Content Comparison

Notes/ Action Items

ACTION ITEMS/HOMEWORK:

1. Staff to produce the Draft Initial Guidance Recommendation Report by Wednesday, 12 July including the revised Section 3 and the boilerplate text for WG review.
2. WG to review the Draft Initial Guidance Recommendation Report and provide final comments or , if any, before the meeting on Monday, 10 July.

Notes:

1. Welcome & SOIs

2. Discussion of the final CLEAN Draft Guidance Recommendation Initial Report Section 3 (the section of the Report with the Guidance Recommendations for Tasks 3-6 and deliberations), particularly the text highlighted in yellow and within that section the suggested new text in brackets based on the brief discussion at ICANN77 and the issue of applications versus applicants raised by Lawrence.  – See https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nwR9cyzVaPvDgksexPXeqvSTJe4R5tEEsyi3YaGgIe0/edit?usp=sharing [docs.google.com]– the link is set for comment mode.

Methodology, Task 5

Re: “commercial entities”

Comment from Gabriella: “Would it be possible to add "any entity", in line with the last GAC Communique (section V.3)"ensuring increased engagement with a diverse array of people and organizations in underrepresented or underserved markets and regions". https://gac.icann.org/contentMigrated/icann77-washington-d-c-communique”

Discussion:

•  With respect to the reference to “commercial entities”, the Chair pointed out that as the WG had already agreed to the language prior to the publication of the Communique’ it was not possible to change it now, but that the suggestion would be included in the deliberations as well as a footnote to the Communique’.  WG members and Gabriella agreed with that approach.

Life-Cycle Elements:

1. Communications & Outreach/Awareness

Deliberations:

Second paragraph -- Suggested text from Mike: “There was further discussion regarding the potential targeting of for- profit enterprises, which one Working Group member argued should be included in this list of targeted groups, however this did not gain any support - while noting that for-profit enterprises would not be excluded from the program but rather would not be specifically targeted for communications, and outreach and awareness.”

• A WG member from the GAC noted that there was a lot of discussion in Cancun on this issue and expressed the concern that it was too strong to say, “however this did not gain any support”, that the discussion was more nuanced in that regard, and suggested that that part of the sentence should be deleted.  The WG agreed with retaining the language without that phrase and Mike also agreed.

Third paragraph:

Comment from Gabriella: “Just for clarification: how can we reconcile this paragraph with the Implementation Guidance 17.9: awareness and education: "diversity and distribution of the applicant pool: geographic diversity, languages, scripts"”

• Mike suggested that the language in the recommendation and that of Implementation Guidance 17.9 were not contradictory but complementary.  In particular, they are not mutually exclusiveto applicant support and there is a possibility that people will require support, and they may come from those different groupings. But at the same time you could find people who are incredibly well resourced in terms of different geographies, languages and scripts. Simply because somebody is not a Latin script user doesn't mean that they actually need or will receive applicant support.  Instead, Mike suggested that the deliberations could reflect that in developing the recommendation the WG gave consideration to the context of 17.9 of the Implementation Guidance. Gabriella and WG members agreed with that approach.

Guidance Recommendation 2:

Quantitative: A majority of Applicant Support Program applicants that access pro bono services indicate moderate to high satisfaction with those pro bono services and information. 

Comment from Gabriella re: “majority” – “just for clarification: majority means more than 60%?”

• Mike suggested and the WG agreed that “majority” meant 50+1, and that there was no need to define the word.

Comment from Gabriella re: “moderate to high satisfaction” – “just for clarification: how to measure satisfaction? would it be possible "indicate that they count with sufficient information provided to make a choice regarding the service"

• Staff noted that the measurement of satisfaction was addressed in the Data/Metrics to Measure Success” text, that is with surveys about pro bono services and whether they were, “useful to informing their gTLD application and/or assisting them through the application process.”  Gabriella was satisfied with that explanation.

1. Application Submission and Evaluation:

Guidance Recommendation 4:

Comment from Gabriella re: “timely”: “just for clarification: what does "timely" means: since the ASP should be open 18 months before the standard window of application, should the material be available 20 months before the round opens ?”

• Staff noted that during the last meeting the WG discussed whether it should describe what is meant by “timely” in more detail, but decided not to do so since that could place restrictions on the IRT.  Mike noted that by including the word “timely” the WG was also suggesting that the timing needed to be addressed.  The WG did agree to call out this issue in the deliberations.

5. Contracting /Delegation

Guidance Recommendation 5: Of all successfully delegated gTLD applicants [applications], the goal is that a certain percentage of them should be from supported applicants.

Indicators of Success: 

No fewer than 10, or 0.5 percent (.005), of all successfully delegated gTLD applicants [applications] were from supported applicants.
Data/Metrics to Measure Success: 0.5 percent (.005) of successfully delegated gTLD applicants [applications] are from supported applicants.  Note that this percentage is not in relation to the number of strings applied for, rather the number of applications.

Re: Issue raised by Lawrence at ICANN77 concerning whether to reference “successfully delegated gTLD applicants” or “successfully delegated gTLD applications”.  See ext above with suggested change in brackets.

Comment from Mike: “[I have been thinking about this issue a lot. We have not suggested it anywhere, but it may be worth noting somewhere that we have assumed that support is likely to [or maybe should] be limited to a single string per supported applicant or a single string in a limited number of scripts [which could result in support for more than one application per supported applicant]. However there may again be portfolio applicants who apply for tens of strings. This may skew the metrics significantly depending on the average number of strings applied for by non-supported applicants. As such, I think the simplest is to work on the number of strings applied for and not the number of applicants.]”

Discussion:

• Mike noted, “The problem comes in in terms of portfolio applicants potentially skewing -- you know, if it's one application per applicant then it should be less of an issue. But given the issue of how many applications per supported applicant is the program going to address? We didn't discuss or debate it.  I think we are generally assuming one application per supported applicant.
• Several WG members agreed that an application should be assumed to be for a single string and that that concept should be included in the recommendations for Task 6.  They noted it would be more fair to assume one string = one application.
• ICANN Org agreed that you could make the assumption that supported applicants would be submitting applications for one string so including portfolio applicants could make the percentage quite small.
• The general agreement among WG members was that “applications” makes more sense and agreed to include this discussion in the deliberations.

Task 6:

See above concerning the WG’s agreement on including the assumption in Guidance Recommendation 7 that one application equals one string for supported applicants.  The WG agreed to include “predictable” in Guidance Recommendation 9.

3. Guidance Recommendation Report Format

Staff previewed the Guidance Recommendation Report format and noted that it had the action item (see above) to provide to the WG to review the complete Report, including boilerplate elements and the revised Section 3 by Wednesday, 12 July for discussion at the meeting on Monday, 17 July.

4. Timing of Public Comment/Work Plan

• Staff reviewed the work plan and timeline (see attached slides) noting that the goal is to post the Initial Report for public comment by Monday, 31 July for the standard period of 40 days until 09 September.
• Staff noted that 31 July was planned for posting of the Initial Report because there are other materials that must be completed to meet this goal, in addition to finalizing the Initial Report, that depend on other staff, most importantly the public comment input tool, which will list the Guidance Recommendations for comment.
• Staff noted that the timing of the public comment is accommodated by the work plan.
• Staff emphasized that after the public comment closed the WG would analyze the comments and develop the Final Guidance Recommendation Report, but that it was anticipated that the Final Report could be delivered ahead of schedule.

5. AOB