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Yrjö was previously a GAC member representing Finland, and a member of the ICANN President's Strategy Committee and has been active in At-Large since 2009. He is currently a delegate to the Nominating Committee

GAC Liaison’s Report on ICANN 67 Virtual Community Forum

Like other ICANN constituencies, the GAC managed to adapt smoothly  to the virtual format of ICANN67, gathering a number of online participants (61 Members, 6 Observers)  comparable to face-to-face meetings in recent years, conducting its core business and drafting a communiqué, however without any formal Consensus Advice, which would have required a face-to-face meeting.  The focus of the meeting was clearly on the issue of Subsequent rounds of new gTLD’s, which was dealt with  both at GAC meetings proper and at its sessions with the Board, the SubPro PDP WG and the ALAC/At Large. In addition, GAC capacity building sessions were devoted to this topic in their entirety.  This emphasis is understandable in view of the rapid turnout of national representatives to the GAC. There are not so many left from the days of the lively discussions 2008-2012, when the GAC played an important role in shaping the modalities of the 2012 round, as it itself was transformed by the process into an operative component of the new gTLD-generating

mechanism.  Recent capacity building efforts seem to have borne fruit, and the GAC is now coming up to speed on this issue, something of great importance also for ALAC/At-Large (see below).

The other two topics mentioned in the communiqué as “issues of importance to the GAC” were Acquisition of PIR (.org) and Domain name registration directory service and data protection (EPDP).

 Unlike a normal face-to-face meeting, where the GAC  (or its WGs) may have a dozen bilateral meetings with other ICANN bodies, the online GAC at ICANN67 had to cut down on dialogue sessions, including an informal meeting that its Public Safety Working Group wanted to have with interested ALAC/At-Large participants  on DNS Abuse.  However, as its only bilateral meeting with another SO/AC at “virtual Cancun”, the GAC met with ALAC/At-Large, as it had at every ICANN meeting since the summer 2016.

ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN67, Wednesday March 11

When a planned face-to-face meeting had to turned into an online one at a couple weeks’ notice, just the absolutely necessary could fit in.  In keeping with this constraint, the joint ALAC-GAC meeting focused on just the two issues high on the agenda of both - SubPro and EPDP – and on the search of possible common ground within them.

SubPro

On the SubPro, intersessional dialogue between the GAC SubPro Focus Group with ALAC/At-Large was suggested by the GAC side already at ICANN64 (Marrakech, June 2019). However, the GAC group had first to focus on capacity building activities. The first intersessional meeting on the topic was held in February 2020, as an “appendix” to the GAC/ALAC leadership call, with Luisa Paez, the Chair of the GAC Focus Group, and Justine Chew, the Chair of the ALAC/At-Large Small Team on SubPro, as the main speakers. Both sides also exchanged the draft score cards on various aspects of SubPro.

At the joint meeting at ICANN67, Justine Chew presented a chart showing the ALAC/At-Large high level process of producing scorecards which ultimately will form its position, with  cooperation with the GAC built in.

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She then presented the list of SubPro topics of interest to ALAC/At-Large and asked for the GAC perspective and inputs on them and whether consensus has been reached within the GAC on them.

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Replying to Justine, GAC Chair Manal Ismael said GAC had  prioritized  five  SubPro topics,  namely  1)closed generics TLDs, 2) public interest commitments, 3) GAC early warnings and GAC advice, 4) applicant support program and underserved regions, and 5) community-based applications.

Jorge Cancio added  that GAC discussions have gone to the substance on public interest commitment, GAC early warnings,  applicant support programs and closed generics. The work of finding possible new consensus positions on the specifics of the of the recommendations being elaborated by the PDP working group will take place intersessionally. GAC is basing its discussions on consensus positions dating back the GAC principles on new gTLDs dating back to 2007 so that it is not starting from scratch.

Luisa Paez noted that GAC has still a lot of internal work to do intersessionally, but that it is encouraging that ALAC has a dedicated group looking at their priorities, and that there is an alignment on a few items.  GAG is open to have further intersessional calls with ALAC and noted that it is helpful to get a sense again of where  the ALAC is moving, and those exchanges will help also to build the GAC capacity as well.

EPDP

Hadia El-Miniawi presented possible EPDP topics that might be of mutual interest for both the ALAC and the GAC:

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Commenting on Hadia’s presentation, Giorgios Tselentsis said that the ALAC and the GAC, in his view, have a quite good collaboration in the EPDP. He not only agreed that the points presented by Hadia were of mutual interest, but also, on most of them, the GAC and the ALAC are practically aligned. This was also confirmed by Alan Greenberg and Laureen Kapin in their comments.

The transcript of the meeting can be found at https://67.schedule.icann.org/meetings/1152550

Yrjö Länsipuro

ALAC Liaison to the GAC

ALAC-GAC meeting at ICANN66, Montreal, 5 November, 2019

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