ICANN today is posting its fifth and final status report [PDF, 316 KB] to the GNSO on the implementation of its recommendations for the Add Grace Period (AGP) Limits Policy. As noted in prior status reports, the success of the Policy is evidenced by the 99.7% reduction in AGP deletes since the Policy went into effect in April 2009.
ICANN committed to analyzing and reporting on the effects of the Policy to the GNSO at six-month intervals for two years after its implementation. The first status report [PDF, 41 KB] was issued on 10 June 2009, the second status report [PDF, 61 KB] on 14 December 2009, the third status report [PDF, 224 KB] on 1 June 2010, and the fourth status report [PDF, 312 KB] on 18 November 2010. The purpose of these reports has been “to allow the GNSO to determine when, if ever, these recommendations and any ensuing policy require additional clarification or attention based on the results of the reports prepared by ICANN Staff.” Presented in a prior report was that during GNSO calls in April and May 2010, following inquiry from ICANN Staff about whether or not additional Policy work should be considered, the GNSO decided that the success of the Policy and the low number of exemption requests demonstrated that modifications to the Policy were not warranted at that time. Further, since the time of those calls there have not been any additional GSNO discussions about the Policy and the number and frequency of reported exemption requests from registrars has dropped considerably.
The results of the AGP Limits Policy illustrate the success of ICANN’s consensus-driven, bottom-up policy development process. Community members identified the problem, initiated policy discussions, generated a solution, and now monitor the results. The ICANN practice of encouraging and considering broad community input on policy issues leads to effective results.