[council] Impact of new gTLDs - draft letter

[Thomas Rickert <rickert@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

All, 
in preparation of this week's GNSO telco, please find below the draft letter in 
response to Bertrand de La Chapelle's request for input on the impact of new 
gTLDs. I would like to thank Brian Winterfeldt, Joy Liddicoat, Osvaldo Novao, 
Zahid Jamil, Stéphane van Gelder, Wolf-Ulrich Knoben and Jeff Neuman for their 
contributions.

I am looking forward to discussing this with you.

Best regards,
Thomas

Dear Bertrand,
the GNSO Council would like to thank you for the opportunity to provide 
feedback to your request for input on the impact of new gTLDs on ICANN's 
structure.
 
As you know, the Council as well as individual SGs and Constituencies have been 
discussing this important subject for a long time now. It has also been a topic 
during face to face meetings between the GNSO Council and the Board and GAC as 
well as with the ccNSO. Some groups have already or will respond to the Board 
directly and our impression is that they are confident to have taken 
appropriate steps to address the upcoming challenges. 
 
As far as the Council is concerned, here will most likely be quantitative and 
qualitative challenges. What these will be and their size can hardly be 
predicted. 
 
In qualitative terms, there may be new requests to form constituencies and new 
stakeholder groups in both houses, some of which may be re-configurations or 
alignments of existing groups.

Since this is an unknown factor, the effects on the democratic and 
participatory process of the Council and the response to that are yet to be 
seen. However, we would like to highlight that ICANN is already publishing 
information on how to participate (see 
http://gnso.icann.org/en/about/participation.htm) including information on how 
to form a Constituency. Thus, the information and processes are available to be 
inclusive.
 
In quantitative terms, challenges are more predictable in some aspects. For 
sure, there will be 
- more attention by the general pubic and Governments;
- more attendants at meetings, which has an impact on sizing the venues; 
- more groups that need administrative and technical support;
- more telephone conferences with more participants and more remote 
participation;
- more documents to be produced and read; 
- more decisions to be made and operationalized;
- more contractors that need to be managed;
- an increased budget to be administered;
- more compliance issues that need to be taken care of; 
to name but a few areas of growth.
 
While ICANN should have sufficient funds to meet these challenges, growth needs 
to be managed carefully. More staff and other operational resources will be 
needed to support the community and fulfill ICANN's mission while preserving 
operational excellence. 
 
These quantitative challenges require managerial responses that ICANN can 
prepare for. Such preparations should also encompass the increased burden on 
volunteers to deal with even more and potentially more complex material to work 
on. Processes and support schemes for volunteers should be designed to best 
possibly avoid volunteer fatigue.
The unknown is what new groups will be established and what their place and 
role in the ICANN eco system shall be. However, additions will only lead to 
marginal changes that can be dealt with once they are known.
 
In summary, the GNSO Council believes that the current structure is resilient 
to respond to the challenges to come as long as ICANN provides the resources 
required to accommodate an increasing number of participants / stakeholders and 
their respective needs.  

Thank you,
Stéphane van Gelder
GNSO Chair