Hi,

I’ve attached an updated version of the NCSG response to the public comment period for the Policy and Implementation WG initial report to this email. In it, I’ve tried to consolidate the excellent feedback provided from last week’s NCSG webinar.

There is some text that can’t be read on page 4 of the document, so I’m adding it here. You can only find it if you save the whole document as free text. This text is particularly important because it includes a somewhat contentious issue we discussed last Tuesday.

Support of the GNSO Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) is provisional to the same 
change in voting threshold being required for initiation of the process as the GGP, and for the same reasons. Additionally, Annex E #4 of the report states that "At the request of any Council member duly and timely submitted and seconded as a motion, the Council may initiate the EPDP by a Supermajority vote of the Council in favor of initiating the EPDP. A motion which fails to carry a Supermajority vote of Council may be resubmitted at the same Council meeting as a motion to 
initiate a GNSO Guidance Process". In the event that a vote confirming the initiation of an EPDP 
fails, it would be necessary for the voting threshold required to initiate a GGP be a supermajority 
vote in favor, also for the reasons mentioned above.

Furthermore, the NCSG believes that an EPDP should not be used to reopen a policy that had 
previously been deliberated upon, and rejected. To reconvene a discussion on a previously rejected policy, an issue scoping phase of a PDP (not included in the EPDP) should be included to scope the policy issue in order to determine wether or not there are new circumstances that have been recognized that require that a policy issue be revisited and reversed. This additional criteria for applicability does not conflict with those already being recommended in Annex E of the report.

For clarification, we had agreed to include input addressing this issue in the “Principles” section of the report. I was, at the time, in agreement on this. However, on review of the report, I found this difficult to do considering that the principles are very general in their nature, and do not specifically address any of the new processes being suggested by the WG. I hope the language I added addresses this in a satisfactory manner, but please let me know if there are any thoughts to the contrary.

Thanks.

Amr