[gnso-ppsc-pdp] Comments on PDP Process

[Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg@xxxxxxxxx>]

During the last call, Jeff asked me if I could summarize what I 
thought were the "legislated" steps required to initiate a PDP versus 
those steps that could be considered optional steps depending on the 
specific details. On reflection, I don't think I am at a stage to do 
that, but let me help the process along.
The current Bylaws set a relatively low threshold for Council to 
request an issues report. For an AC to request one, I would guess it 
takes a simple majority (that is the situation for the ALAC in any 
case). But in today's world, that is still more than a single 
constituency, so there must be SOME support. I have not gone back to 
the statistics, but I suspect that most issues reports are requested 
with a much larger level of support. In all cases that I know of, 
there has been a LOT of cross-ICANN discussion before it ever gets to 
that stage.
Today, the rules says that the issues report must be written within 
15 days, which clearly indicates it is not a thorough study of all 
the (lower case) issues related to the ISSUE. I do think that we need 
more flexibility than 15 days. Perhaps it should be a time not longer 
than 60 days, negotiated with staff - hopefully that does not mean 
that it would ALWAYS take 60 days...
Once it is submitted, Council has 15 days to decide to do a PDP or 
not. Period. I don't know if that latter deadline has ever been met - 
certainly not in my 2+ years on Council.
Today we go through an almost iterative process. The minimalist 
approach seems to be to form a drafting team to recommend a way 
forward. That DT may craft a motion to initiate a PDP. Or it may 
recommend some other sort of action. That action may be to commission 
a study. Or form a WG to investigate what studies should be done. 
There may be formal or informal public consultation. And that WG may 
ultimately recommend yet another action (look at the Whois studies).
To further confuse things, if a PDP IS launched, the PDP WG may 
initiate any of the above actions as part of its work. If you look at 
the Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy, a WG (I think) was formed which 
recommended that several PDPs be launched, in sequence or overlapped, 
to try to keep the work done by any one group at a reasonable level, 
and possibly to allow different people to do the different sub-sets.
There seems to be a reluctance to simply say no, lets walk away from 
this issue. And in fact I think that this is reasonable. If it got as 
far as an Issues Report (and in my opinion, there is virtually ALWAYS 
a lot of work that precedes the IR, and not just within a 
Constituency or AC), there probably is something that needs to be done.
So right now, the practice is that there is effectively no limit to 
how long a period can go by from the creation of the IR until a PDP 
is launched, as long as SOMETHING is happening to further the work. 
If this is being done in good faith, I have no real problem with it. 
Sometimes it seems that some people want to use this "let's do some 
further work first" as a way of derailing the process. So perhaps we 
need SOME limit. Maybe.
I think that the bottom line is that we don't want to launch a PDP 
until we believe that a) some new policy is needed; and b) it is 
possible to develop it. But once we believe both a and b, there is no 
reason not to launch. I do not believe that we need to gather all of 
the information needed to actually develop the policy before 
launching the PDP (or whatever we will call this stage).
What are the stages between the issuance of the IR and being able to 
decide that a + b are satisfied? I think that we should not limit 
Councils ability to be innovative and come up various ways to address 
the problem.
A bit of a rambling dialogue, but I hope it is useful.

Alan