Cassia Oliveira on behalf of Goran Marby

Dear SOAC leaders,

Thank you again for taking the time to meet with Maarten and me last week. I am writing to follow up on one of ICANN org’s action items from that call, which was for me to finalize and circulate to you a proposal for a new Operational Design Phase relating to the implementation of approved gTLD policies. As we discussed, the objective for an additional design phase is to allow the Board to obtain relevant information about any operational and resourcing issues associated with certain policy implementation efforts. Accordingly, the Operational Design Phase is envisioned to take place prior to Board action on GNSO-approved policy recommendations, initiated through a Board request to ICANN org. Our expectation is that an Operational Design Phase will likely only be needed for complex, costly or other large-scale implementation efforts.

I appreciate the thoughtful and substantive discussion we had on this topic during our call. While gTLD policy development work is managed by the GNSO, the other Supporting Organizations and the Advisory Committees play important roles in ensuring that ICANN consensus policies are developed through community consensus and are appropriately resourced. Thank you for the comments and suggestions you made on the call, which we have tried to address as much as possible in this initial draft paper.

Please circulate the paper to your community groups for their review and further discussion. As I mentioned on our call, ICANN org will continue to refine the paper and welcome your feedback as part of this iterative process. After ICANN69, we plan to conduct a fuller community consultation on the gTLD policy lifecycle, to include an updated version of this paper and to gather community feedback on any updates we can make to improve the efficacy and efficiency of the policy making process.

Best regards,