[gnso-osc] OSC Response to CCT Final Report
Mason, Attached and copied below is the OSC response to the CCT Final Report. Please forward this to the full CCT membership. If you or the team has any questions, please feel free to ask. Thanks again for the team's excellent work. Chuck Gomes To: Mason Cole, Chair of the Communications and Coordination Team (CCT) From: Operations Steering Committee (OSC) Date: 7 December 2009 Subject: OSC Response to the CCT Final Report Firstly and most importantly, the OSC wishes to thank the CCT for its report and compliment those participating members who have clearly produced a constructive work product resulting in many helpful recommendations. While the OSC acknowledges the value of the report, there are a few specific areas where the committee believes that the report could be improved and strengthened so that its recommendations are actionable to the largest extent possible. 1) The OSC recommends that the CCT's Final Report be separated into two sections: (1) Technology Improvements (e.g. website) and (2) All Other Communications and Coordination Improvements. It appears that the Technology sections are nearly completed and that report could be forwarded to the OSC as soon as practicable. 2) It would be helpful if the Executive Summary (in both documents) provided a clearer guide regarding what to expect in the report. For example, immediately following the high-level recommendations, perhaps include a reference to Section 3 where more detail is provided. 3) The OSC's understanding is that the CCT was tasked with developing proposals for implementing various recommendations from the Board related to Communications and Coordination. In places, the document appears to be more of a review of GNSO communications rather than an implementation plan. Certain of the specific recommendations are worded as implementation tasks while others lack the specificity to give enough direction to serve as implementation guides. Two examples of the latter condition follow: a) Example 1: 3.2 Document Management Recommendation: "Due to the variety of computer platforms and operating systems and application programs and versions in the ICANN community, any single document management system would be very difficult to introduce. This is an area for further study by a specialist. In the meantime a repository of good templates would be helpful. The GNSO should also adopt practical guidelines for draft document versioning and FTP storing." Comment: With the exception of the suggestion of "a repository of good templates," this recommendation provides little help in terms guiding Staff on how to improve document management. Perhaps the team could consider recommending that Staff do some work in this area, e.g. research document management tools. While the Work Team was not tasked with defining detailed requirements for document management systems; the OSC thinks that it could provide some criteria for effective document management tools, rules, and processes -- as was done for the website recommendations. b) Example 2: Cross SO/AC Communications (See 2.1 The Task of the CCT) Recommendation: None provided. Comment: This area does not appear to have been addressed by the team. There is quite a bit discussion about GNSO/Board communication and coordination (e.g. Section 3.6), but almost nothing about SO/AC communications and coordination. The OSC thinks this is an area that needs more attention and believes that the BGC specifically intended such a focus. One suggestion to consider is that the Working Group model may be one mechanism to improve communications in this area. 4) Certain OSC members have offered a few additional comments (see below) that are respectfully submitted as ideas or suggestions for additional CCT consideration. a) Executive Summary Recommendations (last bullet point) and 2.5.7 Degradation in Civility Recommendation: "Encourage the understanding of opposing perspectives, while maintaining a spirit of cooperation and civility" Comment: Several OSC members had differing thoughts and opinions about this recommendation; however, the OSC was unable to reach consensus on a single position. For additional information, the CCT is encouraged to consult the OSC email archive at http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-osc/index.html <http://forum.icann.org/lists/gnso-osc/index.html> between the dates of 1 November through 7 December 2009. b) 2.3.4 Board-GNSO Communications Problem: Few formalized channels for GNSO Council to communicate with Board Comment: In addition to few formalized channels, would the team also discuss how direct those channels should be, e.g. the extent to which they are mediated by Staff? c) 2.4.3 Feedback Solicitation Problem: Poor ability to solicit meaningful feedback Comment: In addition to the mechanisms/tools for soliciting and responding to feedback, the team is asked to consider the quality of the feedback itself, that is, how to make it more useful and meaningful? d) 2.5.1 Time Demands/Compression and 2.5.8 The Prioritization Issue... Problem: "Because the GNSO is not prioritizing its work..."; and, "The threshold for introduction of an issue into community debate or policy development is sufficiently low that almost anything can be brought to community attention at any time." Comment: The team is asked to consider the idea that, in addition to limiting the number of issues and/or not establishing priorities, another factor may be not having succeeded in scaling up the GNSO's ability to process more work. One of the principal goals of restructuring was to broaden the involvement of those doing the work, leaving the GNSO Council in a largely managerial role with Staff available to support. Since communication seems like a viable way to widen the base, would the team consider ideas as to how the participant pool could be increased? In addition, are there potentially ways to scale up the efficiency of the volunteer community? e) 3.6 Board-GNSO Communications Recommendation: ICANN Staff assigned to GNSO support should prepare a bi-monthly update of GNSO activity against its objectives and present it to the board." Comment: Would the team consider that such Staff reports should be vetted with the Council first? The CCT's report acknowledges that the team spent at least half of its time on its technology-based recommendations (see 3.1 GNSO Website). Obviously, that time was well spent because the committee believes that the work there will benefit the GNSO in a multiplicity of ways going forward as evidenced by the excellent presentations given prior to and during the Seoul meeting. The OSC wishes to make clear that it is not suggesting that the CCT spend huge amounts of time on the other recommendations as they did with the website. On the other hand, allocating some additional attention to the lesser developed recommendations would be helpful from an implementation point of view. Certain of the recommendations may require more work than others. Two areas that may not require a lot of time include: 3.4 Languages and 3.5 Feedback Solicitation. Others that could be expanded include: 3.3 Collaboration Tools and 3.2 Document Management. The committee notes that recommendations under 3.6 Board-GNSO Communications appear to be general communications principles that would apply across the community and not just to GNSO/Board communications. The OSC wants to ensure that the CCT does not misinterpret these requests as involving the creation of detailed implementation plans with timeline and costs. Those matters should properly belong to the ICANN Staff. The OSC would appreciate receiving target dates for completion of the CCT's Technology and non-Technology recommendations. The preference would be to discuss the latter report no later than the GNSO Council meeting in Nairobi. Sincerely, Chuck Gomes, Chair Operations Steering Committee Attachment:
OSC Summary Comments re. CCT Final Recommendations - 7 Dec 09.doc
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