[gnso-otf-dt] Re: Revised Outreach Task Force Draft Charter

[Julie Hedlund <julie.hedlund@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Chuck,

Thank you for your quick response and again very helpful comments.   If the DT 
members have any questions or concerns I will relay them.  Otherwise you can 
assume we will make the changes you suggest.  We will forward a final version 
for your reference.

Have a nice weekend!

Julie


On 10/14/11 7:25 PM, "Chuck Gomes" <cgomes@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Thanks Julie and the entire team. Please see below.

Chuck


From: Julie Hedlund [mailto:julie.hedlund@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, October 14, 2011 4:45 PM
To: Gomes, Chuck
Cc: gnso-otf-dt@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Revised Outreach Task Force Draft Charter

Dear Chuck,

On behalf of Olga Cavalli and the Outreach Task Force Drafting Team (OTF-DT), I 
want to thank you for your thoughtful and extremely helpful comments on the OTF 
Draft Charter.  Attached is a redlined document incorporating the changes we 
made to address your comments.  Here also is a brief description of what we did 
in each case:

 1.  General Comment:  The OTF-DT members agreed with your suggestion 
concerning the need to include tactics but thought that the words 
“Implementation Plan” more clearly captured the intent.  A global change was 
made to include “Implementation Plan” with each occurrence of the word 
“Strategy.” [Gomes, Chuck] Excellent change.
 2.  Scope:  We tried to make the language more clear and to emphasize the need 
for efficiency and cost-effectiveness. [Gomes, Chuck] I think you covered this 
pretty well.
 3.  Deliverables:  Here and elsewhere we included a step for a budget request 
to be made according to the ICANN budget cycle.
 4.  Membership Criteria and Roles, Functions, Duties: We tried to state more 
clearly the size and composition of the OTF at the start of the section and we 
decided to make the Steering Committee contingent on the size of the OTF/number 
of volunteers. [Gomes, Chuck] I like the way you changed the steering committee 
but I have one more caution: you shouldn’t be surprised if you cannot get a 
volunteer from every constituency or stakeholder group.  It is a good goal to 
do that but I think it would be wise to word the goal in a way that allows for 
the eventuality that one or more constituencies or stakeholder groups may not 
be represented.  How about something like this: “. . . small Steering Committee 
that would include the Chair, Vice Chair, and at least one representative from 
each Stakeholder Group or at least two representatives from each House.”  Note 
that this might result in a steering committee as small as six but it could 
still be larger if there were enough volunteers.  Note that changes in this 
regard would affect wording in several other places in your document.
 5.  Status Report:   We adjusted this to add flexibility by removing the 
requirement for reporting at each Council meeting. [Gomes, Chuck] I like what 
you did here.
 6.  Additional Change:  We realized that we needed to reflect that the Council 
will appoint the Chair and Vice Chair, so we included this step.  In addition, 
since there initially would not be a Steering Committee, we assigned the 
recruitment role to the Chair, Vice Chair, and support staff.  This should be 
reflected throughout the document.[Gomes, Chuck] This seems fine to me but I do 
want to comment on the following: “Objective 1: The GNSO Council shall approve 
the Charter and appoint the OTF Chair, who also is the GNSO Council Liaison, 
and the Vice Chair.”  It appears to me that this requires the OTF Chair to be a 
Councilor; are you sure you want to do that? I believe that Council liaisons 
are normally Councilors.  Assuming that is true, what happens if you cannot 
find a Councilor who will be OTF Chair?  If I was you, I would consider 
deleting “who also is the GNSO Council Liaison”.   Qualified chairs are hard 
enough to find without be too restrictive.  On the other hand, if it is okay 
for the liaison to be a non-Councilor, your language may be okay, but if that 
is the case I suggest you make that clear.  Note that this issue occurs again 
in Deliverable # 1, in the steering committee discussion, under Formation and 
in Roles, Functions & Duties.

[Gomes, Chuck] Your goal is that “the size does not hinder the ability of the 
OTF to complete its work in a timely fashion.”  I personally have a hard time 
understanding how a group of up to 45 could complete its work in a timely 
fashion.  First of all, it is hard enough to scheduled meetings or coordinate 
activities with 10 people, let alone 45.  I think you will need a carefully 
designed plan to ensure timely progress and simultaneously heard 45 people but 
maybe you already have ideas to make that happen.  On a somewhat related note, 
you require a minimum of 35 OTF members (at least 7 per region); what happens 
if you cannot achieve that requirement.  At a minimum, if you are convinced 
that it would be helpful and workable to have that many, I think you should at 
least allow some flexibility for fewer members to cover the possibility that 
you cannot get that many volunteers. Maybe something like this: “The OTC shall 
be composed of a minimum of two members from each geographical region and may 
contain up to (whatever maximum # you think best).”
Minor edit:  There are at least a two places where the term “public form” 
should be changed to “public forum”.

Our goal is to provide the revised Charter to the Council for consideration at 
its meeting on 26 October in Dakar.  Since yours are the only comments we have 
received, if you could address our revisions by COB Monday the 17th, we would 
like to try to revise the document and submit it to the Council in time for the 
document deadline on Tuesday, 18 October.  We hope that this will give you 
enough time to review the document, if not please let us know.

Thank you again for your comments.  We do think that they have aided us in 
improving the document.

Best regards,

Julie

Julie Hedlund
Policy Director — on behalf of the members of the OTF-DT