[gnso-vi-feb10] the way forward - results from the call today.

["Mike O'Connor" <mike@xxxxxxxxxx>]

hi all,

i'm going to push this out to the list a little bit half-baked, because i'm 
about to jump on a plane and don't want to hold up the conversation while i do 
all that transit stuff.

regarding the comments

-- my idea of just pushing the comments to the Board, and saving them for our 
Phase II work (as outlined in the call for agenda items), was not the right 
approach.

-- we concluded that there is substantive work to do on the comments.  
essentially, it's the work that we got ready to try to do after the Board 
resolution came down, but then gave up on when we realized we only had 3 days 
to do it.  namely, we need to look hard at the Principles section of the 
document in light of the comments and see if we can move closer to (or achieve) 
consensus on some points.

-- it would be especially useful to the Board if we could do that pretty 
quickly (so i'm really interested in how we get that done -- the idea of 
splitting into the sub-groups that developed the detailed language in our 
Annexes appeals to me, but i'm open to other ideas).

regarding the Final Report

-- it's agreed that my second sentence to the Council in response to the Board 
resolution was riddled with errors.  here's what i wrote: "We plan to 
incorporate public comments into the Interim Report and provide the Council 
with a Final Report in advance of the Council's 18 November meeting."   

-- the first problem is that it allows somebody to conclude that this is the 
Final Report for the working group (and thus the WG is wrapping up) when in 
fact this is the Final Report for **Phase I** of the working group.  so that 
needs to be cleared up.  the WG is **only now** starting the work we were 
chartered to do -- we crammed Phase I into our schedule in response to the 
Board resolution at Nairobi and we need to transition back to the charter we 
were given, not the one we invented.

-- the second problem is that date -- now that we're going to do some 
substantive work, i want to unwind that arbitrary date commitment.  we'll get 
the revisions to the Council once we've completed our work.

regarding Phase II of our work

-- we agreed that the actual Board decision with regard to VI for this round 
will influence the scope and approach of the work we do during Phase II.  so it 
probably makes sense to wait a bit before jumping into that effort.  how long 
to wait, and what the trigger is to "restart" the work is still subject to 
debate.  

-- my inclination at this moment is to wait on this question and focus on 
working the public comments into our current report.


thoughts?

mikey


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