Question 4: If prioritizing Public Comment topics would be helpful, what method or scheme do you recommend and how would such prioritizations be established keeping in mind that Staff has recommended to the Board that it would be inappropriate for Staff to make such determinations?
A diagram is the only solution to allow objective priorization according to me.
That way, you allow the public to know which topics have to be handled in priorities.
For exemple : icann votes new tlds (great). then we need a marketing campaign. If for the campaign to start we need to have public comment, then that make a priority. Easily.
Interesting thought which raises the issue of how "priority" is defined. Is it subject importance or another measure? Should the fact that a low-ranked item has received no comments raise its importance or should it just be taken as a demonstration that it really didn't matter much?
First of all thanks a lot for your valuable contributions so far. This was voluntary work and we appreciate your dedication of time.
As we proceed towards the end of the period set for the Focus Group process, I would like to comment on few issues raised so far, regarding Topic 1, Stratification and Prioritization and make some general comments.
Public Comments are there for everyone, being a vital element towards the transparency necessary at ICANN multi-stakeholder environment. They are there to provide the opportunity to comment on each substantial piece of work before it is considered for approval. In other words, they are the last stage of ICANN Processes for the wider community feedback, regardless of which specific ICANN Community group discussed all the details so far, before the issue proceeds for final decisions. Note that considerable amount of public comments are results of various stages of Policy Development Processes (PDPs) that GNSO, ccNSO and ASO are deploying. These PDPs are not the same and they are defined by the specific groups’ needs.
In regards to passive vs proactive information supply, please note that ICANN already provides News and RSS feed subscription options on various topics. All Public Comments are part of Announcements and one can already sign-up to receive notifications when they are opened. So you can either see the open public comments by visiting the ICANN.ORG or you can choose to receive notifications about them. Knowing that on average there are about half a dozen open public comments at a given time, serious thought should be given on increasing the number of announcements about the same issue because this can pose extra overload on the reader’s side, causing further oversight.
In regards to Stratification, as many comments also made here, there is not a single magic formula. I believe this is very normal when one thinks of the diversity of issues that ICANN Community discusses within their fora. Please note that the current list was drafted after a research over the recent years’ comments, mapping them over possible common categories.
There had been some very interesting suggestions made here too and we will look if we can have these notions integrated in our current implementation plans or in future improvement plans over Public Comment processes. Some of these will depend also on the choice of platforms (like wiki) that has been discussed by the Focus Group under Topic 2 too.
With Prioritization, it gets even tougher as we have also seen from the discussions here, priority may differ from one ICANN group to another as well as from one individual to another.
Overall, a possible solution may be providing enough mechanisms that will relate to the broad ICANN Community. One idea is that the desired medium ground solution may be provided via a combination of these various mechanisms and the mechanisms can be used as building blocks for the interest level of the reader.
In practice, if something is attractive enough looking at the Title, which should provide some keywords on what the issue is about, then the next click will take you to the Comment box where you will find at the top an Originating Organization. Originating Organization is a short text to reveal which group of ICANN Community is involved with the issue. We introduced this on 30th June and some examples of it so far have been, Affirmation of Commitments Mandated Review Team, ccNSO Council, GNSO Council, ICANN Board etc. Once they are finalized, we will also have another data token there, Category, and I do not see why a combination of categories in the stratification list cannot be used here to facilitate the usage of this field to the maximum.
And then further on, Purpose, Current Status and Next Steps can tell more, including what stage the issue is at and what will be the next.
So we are hoping what we have changed so far on the Public Comments Webpages will provide a good foundation for the upcoming improvements.
Thanks again for your comments and helping us out in this difficult task!
5 Comments
Frederic Guillemaut
Hello
A diagram is the only solution to allow objective priorization according to me.
That way, you allow the public to know which topics have to be handled in priorities.
For exemple : icann votes new tlds (great). then we need a marketing campaign. If for the campaign to start we need to have public comment, then that make a priority. Easily.
And easy to translate in a diagramm.
Frederic Guillemaut
I also made a note on a method that might be subject to discussion : using the number comments to change priorities for a topic.
On one hand, it is Demagogy. On the other hand, if people are interested in a topic, why not have it higher on the list ?
On another side, having a ratio between the number of days left before the closure of the comment and the number of comment could help :
for exemple if a topic is closing soon but no one made any comments, then put it higher on the list.
These are juste thoughts, I am not saying it is easy to implement.
Don Blumenthal
Interesting thought which raises the issue of how "priority" is defined. Is it subject importance or another measure? Should the fact that a low-ranked item has received no comments raise its importance or should it just be taken as a demonstration that it really didn't matter much?
Frederic Guillemaut
Well, one reason for which public comments exist, I think, is to allow aznyone to speak "now or never" before issuing a final report / notice /policy.
In that case, it is important to gather comments. And to highlight these items with no comment one last time before they close.
That gives more credit afterxwards for the work Icann and the Staff.
Filiz Yilmaz
Dear all,
First of all thanks a lot for your valuable contributions so far. This was voluntary work and we appreciate your dedication of time.
As we proceed towards the end of the period set for the Focus Group process, I would like to comment on few issues raised so far, regarding Topic 1, Stratification and Prioritization and make some general comments.
Public Comments are there for everyone, being a vital element towards the transparency necessary at ICANN multi-stakeholder environment. They are there to provide the opportunity to comment on each substantial piece of work before it is considered for approval. In other words, they are the last stage of ICANN Processes for the wider community feedback, regardless of which specific ICANN Community group discussed all the details so far, before the issue proceeds for final decisions. Note that considerable amount of public comments are results of various stages of Policy Development Processes (PDPs) that GNSO, ccNSO and ASO are deploying. These PDPs are not the same and they are defined by the specific groups’ needs.
In regards to passive vs proactive information supply, please note that ICANN already provides News and RSS feed subscription options on various topics. All Public Comments are part of Announcements and one can already sign-up to receive notifications when they are opened. So you can either see the open public comments by visiting the ICANN.ORG or you can choose to receive notifications about them. Knowing that on average there are about half a dozen open public comments at a given time, serious thought should be given on increasing the number of announcements about the same issue because this can pose extra overload on the reader’s side, causing further oversight.
In regards to Stratification, as many comments also made here, there is not a single magic formula. I believe this is very normal when one thinks of the diversity of issues that ICANN Community discusses within their fora. Please note that the current list was drafted after a research over the recent years’ comments, mapping them over possible common categories.
There had been some very interesting suggestions made here too and we will look if we can have these notions integrated in our current implementation plans or in future improvement plans over Public Comment processes. Some of these will depend also on the choice of platforms (like wiki) that has been discussed by the Focus Group under Topic 2 too.
With Prioritization, it gets even tougher as we have also seen from the discussions here, priority may differ from one ICANN group to another as well as from one individual to another.
Overall, a possible solution may be providing enough mechanisms that will relate to the broad ICANN Community. One idea is that the desired medium ground solution may be provided via a combination of these various mechanisms and the mechanisms can be used as building blocks for the interest level of the reader.
In practice, if something is attractive enough looking at the Title, which should provide some keywords on what the issue is about, then the next click will take you to the Comment box where you will find at the top an Originating Organization. Originating Organization is a short text to reveal which group of ICANN Community is involved with the issue. We introduced this on 30th June and some examples of it so far have been, Affirmation of Commitments Mandated Review Team, ccNSO Council, GNSO Council, ICANN Board etc. Once they are finalized, we will also have another data token there, Category, and I do not see why a combination of categories in the stratification list cannot be used here to facilitate the usage of this field to the maximum.
And then further on, Purpose, Current Status and Next Steps can tell more, including what stage the issue is at and what will be the next.
So we are hoping what we have changed so far on the Public Comments Webpages will provide a good foundation for the upcoming improvements.
Thanks again for your comments and helping us out in this difficult task!
Filiz Yilmaz