GNSO Council Teleconference Minutes
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19 October 2006 Proposed agenda and related documents List of attendees: 14 Council Members Bruce Tonkin chaired this meeting Motion approved. .Item 3: Correspondence Item 4: Proposed bylaws amendment to improve transparency with respect to contract approvals - Jon Nevett and Alistair Dixon to provide proposed changes to the wording supplied by the General Counsel Jon Nevett, the Registrar Constituency chair, invited to attend the GNSO Council meeting commented that Alistair Dixon proposed alternate language under the new section 7 under the transparency article: Notice and comment on gTLD agreement approvals: Jon Nevett further noted that the General Counsel's language related only to gTLD Registrar and Registry agreements but the question arose whether the scope should include the broader definition of gTLD contracts that, in a transparent organisation should be published for public comment. Discussion indicated that tenders should be published and pragmatic transparency was favoured on procurement issues. The GNSO, in making a recommendation on transparency should focus on anything that concerned the business of the GNSO. 'Materiality' was a broad term that could be defined in several ways. It could refer to financially material, as well as material within ICANN's mission with respect to security and stability of the Internet. There was also discussion as to whether the bylaw amendment should also cover agreements such as the ccTLD managers agreements, root server operators agreements and the Regional Internet Registries agreements. It was considered overstepping the GNSO mandate to require ICANN to post all agreements or moving into material areas outside of the GNSO scope. There was general agreement that Jon Nevett would provide revised language to the GNSO Council framed around: Dan Halloran, Deputy General Counsel, reported that for (c) a draft comparison table for registry agreements was posted - Consider whether to address terms of reference via a separate PDP, or Note the GNSO Council did form a working group to review the issues Olof Nordling referred to the Revised Terms of Reference Discussion indicated that the document did not reflect the distinction between similarities between strings in the root zone file ( e.g. starting with "xn-") and strings that look similar once rendered onto a users display as a result of an application located on the user's computer. It has not yet been determined how to describe the actual policy concern. Item 6: Next steps for improving the GNSO structure and processes The GNSO Review was built into the ICANN bylaws One of the suggestions that arose from the discussion was that the GNSO have its own dialogue about its evolution and support a cross Supporting Organisation dialogue and at the same time have interaction with the Board and a group of individuals from the GNSO. Further, it was suggested that the recommendations could be divided into 3 categories: 2. Resource issues, such as a better structure of the GNSO website, and better communication of the outcomes of the GNSO, which could be a staff function. Denise Michel reported that following up from the resolution passed at the GNSO Council meeting on 28 September 2006 Work had started on gathering the data on the PDP actions and the basic data would be available in the next few weeks to provide a foundation for revising the work of the PDP. Denise Michel reminded the Council that the ICANN bylaws required: The Board Governance committee, a sub-committee of the ICANN Board, was taking the lead on recommending a road forward and was interested in creating a joint Board-GNSO working group to help guide work in interaction with the community to help develop recommendations for consideration by the community, the Council and the Board. Thus the views expressed by the Council could be accommodated by creating a joint Board - GNSO working group with a specific mandate to address the structural issues. Staff could propose a schedule for the implementation of operational issues that did not require new decisions by the community. It was clarified that a joint Board-GNSO working group would not preclude the GNSO from initiating information gathering on the PDP and the suggestion of a small committee of former task force chairs, and people with experience of the PDP bylaws could be fitted into the joint working group. Currently as is posted on: http://www.icann.org/meetings/saopaulo/ Item 8: Any other business 8.1 Status Update from PDP Feb06 Policies for Contractual Conditions: Existing Top Level Domains Bruce Tonkin proposed that, in the future, task forces and working groups should deliver written status reports 7 days prior to the GNSO Council meeting. Bruce Tonkin formally closed the meeting and thanked everybody for participating.
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