Increasing the Influence of GAC Advice on gTLD Policy Undermines the Efforts of the GNSO

[Amr Elsadr <aelsadr@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

GNSO Working Groups go through a pretty exhaustive process to come up with 
policy recommendations, send them to the GNSO Council to be approved and 
forwarded to the ICANN board. GAC members are more than welcome to participate 
on equal footing with other stakeholders in these WGs, they are more than 
welcome to provide feedback at multiple stages during the public comment 
periods of this process including the scoping of the policies being discussed 
(twice when staff publish issue reports and when a PDP charter drafting team 
comes up with a charter), provide input during the WG deliberations, and 
feedback on recommendations that have gained consensus by the WG members.

Undermining the GNSO’s PDP by empowering a parallel policy development 
mechanism is a hazard to how gTLD policy is developed at ICANN. It’s difficult 
enough to attract volunteers to participate in WGs. Increasing GAC influence on 
the outcome of this process will only demoralise participants further. This 
suggested amendment to the by-laws is also very conflicted with the efforts 
underway between the GNSO and the GAC to encourage early engagement in the GNSO 
process (as opposed to only resorting to GAC Advice).

I personally don’t see the point in folks participating in WGs that sometimes 
take more than a year to reach consensus if this work will have to contend with 
GAC Advice when all is said and done.

Thanks.

Amr.