Hi, Following today's meeting I decide to follow the process as I understand it and submitted a note on a PHR issue. As I understand it, if staff thinks it appropriate, they may forward it on to the PHR Team. avri -------- Original Message -------- SUBJECT: Comment from an observer re: the PHR is neither a pilot or a review, nor a pilot review DATE: 2024-10-03 12:25 FROM: avri@doria.org TO: Rsa Coordinators <rsa-coordinators@icann.org> CC: Chris Disspain <chris@disspain.uk> Intended as input to be shared with the PHR review team: First, I hope it is appropriate for me to use email to make a comment. My reading of the Operating Standards for the PHR (excerpt included below) indicates that while I may neither speak nor use the chat function during the calls I am observing, it indicates "Observers may send an email to the review team to share input on their work via rsa-coordinators@icann.org." As someone who was intimately involved in creation of the ToR for the PHR, I want to offer a few personal thoughts in input on the claim made during the first meeting, that the PHR is neither a pilot nor a review. I believe it is a pilot, it is a review, and it is most certainly a pilot review. What is it not is a Holistic Review. Let me offer a brief argument for each of my claims. 1. What is a Pilot: most of the definitions one finds include phrases like: * a piece that guides a tool or machine part * to conduct a ship into and out of port or through dangerous waters. * a guide or leader * guide for centering or otherwise positioning * &c. The word pilot has many definitions, in many areas of discourse. While I would agree this is, possibly, not a pilot in the sense of TV show pilot (though one never really knows) , given the degree to which developing guidelines figures in to the ToR Deliverables, I find it hard not to see this as a pilot that is intended to guide through sometime dangerous waters; including the guidance on a Bylaws change to satisfy the recommendation from ATRT3 as contingently approved by the Board. 2. I find it difficult to image how the guidelines referred to in the Deliverable can be developed, or perhaps discovered, without a great deal of review. This may be more in the line of meta-review of how reviews are done, commented upon, and approved in the ICANN environment and according to the possibilities allowed in a bottom up set of structures as enabled by our Bylaws. Reading each of the Deliverables, I envision a set of material and practices that will need to be reviewed. Certainly the PHR is not a community review, nor a specific review as defined in the Bylaws. While the ATRT3 recommendation intended this as a future specific review, until it is put into the bylaws, it cannot be considered a specific review; that is just a formal reality. In this respect it is not a bylaws based review. While as an observer I cannot know for sure, I expect to see a lot of reviewing being done by the PHR team as they do the reviews of processes, possible guidelines, and limitations imposed by bottom up concerns. 3. In terms of a pilot review, taken as a single term, almost in the sense of a pilot TV show, Deliverable 12 seems to require a "testing of the guidelines as applied to specific issues." this testing, whether done as a desktop event, or in some other manner, could have been called a beta review, but I think that 'pilot review' is an apt term. It will be a review of an issues according to the guidelines, but will only be pilot in that it tests the guidelines and applicability, its partial nature, and degree, if any, of implementation. It should be noted that Deliverable 12 was a hard earned compromise that I hope can survive the PHR process. I can wax on on at length on this topic and happy to do so on demand. I will not put forward a guess as to why staff would find it necessary to tell the team that they were neither engaged in a review nor a pilot, and I was ready to let it go as one of those staff things one just lets pass by. But it seemed to cause concern among some members, and as it seemed to me to be a counter factual, I decided to send this note based on my impression of the abundance of thinking and conversation that went on in and around the PHR ToR development effort that preceded this effort. I hope I have not transgressed the scope of an observer in sending this note. While some of the changes made by the staff in the operating standards specifically for the PHR seem a tad regressive to me, they also seem to have been appropriately empowered by the Board to do as they willed. I understand that I could have, and perhaps should have, written a blog piece or some other external comment about the claim that the Pilot Holistic Review was neither a Pilot nor a Review. Instead I decided to try this route to making the comment in this instance. With your indulgence, avri ---- Observers cannot participate in review work or review team discussions. Observers may: ● Attend meetings: Observers will have the opportunity to attend all meetings, whether in person or virtual. A calendar of scheduled meetings shall be published on the review team's wiki page along with their agendas. ○ Virtual Meetings: Observers must use an identifying display name upon entering a meeting room. Observers cannot participate in the meeting chat, breakout discussions nor whiteboard sessions. ○ In-Person Meetings: Should there be a face-to-face gathering of the review team members, observers are allowed to attend, subject to physical space limitations. Note: ICANN will not cover any expenses incurred by observers. ● Subscribe to the email list: Observers may send a request to rsa-coordinators@icann.org to be subscribed to the mailman list. ● Email input to the review team: Observers may send an email to the review team to share input on their work via rsa-coordinators@icann.org. Having received input from observers via email, the review team is encouraged to respond, if appropriate. ● Provide input during Public Comment proceedings: Observers may contribute their views via the standard Public Comment process and during public consultations.