Re: [gnso-osc-ops] RE: GCOT Work for OSC review

[Julie Hedlund <julie.hedlund@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ray and Chuck,

>From the staff side, Rob Hoggarth and I will be in Nairobi and I will be 
>supporting the OSC meeting as well as the OSC Work Team meetings.  
>Unfortunately, Ken will not be in Nairobi.

Best regards,

Julie


On 2/25/10 3:59 PM, "Ray Fassett" <ray@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks Chuck.  Avri Doria recently accepted the position of Vice Chair of the 
GCOT and agreed to act as interim Chair for Nairobi.  Ron Andruff will also be 
present as well as Wolf-Ulrich Knobin.  From the ICANN staff side, I think Ken 
Bour will be present in Nairobi and he assisted us tremendously with the final 
product.  Each has been very active in the GCOT and told me to just stay home 
while they handle this with the OSC in Nairobi.

Ray
p.s. kidding aside, I know it is a lot to absorb and I look forward to your 
questions/comments to provide response.


________________________________

From: Gomes, Chuck [mailto:cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 3:37 PM
To: Ray Fassett
Cc: gnso-osc-ops@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: GCOT Work for OSC review

Thanks Ray. I think it will take me awhile to absorb all of this.  I have a few 
questions that I will ask in the next day or so.

In the meantime, let me say that it is too late to present this to the Council 
for action in Nairobi. The deadline was 15 February. But it is still possible 
for the OSC to take action on this in Nairobi if the OSC is ready to do so; 
i.e., the OSC could approve the WT recommendations for Council consideration at 
the next Council meeting.

I suggest that the GCOT have a representative in the OSC Nairobi meeting who is 
able to give an overview of the proposal and to answer any questions.  There is 
supposed to be remote participation facilities so it should be possible to do 
that in person or via telephone.

Chuck

________________________________

From: Ray Fassett [mailto:ray@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:34 AM
To: Gomes, Chuck
Cc: gnso-osc-ops@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: GCOT Work for OSC review
Chuck, I have a series of work products from the GCOT now ready OSC review.  To 
this e-mail, I have attached 2 documents:

1)       Section 4 Voting of the Council Rules of Procedure.  We are asking for 
the OSC to review and recommend Section 4.5 Abstentions to the Council for its 
review and consideration as part the Nairobi meeting.  The entire Section 4 is 
included in the attached only for purposes of Section 4.5 being in context 
(there are no other proposed changes from the current adopted RoP other than 
Section 4.5).  Since Cairo, the Work Team along with ICANN staff support 
attributed has considerable time and effort with regards to Abstentions, 
understanding the issues involved from a Councilor perspective, from an 
SG/Constituency perspective including differences in Charters, as well as 
seeking staff legal counsel advice based upon the history of this topic over 
the years to finally land at the language we have per the attached.  While we 
realize it unlikely that the Abstention language can be brought to an actual 
vote of the Council as part of Nairobi, we have taken the liberty of providing 
to the OSC a draft motion contained below for OSC consideration:

SAMPLE COUNCIL RESOLUTION:

WHEREAS the GNSO Council Operations Work Team (GCOT) has developed a set of 
abstention provisions that it recommends be incorporated into the GNSO 
Operations Procedures as Sub-Section 4.5 (part of 4.0-Voting); and

WHEREAS the GCOT has also identified other voting procedures within Section 4.0 
that it recommends be amended to be consistent with its proposed abstentions 
provisions; and

WHEREAS the Operations Steering Committee (OSC) has reviewed all of these 
revisions and recommends them for adoption by the GNSO Council.

RESOLVED, that the GNSO Council accepts Version ___ (TBD) of the GNSO Operating 
Procedures, including the recommended revisions to Section 4 and its new 
Sub-Section 4.5.

RESOLVED FURTHER, that the GNSO Council directs Staff to post this document for 
twenty-one (21) days in the ICANN Public Comment Forum and reserves the right 
to modify these procedures upon conclusion of that public comment period.

2)       Analysis of 2009 Abstention Voting.  This exercise was for the purpose 
of interpreting how the Section 4.5 Abstention language would have affected 
actual Councilor abstention votes if in place at the time of the vote.  While 
admittedly some interpretation by the Work Team, we think this was a useful 
analysis that we want to share with the OSC as part of its review of the 
Section 4.5 language.  I should mention that Work Team members debated whether 
to redact individual names from this analysis for the reason of potentially 
being a distraction to the real purpose of the analysis (which was to evaluate 
the recorded reason for the abstention against the Section 4.5 language).  We 
decided not to redact names for the reason that the voting information is 
public information anyway.  I am mentioning this for 2 reasons: 1) a heads up 
for OSC members to focus upon the intention of the analysis vs. “who” performed 
the abstention and 2) For OSC members to consider too whether or not to redact 
names if decided to share the analysis more broadly such as with GNSO Council 
members or other such public disclosure.

Also, we are seeking OSC advice with regards to Section 4.4, Absentee Voting.  
The Work Team is strongly considering taking a close look at this language that 
may lead to a recommendation.  One of our questions was:  What do members of 
the OSC think?  Is the current language for Absentee voting acceptable?  For 
example, the recent sort of emergency Board Seat 13 vote was excluded from the 
ability for absentee voting. Is this appropriate?  We’re questioning it and as 
part of this, seeking OSC member advice in general with regards to the current 
language as contained.

Lastly, we have made quite a bit of progress on the Statement of Interest 
document which we intend to incorporate into the Rules of Procedure.  We feel 
this is ready for OSC review, including having received ICANN staff legal 
counsel input.  I will be sending this to you in the near future under separate 
cover.  The Work Team respectfully requests prompt attention from the OSC to 
the Abstention Language as contained in Section 4.5 of the attached document, 
including if possible getting this language in front of GNSO Council members as 
part of their agenda for discussion in Nairobi.  Upon review, OSC members will 
see the approach we took with regards to Abstentions primarily on two fronts 1) 
How can the reason for Council member abstention be remedied at the 
SG/Constituency level and 2) how can the outcome of reducing the denominator at 
the time of Council vote due to an abstention be the rare exception.  While our 
Work Team does not necessarily conduct its business by way of formal voting 
measures, I believe it is appropriate for me to communicate as the Chair that 
we had what I considered as supermajority consensus to these 2 points which was 
the basis of our work the leading to the final product as now being recommended 
to the OSC.

Please let me know if any questions.

Ray Fassett
Chair
GCOT