Their questions were:
- ICANN and GDPR compliance: there are still issues with compliance models offered by ICANN such as lack of data minimization, maintaining thick data and giving power to GAC to come up with the tiered access and certification. Does the board see these aspects of the models as problematic? We would like to know the opinion of Board on these issues.
- Although we had talked to some Board members about the jurisdiction subgroup recommendations and their importance to facilitate global access to DNS, Board Comments on Jurisdiction Sub Group were far from positive. For example, it was even suggested by the board to consider opportunity costs in the study that needs to be done for seeking a general OFAC license. Global access to DNS is in ICANN mission if the Board believes that then asking to do opportunity costs for something that enables ICANN to do its mission might not be workable. There are other examples of not supportive comments to jurisdiction recommendations which we will discuss during the meeting if needed.
- Some of the budget cuts at ICANN will directly or indirectly affect our policy work. ICANN has an increase in personnel budget while there are a lot of cuts in community budget, and GNSO policy team which supports the GNSO policy development has had serious cuts. Community Additional Budget Request has been reduced by half and CROP was removed from this year budget without any announcement. We want to know the opinion of Board about these cuts.
- CCT-Review-Implementation: We are concerned about CCT-Review recommendations. Some of their very controversial recommendations been supported by GAC. The Review team has gone so far to recommend a contractual change (it recommends it to ICANN Board, GNSO, and a WG). The change (which we opposed in our public comment) says that:[ A. Consider directing ICANN org, in its discussions with registries, to negotiate amendments to existing Registry Agreements, or in negotiations of new Registry Agreements associated with subsequent rounds of new gTLDs to include provisions in the agreements providing incentives, including financial incentives for registries, especially open registries, to adopt proactive anti-abuse measures.] At the moment we don't see our comments on their recommendations being given due consideration. How does the board plan to implement these CCT-Review recommendations and what would be the implications if the final version of review does not include community comments?
- On many levels, GAC advice has been given undue attention. Post IANA transition, we would like the Board to honor ICANN bylaws and not look at GAC whenever it does not have a solution for a problem. This has been happening, for example in the GDPR models suggested by ICANN, (in the second model) GAC has the primary role of certification. What should we do so that the Board does not look at GAC as a source of solutions in matters related to GNSO remit? [this also happened in the two letter second level domain names that correspond with country codes (ccTLD). Board considered GAC advice which was not even based on consensus and implemented it without any consultation with GNSO although the two letters consisted of generic names. Please refer to NCSG public comment on this issue for more information: https://forum.icann.org/lists/comments-proposed-measures-two-char-08jul16/pdf7DRdQjpIWq.pdf[forum.icann.org]]
Two questions the Board asked them:
- What are your key goals in 2018? The Board is interested in this question to make sure that its own priorities are aligned with the community’s priorities.
- What are your most relevant longer-term goals? The Board is interested in this question because discussions about longer-term goals and strategic planning will commence soon between the community, the Board and ICANN org.
