2019-10-08 PDP3.0

Notes/ Action Items

ACTION ITEMS

- Staff to update the proposed documents for Improvements #13 and #5, incorporating input from Darcy and the small team, and prepare them for the delivery to the Council prior to its October meeting.

NOTES

1. Welcome and roll call

2. Improvement #13

- Get this improvement wrapped up, just having a couple of items that need to be completed.

- Added text in Section B to include more details about the review setup.

- Section C includes specified verbal input.  

- Section D has some clean up.

- Section E provides text to clarify that the template may be adjusted.

- Section F has a set of questions, and no commentary on those from the small team. Added a non-exhaustive list of issues the Council could seek to address in the review process. Added another section about the mitigation strategy to address the issues (e.g., status and condition code change).

- Section G is about escalation, which needs more guidance/feedback. Follow steps 1-4. The bigger question is what to do, under the exceptional circumstances, when the mitigation steps do not work. Do we need more detailed process about the WG leadership removal, even include something in the Operating Procedures? It would make sense to add some guideline on the removal of a WG leader. Might not be necessary to change the Operating Procedure.

- Give Darcy a chance to review the added text in Section G. It may be related to other work underway, such as 3.7 and the escalation procedure. It may not be needed to over engineer this procedure now, and we can see how other related improvements play out.

- It is hard to remove a leader who is a volunteer. So perhaps change this sentence “Under these rare circumstances it is within the authority of the GNSO Council as manager of the policy development process to remove and replace a member of the PDP leadership team or the full leadership team” to something softer.

- But playing devil’s advocate, what if someone doesn’t step down if you ask them nicely? Do you need to keep that ability to force a change?

- If it's not clear about powers to remove chair, the GNSO Council do have the power to terminate a WG.

3. Improvement #5

- The most important thing is to provide more details about what a liaison is supposed to do.

- It is to provide more clarity on the role of liaisons, adding more specificity, including regular reporting duty to the Council. Listed the steps for reporting at a high level.

- Liaisons are tasked to identify material changes and milestones in collaboration with WG leadership and staff.

- Liaison is a conduit of information and escalation of issues to the Council.

- Need to understand what the expectations for liaisons are realistic, taking into account their workload. Need to find a balance.

- The level of details is not just for the liaisons, but also for the Council, Council leadership, and the WG leadership. Need to see what is “too much detail”.

- Improvement #5 is an outcome from the breakout session of SPS2018, as a few Council members feel the description of liaison roles was lacking details. This was the genesis of this particular document.

- Provide “estimate” to help liaisons evaluate time needed to fulfill their obligations (e.g., attending WG meetings, WG leadership/staff/liaison meetings, processing emails)? Can provide a range of hours a liaison should commit, perhaps. It varies in range depending on how engaged or interested they are in the topic.

- ACTION ITEM: Staff to update the proposed documents for Improvements #13 and #5, incorporating input from Darcy and the small team, and prepare them for the delivery to the Council prior to its October meeting.

4. AOB

- Target delivery date for Improvements #13 and #5 is October 16, but there may be some flexibility for the Small Team to finalize the documents for an extra few more days and still deliver them before the October Council meeting.