Overview

The Planning Process

The Planning Team

The Planning Team has the following responsibilities:1. To propose a work structure for implementing the non-contentious operational changes recommended by the Board Governance Committee Working Group on GNSO Improvements (BGC WG). This structure will also be used to implement all recommendations as appropriate once the full plan has been adopted by the Board.
2. To monitor and report on the progress of the transition once the report has been approved by the ICANN Board and the initial plan has been approved by the GNSO council. That is, once the initial process has been defined by the planning committee, reviewed by the constituencies and the community and approved by the GNSO council, the structures defined in that plan will become functional and will be used as the basis for recommending further activities. At this point the planning committee will, however continue to monitor and will continue to create monthly updates in advance of Board meetings to the GNSO Council and to the ICANN Board. This group will not be assessing policy-related deliverables or outcomes, those deliverables will be forwarded directly to the Council for consideration.
3. To assist any of the committees, teams or working groups as necessary in their processes.

Steering Committees (SC)

From the BGC WG ReportThe Board has found it useful to establish several committees to focus specific attention on some of its many ongoing responsibilities, such as the Committee on Meetings and the Committee on Conflicts of Interest. The Council may wish to follow this pattern by establishing committees of 4-5 members to guide work in a certain area where focused attention and follow-up are required. The subject just mentioned – benchmarking and trends analysis – might be a prime candidate for such an approach.6 Staff and the Council are encouraged to consider other areas where the establishment of smaller committees might be useful. Another area that might be appropriate for management by committee (along with legal and policy staff support) is consideration of conflicts-of- interest issues as they arise.
The planning team is recommending that the initial process include the use of a few standing committees (the planning team has chosen to refer to them as "steering" committees in this context). While there is no requirement that the steering committees established as part of the transition process continue beyond that process, one concern in deciding to recommend that a certain issue be dealt with in a steering committee instead of a team dedicated to the topic is a view that some of the concerns in dealing with these issues will continue to remain important and relevant to GNSO council operations even after the first phases of the transition. It is also considered important that the Steering Committees are focused on GNSO or GNSO council processes and practices and not on gTLD policies which will be the province of Working Groups.

The two Steering Committees proposed by the Planning Committee are the following:

• GNSO Process Steering Committee: Oversees overall efforts to enhance the policy development process including serving as the coordinating body for separate teams tasked with developing a proposal for a new working group model and a new policy development process. These teams will be responsible for making recommendations concerning structure, processes and methods involved in the transition to a GNSO Working Group (WG) model. This SC will also consider the revision of the Policy Development Process (PDP) which is closely tied to the the transition to the WG model.

• Operations Steering Committee: Oversees efforts focused on recommendations concerning restructuring activities, constituency enhancements, and communications. This committee could also task groups to develop proposals to implement recommendations related to these three areas and would operate in an inclusive and transparent manner. Membership in the SC and in the work teams would be drawn from both existing and emerging constituencies.

Adopting, modifying or terminating a Steering Committee

It will be the responsibility of the GNSO council to adopt the charter that initiates the work of a Steering Committee. This will be done by a motion for approval of a charter which is duly seconded according to the by-laws and which receives a supermajority vote of council members present. The council will also be responsible for approving the membership in a Steering Committee and for any changes that are made to the work items or milestones. All such work plan or membership decisions will be done by a motion within the council that is duly seconded and which receives a majority vote of the council members present. A Steering Committee can be terminated by a supermajority vote of the council. Moreover the charter of the steering committees will need to be renewed by the Council on a regular basis.

Membership in Steering Committees

It will be the responsibility of the GNSO council to approve membership of any standing committee. Depending on the definition and role of a particular committee, suggestions for membership may come from diverse sources, i.e., the GNSO council, the stakeholder groups, the constituencies, other Supporting Organizations or the Advisory Committees, the committees themselves, the teams formed by the standing committee, the Board and on occasion the staff.

How many in a Steering Committee

While the Board recommends that a standing committee be composed of 2-4 council members, it remains to be seen whether this is a workable formula for the GNSO. Certainly in the transition period and perhaps beyond, the constituency structure usually dictates that there be place for at least 6 members and more if the NomCom Appointees and liaisons are to be included. During the transition period an attempt will be made to keep the standing committees small, with 12 members or fewer.

Who can be in a Steering Committee

The Board recommendation seems to indicate that membership in a standing committee should be limited to GNSO council members. It has been recent council practice to allow for other constituency members to substitute for council members in task forces and in committee of the whole. In the transition period, membership in the committee, while primarily composed of council members will allow for substitution from the existing and emerging constituencies or the liaison's SO or AC.

Steering Committee working teams

At the discretion of a majority of the members of a Steering committee, a Steering Committee can create working teams to focus on specific tasks that are part of the chartered work plan of the Steering Committee. Any such teams should have a specific charter and should report their results to the Steering Committee. It would be the job of the Steering Committee to coordinate the work of any such teams and to present the GNSO council with well formed proposals that take into account the work of any of the relevant teams. Steering Committees will have to balance between the necessity of bringing enough people to the table to do the work without straining a few volunteers and the scalability and complexity of the team structure they create.

Transparency for Standing Committee and their teams

All work done in a Steering Committee or in one of its teams must be made public. For this purpose, publicly viewable wikis, mailing lists with public archives and meeting minutes must be available. All formal meetings must be either recorded or transcipted, with the recording or transcript made public within a reasonable time frame.

Start Date for Steering Committees

The initial Steering Committese should be formed as soon as practicably possible after approval of the implementation structure by the GNSO Council.

Proposed Steering Committee charters

GNSO Process Steering Committee

Operations Steering Committee

Start Date for Steering Committees

The initial Steering Committees should be formed as soon as practicably possible after approval of the implementation structure by the GNSO Council.

References

Picture of Proposed Structure