All,

Please see attached. 

Apologies that this was not forwarded on to you yesterday.

Jonathan

Dear SO/AC Chairs,

We, the Chairs of the ccNSO and GNSO Council, would hereby like to invite your organization to join a drafting team, tasked with drafting the charter for a Cross-Community Working Group to develop a Transfer Process for the IANA Stewardship Role.

Based on conversations to date, we anticipate that the ALAC and SSAC will join this effort and we sincerely hope that the ICANN’s other supporting organizations and advisory committees   will also respond positively to this initiative. The final draft charter will be presented to at least each of the organizations participating in this effort for their adoption, according to each organization’s own rules and procedures.  

Taking into account the principles outlined by the NTIA in its announcement, we believe such a cross community working group, with participation from and supported by the ICANN community as well as other organizations, is the most appropriate way to develop a proposal for a transition plan.

Initial work by some members of the community resulted in a first draft straw-man document, which is included here as an annex. We believe this may help the drafting team in its efforts, but it is by no means intended to prescribe, limit or restrict conversations, though it is worth noting that some elements contained in the document align with the current thinking of some ccNSO and GNSO members. We anticipate that any final draft should address at a minimum:

-          Purpose and Scope (what is in and what is out of scope)

-          Goals and objectives

-          Deliverables

-          Timeline

-          Proposed approach (how is the WG expected to conduct its work, reporting to chartering organizations)

-          Relationship with Coordination Group as proposed by ICANN (see https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/process-next-steps-2014-06-06-en)

-          Membership / sponsorship (should membership be limited, open to anyone interested?)

-          Sponsorship / chartering organizations (should sponsorship be restricted to ICANN structures or also extend to external organizations?)

-          Staffing / support needed

-          Rules of engagement

-          Decision-making methodology (how are decisions made in the WG and how are these reflected in the recommendations) 

-          Process for review / adoption of proposal by chartering organizations (also addressing what would happen if one of the chartering organizations would not adopt the proposal)

-          Closure of the WG

In order to be able to complete the drafting of the charter and share it with the different organizations for consideration in a timely manner, we would ask that each participating organization assign a maximum of 4 representatives to the drafting team. 

To facilitate the work of the drafting team at its initial stages, we are both available to serve as interim chairs of the charter drafting team, if that is deemed to be helpful, and for as long as the drafting team would like us to.

Although the ICANN London meeting is very close, we recognize the value of meeting face-to-face. Therefore we would like to organize an informal meeting of the drafting team during the London ICANN meeting and as such have identified Monday 23 June 2014, 17h00 UTC (18h00 London)  as a possible option to do so. We hope and would appreciate if you could provide us with your feedback and the names of volunteers (even it that would be on an interim basis until your organization has formally assigned a representative to this drafting effort in accordance with your own rules and procedures) by Sunday 22 June at the latest.

We look forward to receiving your feedback.

Byron Holland                                    &                     Jonathan Robinson

ccNSO Council Chair                                                   GNSO Council Chair