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In January 2021, Joanna Kulesza was appointed as the shadow ALAC Liaison to the GAC. 

GAC Liaison's Report on ALAC-GAC Meeting at Virtual ICANN70

21 April, 2021

A joint meeting of  the ALAC/At-Large and the GAC was held at the virtual ICANN70 on Tuesday, March 23, 2021.  On the agenda were the two perennial items – EPDP and SubPro – and ATRT 3, a new subject for ALAC-GAC discussion. 

In a way, the meeting marked a new stage in the cooperation between the two advisory committees in that substantive discussion on both EDPD and SubPro has increasingly moved to intersessional meetings  specifically held on each issue in the LT+topic leads format.   Thus, the role of the full joint sessions at ICANN meetings has somewhat shifted towards reviewing and assessing the progress of the practical cooperation between the experts on both sides, in addition to searching for new policy areas where the two committees could benefit from working together.

EPDP

Drawing on his 10-11 year of experience from discussions with the GAC, and remembering the beginnings of cooperation with occasional joint statements, Alan Greenberg gave high marks to the present level of cooperation on EPDP :“In my wildest dreams I never thought it would come to this…”  He praised the GAC representatives as marvelous, both active and vocal team, with whom “we are pretty much 100% in sync on most of the important subjects, so I’m just delighted about how well the two groups are working together, and I’m so delighted how much the GAC people are putting in because it takes a lot of pressure off us.”

Laureen Kapin agreed that the representatives of both AC’s are very much in sync and working together better than ever.  Both she and Hadia El-Miniawi mentioned the efforts to take into account concerns of the contracted parties on the natural/legal distinction, and both expressed a hope  on eventually coming up with policy recommendations that “take us to a better place than where we are now” (Laureen). Hadia also raised the possibility of the Phase 2A being terminated without result, and Manal Ismail confirmed it has been a worry for the GAC as well.

Alan mentioned that the contracted parties are pushing for deciding on guidelines instead of consensus policies, which is not really the job for a PDP. Laureen stressed that the GAC is in full accord that PDP should produce requirements rather tan just aspirational goals, valuing if course those who elect to go above and beyond what contracts require and engage in best practices.

SubPro

Justine Chew echoed the comments made by Alan regarding the excellent cooperation between the ALAC and the GAC. She noted that the ALAC is preparing its advice to the Board, and explained the four items that are going to included  in addition to those raised in the report of the SubPro report.  She also said she didn’t believe that although we are now at the stage where advice to the Board will be issued, this will not be the end of opportunities for ALAC-GAC cooperation the SubPro.   There’s still going to be Operational Design Phase, and the implementation, where the ALAC and the GAC  will have a role to play.

Jorge Cancio agreed on the good cooperation on SubPro and pointed out the dedicated intersessional call on 20 January as exceedingly productive.

At ICANN70, the GAC had focused on SubPro at three sessions, of which  Luisa Paez gave a summary. The items discussed by the GAC included predictability of the applications process, public interest commitments, applicants’ support, closed generics and GAC advice.

Alan took up the concerns expressed by the Board as to the mission limits of the ICANN that may limit enforceability,but argued that a careful reading of the Bylaws says ICANN cannot impose its views on content, and that this would not be the case if a registry voluntarily agrees to content-related commitments.

ATRT 3

Sébastien Bachollet, who was one of ALAC representatives on the third accountability and transparency review team and had had proposed ATRT3 to the agenda, gave a summary of the Board scorecard of the recommendations of the third accountability and transparency review.

Manal noted that the GAC had been actively involved in the community assessment and feedback effort of ATRT3, but mainly focusing on parts relevant to the GAC. As the GAC is not subject to organizational reviews, it relies mainly on ATRT reviews for feedback. This time there were no recommendations, and only a few suggestions to to the GAC. (Contained on pp. 174-181 of the ATRT3 Report, https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=66083811&preview=/66083811/136120478/ATRT3_Final_Report.pdf

Sébastian pointed out a suggestion that the GAC could be taken as another AC with the continuous improvement, and that the ATRT and the holistic review would take that into account. Manal said the GAC will take note and look into it, and it could well become another topic for coordination and cooperation.

The GAC Communiqué

In the part of the GAC Communique dealing with SubPro, there were a couple of references to ALAC positions:

• Relative to Community Based Applications, some GAC mMembers expressed support for a GAC alignment to At-Large positions in the ALAC MinorityStatement, especially relating to CommunityPriority Evaluations (CPE).

• On Auctions/Mechanisms of Last Resort, some GAC Members supported the At-Large MinorityStatement on disincentivizing auctions of last resort and that the use of a bona fide intentaffirmation should supplement applications, not only those which fall into contention sets

Some possible next steps envisaged in the GAC Communiqué included further coordination/cooperation with the ALAC/At-Large:

GAC members discussed potential next steps for theGAC to consider, including:

• Review of advice envisaged by At-Large for ICANN70,which could provide a basis for a GACconsensus comment in the forthcoming Public Commentproceeding;

• A potential intersessional statement from the GACto the ICANN Board (separately or jointlywith the ALAC); and

• Potential GAC Consensus Advice to the ICANN Boardbefore it votes on the SubPro PDP FinalReport.

Follow-up after ICANN70

In view of the GAC interest expressed in the Communiqué, I relayed the draft ALAC Advice to the GAC Leadership and SubPro topic leads after it was cleared by the CPWG, and Justine sent then the final version immediately after it was approved by the GAC.

The ALAC Advice was discussed preliminarily at the GAC Leadership call on 19 April. In his e-mail, Jorge Cancio said GAC will factor it into the preparations for a GAC consensus input to the Public Comments period:

“We will look into the substance and the next steps for the development of GAC positions in a specific internal GAC topic leads’ call later this week, and will then come back to you regarding how we can further align our mutual positions in this phase of the process – possibly a common call may help in sharing information and exchanging on positions.”

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GAC Liaison’s Report on Intersessional Meetings, December 2020 - January 2021

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