Board Committee Reports
ICANN - San Francisco
Friday 18 March 2011


>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ladies and gentlemen, take your seats,
please.  We're about to begin.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the presentation from the board
committees of activities since the last meeting.  Always scheduled at
this very popular hour after probably the latest night the board has
in preparing for the coming day, something that we might need to look
at in future meetings.

Just to say that there are a number of board committees, and all of
them are incredibly hard-working, not just by the board members on the
committees, but by the very supportive staff that are assigned to
support those committees.  And this is the opportunity for an update
from those committees to the community.  These reports have been
posted since Monday, early in the week, and we assume that people have
read them and will have been prepared to raise questions if there are
any.  And we go through them for reasons of the chair's convenience,
in alphabetical order.  And we begin with the Audit Committee, chaired
by Rita Rodin.

Rita.

>>RITA RODIN JOHNSTON:   Thank you, Peter.

So for the ten people in the audience, I think somebody mentioned that
maybe Peter or Rod was doing weed yesterday, and I'm not sure about
that, but I think we definitely could use some uppers if anybody
around has those for the board here.

The Audit Committee has been quite busy.  If we can go to the next
slide, please.  We rotated some members off the committee, Dennis
Jennings and Harald Alvestrand were on the committee, in addition to
Steve Crocker and myself.  So one of the new board members, Erika
Mann, was appointed to assist us going forward.

Next slide, please.  And we -- since the last Audit Committee report,
we had discussed the fiscal year '10 audit, which was done by our
independent auditing firm, Moss-Adams.  There was a clean audit report
posted.  There were a few little things that they note, auditors when
they do audit reports have the sort of generally accepted accounting
principles and making sure that the internal controls of the
corporation are in accordance with those.  And sometimes they note
little things they have found in connection with doing their audit.
So there are a few things that they've noted that we're working on
talking to staff about tidying up.

What we also did, as you may recall, last year was institute an
internal audit function at ICANN, which essentially is going to be
able to do things internally.  So it's not staff of ICANN, but what we
did was retain another independent audit firm, Grant-Thornton.  And
what that firm did is their inaugural audit project was to take those
items I just mentioned from the FY 2009 audit, so the items the
external auditors, Moss-Adams noted that might be of interest in terms
of tightening up, some of the little minor things.  And so Grant-
Thornton did a report looking at those things having to do with bank
account reconciliation and other things and have given us a report.
The Audit Committee is going to meet in the next month to talk to them
and discuss what their findings were and additional -- the scope of
some additional projects.  So I think that's a very positive step to
have this team on call for ICANN.  They're going to be getting more
and more involved, I think, in some of the internal controls matters.
And they're independent, so it gives the Audit Committee a good sense
of best practices and how ICANN is doing in that regard.

The third thing we're doing in terms of trying to again elevate some
of the board committees to best practices is looking for external
financial expertise.  We heard a lot of comments in the public forum
yesterday about budgeting and salaries and different internal
financial matters at ICANN.  So one of the things the Audit Committee
started last year was thinking it might be helpful, given the huge
workload on board members and tons of different areas of expertise on
the board to have somebody just financially qualified to help the
Audit Committee if we should find there were some issues that were
ever uncovered by either the internal or the outside auditor.

So we sent out an RFP, I think, in Q4 last year.  And we got some
pretty good candidates that gave us their resumes.  So the Audit
Committee will be discussing and interviewing those I think also next
month, so we can announce at some point soon who those individuals
will be.  And, again, these are not going to be board members.
They're not going to be staff members.  They're going to be
independent people that have financial expertise that should the Audit
Committee deem it appropriate, will call them in to get some advice
about some financial internal control issues.  So we're excited about
that.

We also -- as some of you may know, ICANN is getting a new financial
system.  They're converting their internal computer system and they're
upgrading it.  And I think this is a much, much needed iteration of
the organization.  There's -- amazingly, there's still a lot of very
manual things that go on in the financial vertical at ICANN.  So we've
had a number of presentations from staff on this new financial system.
And it's quite exciting.  And Ramaraj and the Finance Committee have
been involved as well just to understand the scope of the project and
the massive benefits and efficiencies that it's going to create for
ICANN and its financial reporting.  So the Audit Committee received a
plan of that rollout, which is going to be starting this year.  And
it's quite exciting.  And we'll continue to report to you all on that.
And, hopefully, that can make some of the financial system a lot more
efficient and give you guys some more information about how that
works.

And the final thing we just did yesterday is, we engaged Moss-Adams to
perform the fiscal '11 independent audit.  Again, this has been a firm
that we've used for a while.  We rotated audit partners last year,
which is something that the best practices of audit committees dictate
is a good thing.  So we have new, fresh eyes on the account, with the
consistency of having the -- one of the women in the trenches still
there, so we're looking forward to having them start soon.

Next slide, please.

Oh, thank you.

So I don't know if anybody has any questions for me.  Comments?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Rita.  Obviously a very busy time
for the Audit Committee and a number of major changes coming.  Thanks
for the report.  I see no further questions.  So let's move to the --
next to the committees -- the Board Governance Committee chaired by
Dr. Bruce Tonkin.

Bruce.

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   Thank you, Peter.  I was getting used to being chair
of the Risk Committee, being lower down in the order.  I've got to get
used to being further up.

So the Board Governance Committee met this week.  The membership, I
think, is on the next slide, which is in alphabetical order, which
should appear on the screen in a second.

The recent activities that we have been undertaking, there was
activity from -- towards the end of last year, there were a couple of
reconsideration requests that were managed by the Board Governance
Committee.  They're referred to as 10.2 and 10.3.  The Board
Governance Committee spends a lot of time making sure that we have
balanced representation from board members in the various board
committees, particularly the important ones, such as audit and finance
and governance.

We also recommended the change in the Board-GAC Working Group in light
of new board members --

>> You need to tell them the next slide.

>>BRUCE TONKIN:   I did before.  And it doesn't seem to move.

So if they can move the next two slides, please.

Thank you.

Okay.  Moving to the next slide, another thing that the Board
Governance Committee does is review conflicts of interest from each of
the board members, and also we're moving towards trying to streamline
processes with respect to conflict of interest.  And you would note
that at the recent Brussels meeting, we did a summary with a couple of
lines of the interests that each of the board members have for the
public to see.  And we also take those interests very seriously in
deciding which board members either participate in discussions or vote
on particular board resolutions.

Then we also recommended board approval at the last meeting for bylaws
changes, which aligns the transitions when board members leave so that
align was our midyear meeting where possible.  So this year, for
example, the terms of the ccNSO elected member to the board, which is
Peter Dengate Thrush, and the GNSO elected member to the board, Rita
Rodin Johnston, both those terms will end at the end of the June
meeting this year.

Next slide, please.

Next slide.

Whoops, sorry, go back one.

Another thing that we are doing for this meeting, and that will be
before the board later this morning, will be the composition of a
newly formed IDN Variant Working Group.  The board continues to view
IDNs as very important topic.  And one of the areas that is
complicated is the topic of variants.  And so the board has asked the
staff to develop a work plan there.  And the IDN Variant Working Group
will be providing some oversight of that work activity.

We've already covered the disclosures of interests.

Next slide.

Another thing we're trying to do continuously, really, is improve the
effectiveness of the board.  Some of that includes determining when we
should spend a bit more time on resolutions.  And you would see that
in our recent Brussels consultation with the GAC, where we gave a
verbal summary of the current board's thinking, but we took another
week or so to finalize the scorecard that we provided back to the GAC.
And you will also start seeing some of that probably in the meeting
later this morning in how we intend to handle the new input that we've
received on the new gTLD topic.

We're also improving our processes with respect to codes of conduct,
including disclosures of interest and treatment of confidentiality.
And we are also starting to look into some of the recommendations from
the ATRT.  And one of those was the concept of having board member
compensation.  And so the governance committee would need to work out
a process for deciding formally whether to compensate board members.
It's a very formal process that needs to be undertaken.

So that's the end of my report.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Bruce.  A busy time for the BGC,
as always.

Any questions for the chair of the Board Governance Committee?

If not, let's say thank you to Bruce, to you and the committee, thank
you for the report, and move to the Compensation Committee -- excuse
me -- which I chair ex officio.  We have a practice of the chair of
the board also chairing the Compensation Committee.

Members alongside with me are Rita Rodin Johnston, Ramaraj, who's
chair of the Finance Committee, and Bruce, as you know, who is chair
of the Board Governance Committee.  So we tend to use the senior
chairs or chairs of the -- those committees on the Compensation
Committee.

Just some of the activities since Cartagena.  The ombudsman was due to
retire on January the 31st, and we've sometime prior to that been
working on a replacement.  And during that period, an international
search was conducted, organized by a firm in Brussels.  In that
period, the short-listed candidates that they had selected were video-
interviewed by members of the Compensation Committee.  Some very
promising candidates have been seen.  It's possible that we may have
some further interviews, depending on discussions with the search
firm.  And we are reasonably confident of making an appointment from
what looks like a very good pool of candidates of a new ombudsman by
the Singapore meeting.  That should probably be the announcement of an
appointment.  We're not exactly sure what the availability of some of
the candidates will be to take up the job by Singapore.  But that's
certainly the intention.

And, of course, it's worth noting on this point that we have heard the
-- for many years who has been our adjunct or assistant ombudsman
frank Fowlie, has stepped up and by working as the ombudsman.  So
there has been no period where there has not been an ombudsman to
serve the members of the ICANN community.

The other thing the Compensation Committee is responsible for is the
general compensation philosophy for ICANN.  And we have prepared that
over the years in consultation with external experts.  And there are
two major elements to that survey.  One of them is to -- excuse me --
is to try and establish a reasonable set of benchmarks against which
ICANN and its officers and staff can be compared.  And we did that
some time ago and created, if you like, a basket of companies, drawing
on not-for-profits, for-profits, technical companies, and other trade
associations and trying to get some kind of range of comparatives,
because as you can probably imagine, there isn't an easy organization
to compare ICANN with, with its particular set of responsibilities,
the kind of global, multistakeholder nature of the corporation, and
the range of very technical staff that we require, not to mention the
demands of serving such a diverse group spread out across the world.

So the first thing is to establish the basket of companies and
organizations against which we compare.  The next thing is to say,
well, how do we want to be compared against those?  And the current
comparative that we want to fit somewhere between the 50th and the
75th percentile against those companies.  So we don't see ourselves as
being median, but we don't want to be the highest-paying company on
the block.

Now, both of those elements are now being reviewed, first steps being
completed in that we've, we think, established a new -- a new basket
of companies.  As ICANN has grown, the size of organizations that we
need to compare ourselves with has slightly changed.

And the next exercise, then, is for the Compensation Committee to
analyze the -- whereabouts against the basket ICANN should be
compared.  And some further work is being requested by the committee
of the outside professional agency that does that work.

So those are the two major activities of the Compensation Committee
since Cartagena.

And I'm happy to take any questions.

Seeing none, we'll move to the next committee which is giving a
report, which is the Finance Committee.  And I'll ask Ramaraj, who has
been chair of the Finance Committee -- Ram, if I can mention that
there is actually a slide controller on the dais in front of you that
you might be able to use for your -- if there isn't, there should be.
I think it was anticipated that board chairs would stand there to give
their reports.  But it's perfectly acceptable to deliver them from
there.

Excuse me.

>>RAMARAJ:   I thought there was an Executive Committee presentation
between the two.  But I am okay.

Good morning.  Can I go to the next -- oh, I need to do it.  Okay.

We have two new board members joining the committee, Sébastien and
Cherine.  And George has been on the committee and continues.
Gonzalo, Bruce, and Katim are observers to the committee.

A couple of new initiatives in the budget framework for FY '12.  One
is that the budget for better transparency and clarity to the
community has been broken into three buckets this time, the framework.
One is core activities.  Two is new projects.  And three is new gTLD
activities.

The new gTLD itself has two parts.  If it is launched during the
financial year '12, what could be income and expense.  If it is not,
what is the expense budget.  So those are the three buckets, for
clarity and better view.

Also, it's a way for the community to be able to say that these core
projects are -- these new projects could be prioritized in another
fashion.  So the actual numbers and dollars would be put up by May,
but this is to prioritize whether we've got the priorities right or
not.  So core, new projects, and new gTLDs.

One other initiative this year was to get earlier inputs from SO and
AC chairs on what could be their requirements, some of their
initiatives that they would like to see in the budget.

Good response this time, some to existing activity, some to entirely
new activities.  And that's being collated and will be put up for
community feedback on the right prioritization.  So that's the second
part of this budget.

The investment policy was reviewed by an external agency, KPMG.  And
this is an annual requirement by the bylaws.  And they said that this
is -- the investment policy is fine for ICANN's objectives.

However, since we have had the same investment manager for about three
years, the Board Finance Committee recommended that we review and
create an RFP to look at the same or new, but to have an RFP out to
see if we have a choice of selecting another investment manager.  That
process is under way, and by Singapore, we should be able to recommend
to the board the same or new, but a review of the investment manager's
activities.  The reserve fund itself, thanks to market, is performing
well.  During the year FY '11, there's been a gain of about $6
million.  And, therefore, effectively, the reserve fund is now just
over $50 million.

There were some initiatives that came outside the budget during the
year.  Bruce just mentioned about the new variant committee or working
group that's been formed.

The AoC review, the ATRT recommendations to start seeing how to
implementing, a new GAC-Board Brussels meeting, a new gTLD workshop
and retreat that was held during the year.  All of this increased the
budget or expense by about $1.6 million.  However, we have, as you
know, a contingency of about $1.5 million.  And, therefore, staff are
working to make sure that we stay within the budget in spite of some
of these new initiatives.

So that's, again, something that the staff are working to making sure
that we stay within the budget.

Thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Ramaraj.

Any questions for the chair of the Board Finance Committee?  A very
busy program.

Thank you, Ramaraj.  There's no report -- yes, there is.  I'm sorry.
Let's move to the next committee, which is global relationships, which
I also chair.

Thank you.

One of the larger memberships, reflecting the importance of the range
of activities that fall within the purview of the board governance --
sorry, that shouldn't be governance.  That should be global
relationships membership.

There's a gender balance, and there's also a geographic balance.  So I
think that's the right slide.  It's just got the wrong heading.

Board Global Relationships Committee was set up to help provide
oversight for all of the very important relationships that ICANN
maintains with siblings in the ecostructure and other external bodies.
So the description there, provides strategic directions to sustain and
enhance the many external relationships.  So the committee's had a
teleconference in February and an in-person meeting in March.

And, in particular, there's been developing the IANA contract renewal
objectives and strategy.

Other activities include assessing the policies and procedures
governing the ccTLD IDN fast track, developing criteria and guidelines
for ICANN entering into memorandum of understandings -- this is the
general memorandum of understandings that we enter into with sibling
and other associated relation parties.

The other aspect is to be strengthening the global partnership team,
and the regional engagement, as you know, we have ICANN staff around
the world acting as regional liaisons.  Very important part of the
ICANN function to be available in their own time zone and in their own
language to members of the international community.

Oops.

All right.  That's the end of the slides.  That's the description of
activity.

Are there any questions of the activities of the Board Global
Relationships Committee?

If not, thank you.  We'll move to the next one, which is the IANA
Committee, chaired by Kuo-Wei Wu.

>>KUO-WEI WU:   Thank you, Chair, and good morning, everyone.

And let me introduce the other committee member.

First of all, as you know, from this year, we actually lost two
excellent IANA Committee members.  One is Dennis.  Another one is
Harald.  But we have another two excellent, you know, new board
members to join in.  One is Ray, and one's Bertrand.

So, currently, the committee members are including me, and Katim
continued from last year, and Ray and Bertrand are the new ones who
joined in this committee.  And Tom and Suzanne are from the committee
already.

So I think that you know this is currently our committee members in
the IANA, IANA Committee.

And for this work plan for 2011, actually, it's given in Cartagena by
the former chair of the -- Harald.  And I just will try to brief what
is different from going from the last Cartagena meeting to now.  And
you can see here that first of all is the briefing for the new
committee member.  And the second thing what we're going to do is a
communication plan for the final IPv4 allocations.  And all of you
know that, you know that we had a big press conference in Miami on
February the 3rd.  And I think that is -- we are prepared.  And thank
you for the IANA office to working on this one and also coordinating
with -- the ICANN institution with all the RIR and other people.

So I think, basically, this is the major developing what's happened
from the Cartagena meeting until now.

The next one, actually, is basically where the committee has self-
assessment.  Basically, it's for last year.  And that is already done,
and they are reviewing the -- our self-assessment by the committee
members.  I think it's the last telephone conference call.

And it's published on the Web site.  I think you can find that.

And so that is the current update.

And in Q2, as you know, we are going to review the first year, you
know, the key-signed key and the manager and the DNS operation area
review, and maybe we are going to do some preparation for the gTLD
delegation workload.  It depends on when our guidebook will go
through.

And the third thing is, of course, the root zone file management
automation launch.  And we are -- will be -- if there's any progress,
we will update as soon as we can.

And so the next one is reviewing the IANA, you know, the department
under 2011 for business excellency self-assessment.

So I think that is our current status of the IANA Committee.  And I
think this PowerPoint and those meeting minutes for the telephone
conferences and also the IANA Committee meeting for -- in San
Francisco is already published on the Web site.  And you are very
welcome to take a look and, you know, let us know if you have any
questions.

So I think that about ends my presentation.

Any questions?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Seeing none, thank you very much, Kuo-Wei,
from the report from the IANA committee.  And we move to the public
participation committee, chaired by Mike Silber.  Mike.

>>MICHAEL SILBER:  Thanks, Peter, and I've already had a note from one
of my colleagues indicating that while it's greatly appreciated that
we are able to sit here and not say very much because the audience is
not yet in a position to respond particularly vocally, it's one of the
issues that needs to be looked at.

There's the usual suspects.  Very useful having some new influence, as
well as having some steady hands.

The critical issue that we're looking at is different people, same
focus.  The public participation process, meetings, remote
participation tools and systems, outreach and engagement.

And let me just say a little bit on each of those.  In terms of the
public participation process, the ATRT recommendations recommends a
particularly formal process which certainly is interesting and
presents some interesting challenges, but also may be more appropriate
to be tweaked to make it more appropriate for a consensus-building
bottom-up organization rather than an adversarial organization.

So I think there's a lot of excellent suggestions in the ATRT
recommendation around the public participation process in creating a
comment and reply comment process, that we are looking at in some
considerable detail.

At the same time, the ultimate intent of this community, wherever
possible, is to build consensus rather than maintain the divides.

In terms of meetings, that's a challenge and there was some work
undertaken last year around the meetings for the 21st century project,
and that's something that this committee is going to be taking
forward.

We also would have seen, and will be passing this morning, the
recommendations around the meeting date for the coming years.

Now, just because those meeting dates are announced, doesn't mean that
the meetings for the next decade process and initiative is swept under
the carpet but is going to continue to be looked at.

One thing I will mention, and just would place on the record, even
though it's a significant time away, is the only space where we really
had any contention in the meeting dates set that we published was
around the first meeting in 2015, which occurs pretty close to the
lunar new year celebrated by, in particular, the Chinese community.

The problem about pulling that meeting forward would have made the
date for publication of papers the first working day of the year,
which would have meant that we would have had staff sitting in the
office between Christmas and new year, which, again, is a significant
celebration for other significant communities.

The decision has been made that the proposed meeting date will stay
as-is, but I'm just encouraging people coming, in particular, from
Asia and from the Chinese language communities, even though it's a
long way away in 2015, just to be aware that travel arrangements are
going to be tight.  People may even want to start booking already,
even though we don't have a venue for that, but jokes aside, that's
the sort of tension that we do need to bear in mind when trying to
accommodate the multicultural, multistakeholder organization that
we're dealing with.

I think people would have seen some significant moves in the last 18
months around remote participation tools and systems, and those we
continue to now iterate to try and improve each time.

Again, I see a lot of people in rooms and physically present making
use of things like the live transcription service, and it would be
very useful if we could get any feedback from people in terms of the
usefulness.  Maybe we actually need to create a local stream to reduce
the impact on those who are actually accessing that stream from
outside of the meeting rooms.

On the to-do list, the one critical one over there, as I mentioned, in
looking particularly at the public participation process, is following
the ATRT final recommendations.  The ongoing meetings review, which is
absolutely critical, ongoing review of the participation tools and
systems.  What's particularly important and what we haven't done over
the last year -- it's been spoken about, but there hasn't been that
much success, and it's something that we are hoping to start focusing
on in the second half of this year -- is a program to reach out to
other communities, and in interaction with the ICANN community, one
community that's been specifically identified has been young people.

And then the other issue is looking at appropriate use of social media
and how we can use the fantastic social media tools to try and engage
with our community over here.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Mike.

Again, a very busy program and very important topics for the future of
ICANN being covered.

Are there any questions for the chair of the Public Participation
Committee?  If not, let's move to Dr. Steve Crocker, who is the chair
of ICANN's risk committee.  Steve.

>>STEVE CROCKER:  Thank you very much.  I've taken over the risk
committee this year from Bruce Tonkin, a very, very hard act to
follow.  He's done a fantastic job of organizing things, and I'm
basically just running in place to keep up.

Let's see.  This did not cause anything to happen.  Why is that?

Am I too far away?

Oh, there's a big green button there.

[ Laughter ]

Never mind.  You can --

[ Laughter ]

There ought to be something cogent I could say about user interfaces
and risks and so forth, but not at this hour.

Here's the members of -- in addition to myself.  We have Bruce Tonkin,
who has remained on the committee, which is a major lifeline for me.
Mike Silber, Ramaraj, and Suzanne Woolf.

We met in February and we met again this week with a work plan for all
of 2011 focused on DNS risks, and we have a risk assessment exercise
that has been ongoing, sampling opinions across the staff against
many, many different categories performed by an outside contractor.
Fairly sophisticated and informative.

We don't have any results to publish on all that, but the -- it's
causing us to focus in.

We're going to meet again in May and June, review in FY -- for FY '12
strategic and long-range risks and do program-level reviews for the
gTLDs, IDNs, and DNSSEC, and global meeting risks.  Thank you.

Any questions?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  I see no questions, so we come to the
structural improvements committee, chaired by Ray Plzak.  Ray.

>>RAY PLZAK:  Thank you, Peter.

This is the cast of characters here.  One change.  We replaced Jean-
Jacques with Bertrand, so we had to keep the French element on the
committee.

[ Laughter ]

We also rotated out one member of the TLG and rotated another one in,
so Reinhard -- I don't know what he's done at the ITU but they sent
him back to the board for another go at it, so...

No more comments on that.

[ Laughter ]

And we are supported by Olof, and in addition, there are several
members of the -- other members of the policy support staff that help
us as well.

This is where we are.  The line down below shows where we are in the
review process, and we -- in the course of doing this work, we have
prepared a number of resolutions that the board will look at later
this morning to help move this work further along.

I believe there's somewhere in the neighborhood of five or so.  But a
few of them deal with the SSAC, and upon enactment of those
resolutions, in fact, the SSAC review will move from the
implementation phase to the assessment of facts, so, in essence, it
will have completed its review process.

ALAC is moving along well.  There's a few more bylaws resolutions to
take care of there that will move that along.

We also have a resolution regarding the TLG review, and I'd also note
that the TLG review was the first review conducted without the
formation of a board working group.  The ASO review will have the same
feature.

The ASO review is being performed by the NRO.  The bylaws provide for
that to occur.  The ASO is the only supporting organization that can
do that.

We did meet during the week with the chair of the ASO, Raúl
Echeberria, to discuss progress, and in the future you'll be seeing
reports from us as that work progresses.

One of the things that came out of the GNSO review was the formation
of a process to recognize new constituencies.  That was enacted very
early on, and we've got some lessons learned from that, and also as a
result, from discussion with various members of the community, the SIC
last year took under its work to work on that process.

We -- as I reported at the last meeting in Cartagena, we have done
work on that.  Since then, the committee has sent it out for public
comment, through the process.

The board has a resolution before it today to extend that comment
period to make sure we get more opportunity for people to comment, so
that's moving along well.

We are also -- have been doing work with the NCSG on their charter,
and you should see a resolution today regarding putting that out for
public comment.

So the committee has been quite busy since Cartagena, and we still a
lot more work to do.

And what we are planning to do is finalize the implementation plans --
oh, I forgot.  There's also a resolution on the ccNSO review,
accepting that report and directing staff to work on implementing
plans for that as well.

So anyway, we're going to be finalizing those plans for the ccNSO and
TLG reviews.

As you can see, we are -- now have the SSAC moved further down the
line.

We will continue our liaison with the NRO regarding the ASO review.

The bylaws actually tell us when we have to begin the next round of
reviews.  That's 2013.  However, that's not that far away, if you
think in ICANN terms, and so we are already beginning to work out
plans for that next review cycle.

We intend to complete the constituency recognition process, and we
also intend to move forward the CSG and NCSG charters, both of which
are in final revision.

In addition, we will also be moving forward a couple of constituency
applications that have been submitted to date.

And so that completes my report.  And with that, I say thank you.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thank you, Ray.

Just a comment how pleasing it is to see the GNSO report, which has
been so large, at that particular phase of the implementation cycle.

And the other thing to comment on, there was a discussion when the
board met with the GNSO, and comment from elsewhere, about volunteer
stress.  Just to note that what a bulge of review work has actually
been going on and going through the organization and how pleasing and
how much relief I think we will all feel when that first phase -- we
seem to be reviewing every single piece of ICANN all at once, as a
result really of having got a bit behind earlier on and now we've sort
of -- looks as if we're coming through that catch-up phase.

So thank you very much for all the work that's involved in that.

Steve.

>>STEVE CROCKER:  Yes.  Thank you, Peter.

I want to echo the -- your comment about the bulge there, and ask a
little technical detail, Ray.

The bylaws have mandated this whole process, of course, and it's an
enormous amount of work and I have to applaud the -- you and your
committee for overseeing all of that.

At what point is a review considered complete?  Is it when it has made
it through the implementation phase?  I don't know if it's possible to
roll back to a previous -- to one of those slides that has the stages
in it.

Is it possible to do that?

>>RAY PLZAK:  Well, to answer your question, the actual rollback --
the completion would be considered at the end of the implementation
phase.

In other words, when the final steps -- when all the recommendations
of the review and the working group have been acted on, then for all
intents and purposes that particular review is complete.

For the purposes of establishing the review cycle, we are taking it
from the point at which the board accepts the report from the review
or, in this case, the review working group.

>>STEVE CROCKER:  So I notice you moved SSAC into the last stage,
which I have a -- obviously a very personal and close interest in.
Yeah.  "Assess effects" there.

So we have -- we have -- the way I read that, SSAC over the finish
line, ALAC, GNSO poised right at the finish line, and several bunched
up right behind it.

I think it's -- these reviews have been going on for quite a while.
They're an enormous amount of work, and I think the completion of this
batch is a -- an important moment in the history and the life of our
young enterprise.

This will be the first time that we're getting through this process,
and it is noteworthy, I think.  A relatively big deal.

It's overshadowed, perhaps, in visibility by the other set of reviews
that have been taken on in the Affirmation of Commitments process, but
I wouldn't want to lose track of the fact that there's a huge amount
of work that was committed to, undertaken, and is now being completed
across the entire spectrum of the enterprise.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Thanks, Steve.  I agree completely.
Particularly to focus on the work that's done by all members of the
community and the organizations that are themselves the subject of
review.  Thanks go to them for the work.

I see a question.

>>LIZ WILLIAMS: :  Thank you, Peter.  I didn't know whether you were
taking questions.  Liz Williams.  I was the staff member involved in
2005 --

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Sorry.  Could you just -- we haven't got
quite enough volume and you probably need to slow down.

>>LIZ WILLIAMS: :  Thank you.  Peter.  That's your theme of the week.
Liz Williams.  Ray, I just wanted to ask you a practical question and
I wondered if you could just go backs to that slide, please, which had
the bunched-up reviews there.

In 2005, in about October/November of 2005, we began the terms of
reference for the GNSO review, and at the time I was the ICANN staff
member that was responsible for doing that.

We're now seeing the end of that review process.

Practically, Ray, in the assessing of effects, how do you then --
that's a very long cycle, from the beginning of the review process,
the community consultation, the retention of the external reviewers.
You go through an assessing-the-effects process and then you want to
start the cycle again.

If you get poor results in the assessment of the effects, is there an
early warning system that says, "You know, things really haven't been
working that well.  We need to address this particular point or that
particular point."

For example, a PDP process is not working or stakeholder engagement is
not working.

How do you prevent the very, very long cycle of assessing a negative
effect, dealing with it, prior to the whole review cycle starting
again and then coming back through the process?  Because that's
another five years away, by my estimation.

>>RAY PLZAK:  Thank you for that question, Liz.  It's a very good
question.  And the answer is relatively simple.

One of the things that I reported on was the constituency recognition
process, and in the course of developing that, we are developing a --
have developed a set of criteria which are objective and measurable
and all those other nice buzzwords, but it also forms a nice basis for
the committee to engage upon the board-directed reviews of -- outside
of this cycle of constituencies and also what we'll be doing is a
similar type of thing as far as developing criteria for stakeholders
because the board wants that to be done as well.

So those kind of internal reviews will be going on.

We need to finalize those plans to move it forward, but we fully
recognize that we can't wait every five years to kind of see what's
going on, so we've got these internal things we're working on, which
will allow us to keep a pulse on things.  And if there's something
that's drastically going wrong, we should be able to detect it and be
able to take some mid-course corrections.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Okay.  Any further questions of Ray Plzak?
If not -- so thank you, Ray.  Again, just recognizing the enormous
amount of work that's going on in that area.

And bringing this session to a close, if we could just move to the
next slide, there is the place where the committee reports can be
found.  As I say, most of the committees have prepared reports.
That's there.  And as Kuo-Wei said, all of the minutes and various
other matters relating to the committee work is also available under
the transparency guidelines.

So thank you very much.  Next slide should be the final one.  Next
slide.

Thank you very much.  We'll close this session.  The next session will
be reports from the SO and AC chairs starting at 9:00, so board
members may leave.  SO and AC chairs, if you could come to the stage,
please, and be ready to work through the reports.  Let's take a short
break and reset for 9:00.  Thank you.

[ Break ]