: And there is a bit more detailed list of activities that have been formulated by Maguy Serad supporting this specific project, so if you would like we can provide a little bit more color behind what this project is about. And I know Maguy has basically the plan for her department that’s being formulated and I’m sure she can provide similar feedback on this as you would like.
So coming back to one of your earlier questions, the Slides 21 and 22 provide the fiscal year 2013 current view of the New gTLD Program. We felt it was useful to present those assumptions that have been formulated to pull together the consolidated figures that will appear on Slide 22. We felt it was useful to present the new gTLD impact first because they are very meaningful, so that when you move on to Slide 22 which has the consolidated view you will have a better understanding of what fits in there.
So we’re providing a certain amount of assumptions on the new gTLD applications’ impacts on Slide 21 and we are making some comments here on the timing of recognition of revenue and expenses which is something that is driven obviously by accounting principles that we have to go by; and we are currently reviewing and formulating further these accounting principles and finalizing the recognition principles that we will have to apply.
Moving on to the next slide… So this is an overview of the new gTLD applications process’ impacts, both in terms of revenues and costs. The left-hand side of the slide, the grey-shaded columns show the impact that were estimated at the time of the budget 2012 which was published in June last year. The right part of the chart, the colored columns, show the same information but a current view – meaning determined as of today.
The assumptions are the same in terms of the number of applications; in both cases we are working with an assumption of 500 applications which we don’t…. Basically whether in June last year or now we don’t have better or more information to formulate number of applications. The only thing we know, and I want to make the point relative to the budget process, is that we don’t know the number of applications that we’re going to receive today. We will know that number by May 1st, May 1st being the date that we publish the list of strings that have been applied for. It also happens to be the day that we will publish the budget, the detailed budget for public comment on, which means that we will have to construct this draft budget without knowing the number of applications that we have received; though by the time we publish the budget that number will be known, and as a result the budget will be basically more or less obsolete right at the time it’s published just because the number of applications will I’m assuming be different than what we will have retained.
So we will formulate various scenarios of the budget based on different numbers of applications, and of course the final budget will retain the actual number of applications that we will have received. But the draft budget provided for public comment will not have that final number in. This is just an unfortunate timing impact.
Any questions at this stage on the new gTLD impacts? While you’re formulating questions, in case you would have any of those, we have amended the timing of both revenues and expenses between ’12 and ’13 just to make some corrections to the assumptions of when we would recognize both revenues and expenses on the basis of those 500 applications. That’s the difference between the left columns and the right columns.
Someone raised their hand.
Pastor Peters: Hello, this is Peters. Can I go on?
Xavier Calvez: Yes please.
Pastor Peters: First of all, apologies for the background noise. My question is about the breakup of some of the expenditures. For example, if you take a look at the item of evaluation [time for ‘12] is $10 million, and for the year ’13 it’s $11.8 million. Does the budget go into the breakup of how this implementation [outplay] is to be detailed? For example, what portion of the money is to be spent on legal services and what proportion of the money is to be spent on external consultancy, and what percentage of the allocation is… And also an estimation of internal expenses.
Xavier Calvez: Okay, so…
Pastor Peters: So the main thing is [it says] these things will cost about $11 million. That’s not a clear picture and this is just one of the items. I’ll go into mute because of background noise.
Xavier Calvez: Okay. And if you don’t mind I will try to address probably partially only at this stage your question because I think you’re asking for more details which we can’t provide during this call; we probably need to have a written answer to be more comprehensive and precise. But we can provide more explanation as to what each of the lines include.
I don’t want to preempt the fact that I may be wrong in saying this but I’ll correct in a written answer, but I think that most of the internal costs of basically staff and office space that are specific to new gTLD teams and so on appear in the lower end of the expense part of this schedule, under the title that’s saying “Fixed”; and the variable costs, what appears under “Variable Costs” is basically external costs only.
And for example, you mentioned the panel costs – those are the costs to basically have the applications reviewed. There’s several layers of review; there’s several iterations of the same reviews to ensure consistency and so on. There’s a fairly detailed process for the review of the applications and that review process is the one that is outsourced to consulting firms, and that drives those costs there. We can provide more details on that.
The only thing I would ask is that because I think your question is relevant to obtaining further detail and because also at least I could not hear very well everything that you said, I would like if you don’t mind that you can formulate your question maybe in more details in writing and send it to us so that we can address it correctly and take the time to address it correctly if you don’t mind.
Pastor Peters: Yes, I would like to send that question in writing and I would like a detailed response. Thank you.
Xavier Calvez: Okay, perfect, that sounds good. Thank you. We’ll move on unless there are any other questions? Sorry, let me move over here…
So further assumptions, details relative to the new gTLD costs and revenues, and that leads us on this Slide 24 to the consolidated framework numbers that include both new gTLD impacts as well as the core operations impacts. Just as a reminder, the leftmost columns shaded in grey correspond to the adopted budget in Singapore 2012 at that time; and the fiscal year 2013 current view are the numbers that we have basically a slightly different view than some of the numbers that you’ve seen before that show revenues and expenses for both core operations and projects and new gTLDs and the total.
Just something that I don’t think I’ve mentioned before in other presentations, and just from a tracking perspective and from an accounting perspective, we are accounting for the core operations and projects in separate entity – not legal entity but accounting entity – than the New gTLD Program so that we can permanently have a complete distinction between the two and segregation between the two.
So I just want to make sure that it’s clear for everyone what this slide presents. The 2013 core operations number appear on the third column from the right under the title “Core Operations and Projects.” The new gTLD figures that appear on the second column from the right come from the previous Slide 22 from memory, and those two columns added together provide the first column on the right.
Heidi Ullrich: Xavier, this is Heidi?
Xavier Calvez: Sure.
Heidi Ullrich: Yes, Dev has a question.
Xavier Calvez: Yes.
Heidi Ullrich: Dev, please.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Hi, can you hear me?
Xavier Calvez: Not very well but we can try.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, I’ll try to come closer to the microphone – sorry about that. This is regarding the new gTLD framework and the budget. I saw that there was a budget for the independent objector for $4 million projected, but I didn’t see any allocation for ALAC. Because in the Applicant Guidebook, it states in the Applicant Guidebook that funding is available to ALAC to file an objection and for the dispute resolution service provider fees. So I could be wrong but I didn’t see that in that table.
Xavier Calvez: So you’re talking about objections that can be performed, can be provided by ALAC and you’re talking about the fees that can be driven by such an objection?
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Correct. I just posted it in the chat. It says in the Applicant Guidebook that funding from ICANN is available for objecting filing fees as well as [various team members’] costs.
Xavier Calvez: Understood. So I don’t know that this is included or not in these detailed numbers but I will verify and I will let you know.
Dev Anand Teelucksingh: Okay, thank you.
Xavier Calvez: No problem. Moving on from this slide, the Slides 25 to 29 from memory provide a bit more information as to the assumptions that have been retained to formulate the Framework at this stage. Under “Scopes Change” we’ve just indicated meaningful changes of approach for a number of elements; either there are changes or they are a repeat of certain assumptions, but we just felt that it was useful to provide that view
The next slides provide a little bit more color as to the cost assumptions in terms of various natures of costs. Slide 27 provides a bit more color on the infrastructure-related type of costs; and then Slides 28 and 29 provide a bit of color on a number of specific departments’ activities that we are expecting will drive costs changes from 2012 into 2013 for the purpose of the budget.
Again, I am expecting that you guys will be able to spend a little bit more time on these slides. Slides 30 to 32 provide an overview of the revenues and the assumptions that have been used to formulate the revenues. And please, I see the chat relative to the GAC objections and so on which I completely agree with. Please be mindful that at this stage this is not a detailed budget, right? This is top-down budget, which doesn’t mean that the items should not be included but it’s not necessarily been determined by adding a detailed item onto the other but to formulate trends.
So the items that you’re mentioning, we will list them to be able to come back to all of you on where these costs are included in the budget or will be included in the detailed budget once we publish it. And we will complete the question from Dev with the GAC objections and others, depending upon what the cost assumptions are for those. What I’m not yet clear on is what costs are driven by those objections but we will formulate those.
Moving on from Slide 30 to 31, again, these are the revenue assumptions as well as 32. And that brings us to about the end of the presentation. We’re also providing a little bit of information relative to contingency fund which is obviously at this stage only an envelope and an assumption; and a few next steps for the community input. And that is it.
At this stage I would just want to know if there is, outside of the questions that already have been formulated, any others that you would like to formulate? Again, we are expecting that you will provide your questions maybe more detailed after this call over the next few days. We will also consolidate the comments that have been received so far either from you or from other organizations with which we have had already calls. And we will also of course provide the answers to all those comments.
While I was saying that and scrolling back up to the beginning of the presentation are there any other questions or comments that anyone would want to formulate?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Yes, Xavier, it’s Olivier here. I had a couple of questions. One was to do with the community requests. I noticed that your FY12 Framework… Well, your fiscal year ‘12 budget was $597,000 SO and AC whilst the other side was nearly half a million, so $500,000. Was the same allocation given last year and was there a budget overrun, or was it a larger allocation last year than it is this year?
Xavier Calvez: I don’t think it’s necessarily related. What I mean by that is I think that the budget for special requests was $597,000 last year because of the requests that had been included. As you may remember in this Framework, the envelop of $500,000 is only a placeholder because as you know we are going through the process of the SO and AC requests. We do not have at this stage a comprehensive review of what those requests are and we expect to have that in the next day or two. But once we will have the full view then we will go through the process of prioritization with all of you to determine what requests make their way into the budget, and we will see what that totals up to be.
The $500,000 is just an envelope, a placeholder that has been determined prior to getting into the process of formulating those requests, and when we will have completed that process and completed the process of selection then we will know what the number is. What I mean by that is we may all decide together that we think the requests added together that need to be satisfied this year add up to $550,000 or $600,000 or $450,000 – I don’t know what the amount is.
But this is only a placeholder at this stage so it doesn’t tell anything specific other than we’re planning for a certain amount for now and it may be different when we’re done with this process. And it’s unrelated to last year other than in terms of magnitude in the sense that it’s just meant to be something more or less similar to what existed last year. Am I answering correctly your question, Olivier?
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: I think I might have been muted; can you hear me?
Xavier Calvez: We can hear you now.
Olivier Crépin-Leblond: Okay, yes – I was probably muted because there’s a lot of noise here. Yes, thank you very much, Xavier. That’s very helpful.
Xavier Calvez: No problem. Was somebody else asking a question?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Xavier?
Xavier Calvez: Yes, Tijani?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, I have a few questions about your presentation…
[background conversation]
Xavier Calvez: Olivier, I think you are not muted anymore.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay. So on Page 6 we can see the [study correlatives], and the #9 is effectively to [promote] SO and AC and Board increasing activities.
Xavier Calvez: Yes.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: But on Page 9 we can read that the community requests drop from $597,000 to $500,000 only. So it is not a strategic priority to help SO and AC.
Xavier Calvez: Well, it is a priority because there’s still an amount but I don’t want that you guys focus too much on the amount that is a number of thousands below what it was in the budget or what it will be in actual. Again, the $500,000 is only an envelope. So the priority is the fact that we’re making sure that we have a process that enables or requests to support the organization and the $500,000 or the $597,000 does not come close to representing the support to the community – there’s much more than that that happens. These are only the additional requests from the community.
And the $500,000, as I indicated to Olivier just before for his question, is not set in stone. It’s just the envelope that we have put aside for the moment until we have a better view of what the requests are. I think this budget was also the same in the Framework for 2012, though the end amount ended up being different. But maybe I will have more comments on that later but that’s what it is. So I think you can consider it a priority because there is in both years the intent to ensure that we are able to handle both the core support of the community as well as specific requests. It doesn’t mean that it’s changing priority.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay. So another question now on Page 15, that is the support of DNSSEC adoption by ISPs and we have here $400,000. And on Page 17 we have the same task budgeted also in the envelope of $210,000. So I don’t know why it is budgeted twice.
Xavier Calvez: Sorry, you referred first to which page – 13?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Page 15.
Xavier Calvez: Yes, Page 15 – DNS security, $400,000. And then Page 17?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Page 17 – Support DNSSEC adoption by ISPs, also twice, the second time.
Xavier Calvez: Yeah, I understand your point. The columns are similar; I’m not sure if it’s necessarily exclusively overlapping. I’m not sure it’s exactly the same thing but I see your point and I will clarify that because we shouldn’t mention the ISPs in both projects to your point. And if there is an overlap we need to make sure that… I don’t know offhand because I don’t know the details of both of these specific projects, but I see your point and I agree that there should not be an overlap; and if there is then there is a double count of some kind. But we will verify whether there is that kind of overlap or not. Thank you for pointing that out.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Okay, another question now: the IDN variants management implementation and further studies are very costly. I see that the amount set for them is very, very high --[$3 million, or almost $3 million]. So for the implementation, I don’t know how much does it cost; but for the further studies, as I see the program I think that it is done substantially by the community and the staff. So I don’t know why we need $950,000. It is on Page 18.
Xavier Calvez: Yes. So coming back to my point earlier we will provide more views as to how these costs have been formulated to see what’s included in it and not included in it. I think that… Let me go back to Page 17 again.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, 18.
Xavier Calvez: Yeah, 18, sorry.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: So for example the implementation is $101,000 and $850,000 is how much it will cost. I will not argue about it. But for the further studies, from what I have seen and as we’re working now it is especially done by the community and the staff.
Xavier Calvez: Okay. We will circle back with Kurt’s team on that because I think that it’s his team that’s formulated that and will provide more detail on it, because the question obviously is who performs those visual similarity rules, whole string variants and mirroring and so on, and what resources contribute to that. And what’s been formulated for that is $950,000. So I understand the question I think and we will circle back to Kurt’s team to precise this and provide your comment and give you an answer.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you. So on Page 20 you are mentioning the intercessional meetings requested by the community. I think that this amount has to go to the additional requests by the community.
Xavier Calvez: Well, they will go if they are being formulated as additional requests but there is also… And this is why there’s not necessarily a perfect distinction between what will ultimately be an additional request versus the core operation if we make that type of distinction. I know that the staff has also formulated the need for intercessional meetings and when we see the requests, when we have analyzed all the requests through we’ll have a view as to whether one fits under the other or not; which is one of the several reasons why the slide indicates a relative amount at this stage until we know better.
But I agree with you that these two elements, one in core and what could potentially come from the additional requests, will have to be sorted out when we have a better view on it. I agree.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you, Xavier. Last question please: on Page 31, once again we can note that the fees for registries are arbitrary. They vary from a registry to another, and for the FY12 we submitted a statement saying that we have to [enforce] the contracts of those registries with exceptions for the public interest registries; not for the commercial ones. Because I see now for example Verisign doesn’t pay for .com the fixed fees.
Xavier Calvez: Sorry, they don’t…? I didn’t hear you well. I didn’t hear what you said about Verisign.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: No, no – you will not see it here. I know by the budget of last year, but here it is not written. But it is written that the fees are not the same for all the registries. If the exception is done for the public interest registries it will be okay, but if it is done for the commercial ones I think it is not normal to [take that proportion].
Xavier Calvez: Sorry, Tijani, I did not understand what you’re saying. When you say if it was done or if it was not done, I don’t know what “it” is. I don’t know what you are referring to.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: So if you go to Page 31 you will see that there is just the fees paid by the registries are according to contracts. And the contracts are not the same. If I recall the fees paid by each registry, I can tell you that for example .com doesn’t pay the fixed fee; they pay only the transaction fees.
Xavier Calvez: No, it’s the opposite – they pay only the fixed fee and not the transaction fee.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Oh, yes. Excuse me, yes – they pay the fixed one but they don’t pay the transaction fees. And this is, we said in our previous statement about the FY12 Framework, that it is not normal that the contracted registries don’t pay the same thing if they are commercial, all commercial. We understand that the public interest registries be treated otherwise but for all the commercial ones, they have to be treated on the same level.
Xavier Calvez: And unless I’m mistaken, and this is a general statement – this is not necessarily an exact answer to your question, and I don’t know that there’s a direct question either in your comment. But I think what we are trying to do is as the contracts get renewed, we try to convert them to a standard type of contract. But the contracts have a number of years to run in front of them and until we have that renewal, changing the contracts is not necessarily something that’s possible or that’s… Sometimes it is possible of course but with potential risks or impacts on the terms of those contracts.
So it’s not just a matter of saying “We want everybody to be the same and we’re going to change the contract.” There is a history and there is a contractual agreement that we have to respect. So I think that we are trying to converge all those contracts towards the same template as they get renewed but they are multi-year contracts as well, so it doesn’t happen overnight and it will only happen at best over time as we manage to get those contracts looking like each other.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you very much. I am sorry to ask all those questions.
Xavier Calvez: You should not be. That’s what we’re here for. That’s exactly the purpose of this call. So that’s fine, thank you.
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Thank you.
Xavier Calvez: Any other questions? I don’t see anybody else raising hands in the room other than what Tijani had. Olivier, do you want to conclude the call at this stage if you can? I don’t know if we still have Olivier on the phone or not.
Heidi Ullrich: Tijani, would you like to end the call?
Tijani Ben Jemaa: Yes, yes, thank you very much. Okay Xavier, thank you. Thank you for your presentation and thank you for your patience. It was very important. We will comment on the Framework on time and if there is no other questions I will thank you and I will close this meeting.
Xavier Calvez: Thank you to everyone for participating and for your questions, and we will follow up with publishing the questions that we will have received and answering them as well of course. Thank you very much for everyone and good end of day, whatever time it is now on your end.
[End of Transcript]
