[council] Measures for how well the GNSO is performing in policy development

["Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello All,

I note that the GNSO members and ICANN staff have put a great deal of
work into the GNSO improvements.

The danger is that ICANN and the GNSO become very internally focussed,
rather than ensuring that the end goal of improving the overall systems
of domain names for Internet users is being met.

I recommend that the GNSO consider what overall measures of performance
we could use, that the external community could relate to, that
ultimately determines whether any new structure is making a difference.

For example what are the top 3 issues that the community at large
believes that the GNSO should be working on and is expecting new
policies to improve.

The GNSO can then regularly report to the external community (ie those
that don't attend ICANN) on progress on these top 3 issues.

One is obviously new gTLDs - substantial progress has been made, but
even for new gTLDs there are not clear measures on whether the policy
has achieved its goals.   For example is the measure of success how many
new gTLDs get created, or how diverse the new gTLDs are, or whether
there is participation from new communities of Internet users - maybe a
combination of measure is appropriate.

Other issues that I can think of at a very high level include:

- ways to improve privacy of information that is published about
registrants, and how to ensure that domain names can continue to be used
for the free sharing of ideas and legal public criticism (ie freedom of
speech) 

- ways to improve accountability for registrants that use domain names,
and how to ensure that it is not easy to use domain name for illegal
activity.

I think the key is to articulate the top 3 issues in terms that the
average Internet user can understand.    Then the GNSO can survey both
GNSO participants and the external community on whether they believe
that the GNSO has introduced policies that have made progress on the key
issues.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin