| No. | Recommendation | Recipient | Thematic Group Source | Assignees | Status |
| 26 | Current policy management processes within ICANN are insufficient. ICANN must implement a workable Policy Management Process System, available for use across the SO/ACs, in order to: • enhance Knowledge Management, • improve the effectiveness of all ICANN volunteer communities, • improve cross-community policy-specific activity, • enhance policy development metrics, • facilitate multilingual engagement, • create a taxonomy of policy categories, • provide policy development history as an aid for newcomers. | ICANN Policy Staff; ICANN Board | TG5 |
| IN PROGRESS |
Actions:
- Chairs of these 3 WGs (Dev Anand Teelucksingh, Tijani Ben Jemaa, Leon Sanchez, Glenn McKnight, Judith Hellerstein) to discuss how to tackle this task
Capacity Building Working Group to work with Social Media Working Group & Technology Taskforce to assess the knowledge management and the policy development system
- ALAC to follow-up depending on the status update on the SOs/ACs Chairs & ICANN Leadership Meeting on Friday 6 Feb 2015
- Social Media WG to help generate the taxonomy of the policy categories and make sure the taxonomy are more accessible to newcomers/curious outsiders
- ICANN Board to help make the policy development process easily sharable via social media
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- After the ICANN 54 meeting, SMWG to hold a call and review the taxonomy used on the new At-Large website and help review and revise the topic/organization tags on statements and news articles
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- Ariel Liang to circulate the taxonomy list on the SMWG mailing list
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- Mark Segall to explore eXo platform and report back to TTF in terms of testing results
Notes:
- A project that overhauls ICANN’s information management system
- The Technology Taskforce Chair is following up with relevant ICANN Staff
- :
Technology Taskforce has discussed the tool Kavi with ICANN IT, as Kavi was tried out in GNSO. ICANN IT is unlikely to continue promoting or implementing Kavi as it does not appear to sustain the needs of GNSO (e.g. not mobile friendly, do not support multilingual work). Nonetheless, the discussion on Kavi is still useful for At-Large to understand the user profile of policy management process tools and to guide At-Large on understanding what users want/don't want.
- Technology Taskforce has recommended a few other solutions to IT that can be considered as alternative tools, and will explore other tools in the future.
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- Knowledge management is still a challenge in the community. Keeping track of action items and what is happening in the Working Group is difficult.
- Confluence has capability to include consolidated task lists for certain wiki parent pages and their respective child pages.
- To keep a concise summary / table of hot topics and key activities in working groups may help address knowledge management issue
- Staff-created weekly policy update (that includes the activities and topics in the working groups) can serve as a template for such summary/table - explore potential to publish them on the new At-Large website?
- Need to build an one-stop shop of working group/RALO/liaison reports: https://community.icann.org/x/XwCB
Input from Social Media:
- : SMWG to give feedback on the taxonomy used on the new At-Large website (tagging of news articles and policy advice Statements).
- : TTF has tested an open source software *** (Dev to provide the link)
Input from Technology Taskforce:
- The At-Large Website Redesign has been completed - part of the website design attempts to provide a policy background on policy issues as well as to create a taxonomy of policy categories and highlight policy metrics. The new website can be viewed at https://atlarge.icann.org/. The website redesign effort has significantly reduced the manual work in publicizing public comment work in At-Large, and this has been demonstrated during ICANN 53.
- The TTF will be reviewing the Policy Development Processes at the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) to see what could be adapted for At-Large Policy Development; conference call will likely happen in the end of September 2015.
Suggested Implementation Strategy
- Assemble cross sectoral technology team to determine the full scope of the project
- Allocate adequate budget for completion
- Create realistic timelines
- Roll out a beta test with assigned volunteers in each sector to test and provide feedback
- Need to provide a recommendation of best practices
- :
Reviewed and evaluated LACNIC's customized policy development process and web tools in the teleconference: https://community.icann.org/display/atlarge/At-Large+Technology+Taskforce+2015-09-21
:
TTF will investigate eXo Platform: https://www.exoplatform.com/. It can create different work rooms to facilitate policy discussions and communications, etc. Learn more about eXo here:
- Comment from Carlton Samuels: what we need is a competent librarian to do the curating. THis morning for example there was a call on the Subsequent Procedures WG for output from all communities that pronounced on the new GTLD process.
- A librarian has been hired in ICANN to look into issues mentioned in the recommendation. So far the librarian has been working on the taxonomy and search strategy with the language service team.
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- A team to test the eXo platform has been formed: https://community.icann.org/x/pAC4Aw
What do we want in a Policy Management Process System?
- To quickly find historical information on a policy issue
For example, find policy history on “new gTLDs” and get a report in chronological order.
Such searches could be further refined (e.g show history in past 4 years) or show the submissions made by a particular AC/SO on a policy issue. Such searches could be visualized using a timeline (e.g http://codyhouse.co/gem/vertical-timeline/). A system would have the policy history stored in a manner to allow for such queries. To subscribe to policy updates/notifications by interest
For a person who has a keen interest in certain policy issues (e.g IDNs), persons should be able to subscribe to receive updates on specific policy issues with links to where the discussions are happening for that AC/SO.This is where a taxonomy of policy categories to be defined for past, current and future/upcoming policies. Furthermore, a policy system could track past user interactions, so that if a person commented on a particular policy issue (e.g WHOIS), they could be notified of new, related policy issues for their review.
Track deadlines for responding to policy comments
With multiple policy comment periods happening simultaneously at different stages, a system should update a calendar or other system for the AC/SO to track and manage deadlines.The ability to read policy issues and updates in your language
Comment Periods on Policies posted for review are posted in English with translated policy documents being uploaded at a later time. Persons should be able to subscribe to notifications when policies are available in their language to review.Having the policy review process more accessible to mobile users.
With more and more users using mobile devices, the policy review process should be made accessible to such users to engage in the policy process.Reduce the manual duplication to disseminate information.
AC/SOs expend a lot of effort to manually copying and pasting text in order to disseminate policy information to the communities and to the wider public (wiki pages, emails, sharing on social media). A system should offer sharing mechanisms so that persons wanting to get the word out can do so more easily.What do you want in a Policy Management Process System?
