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Board Activities and Meetings

View records of actions and decisions made by the ICANN Board from recent activities and meetings.

Public Participation Committee (PPC) Minutes 16 December 2009

PPC Attendees: Jean-Jacques Subrenat – Chair, Thomas Narten, Vanda Scartezini and Katim Touray

Other Board members present: Dennis Jennings

Apologies: Gonzalo Navarro

Staff Attendees: Doug Brent – Chief Operating Officer; Nick Ashton Hart, Samantha Eisner, Christina Rodriguez, Diane Schroeder, Amy Stathos and Nick Tomasso

The following is a summary of discussions, actions taken and actions identified:

  1. The Chair thanked members who had renewed their commitment to this Committee, and welcomed the new Board members to the PPC.

  2. The PPC received an introduction from staff on the new role of Senior Director Participation and Engagement and the future work plan for the PPC in light of the change in supporting staff.
    • Action:
      • Staff to provide budget figures for items identified in committee work plan.

  3. Discussed the work identified within the PPC charter to inform the new members of the PPC’s work, and received updates from staff on some of the items that remain open, including an update on the ICANN Translation Policy. The PPC noted that the standardizing document numbering and naming is important to public participation within ICANN.
    • Actions:
      • Staff to provide a review of what similar organizations do to address standardization of document naming and numbering and provide a rough estimate of costs to address a solution within ICANN.
      • Staff to provide the committee with an update on: (1) where ICANN stands on each open issue identified by the PPC; (2) what are the choices for moving forward; (3) what are available solutions; and (4) what is ICANN ready to use on a trial basis prior to Nairobi. The issues include document operational policy, standardized document naming and numbering, public consultations, public ICANN meetings, linguistic policy, and open standards-based software.
      • Staff to prepare a one-page summary briefing on the state-of-the-art with respect to multilingualism as it relates to the following four areas:
        • Level of current translation and of what types of documents;
        • Trends with respect to interpretation over the course of time and associated costs;
        • Potential cost impacts above budgeted amounts related to the draft translation program if it were to be implemented;
        • Relative cost reduction in translations over time.
          Challenges should be clearly identified and where feasible options to resolve them provided. The objective is that this briefing would be able to lead to a dialogue with the community on next stages in the implementation of multilingualism in translation.

  4. Discussed the PPC action plan for 2010 and planning for future PPC meetings. The PPC received a staff update on each of four themes selected by the PPC for future work, including: (i) Meetings; (ii) Distance Communications Tools and Systems; (iii) Holistic Review of the Public Participation Process; and (iv) Holistic Outreach / Recruitment Strategy.
    • Actions:
      • Staff to prepare focused questions for ICANN community members and key participating organizations, as well as a general questionnaire seeking input on the formation of ICANN’s International Public Meetings for use in determining short and long term solutions for enhancing the efficiency of the meetings and assuring the purpose of the meetings is being fulfilled. Process should be launched prior to the meeting in Nairobi and ready for community conversation in Nairobi, including conversations between the PPC, staff and other participants to assist in moving the process forward.
      • Staff to present the proposed questions to the PPC for review prior to dissemination.
      • Staff to review the propriety of use of online tools to facilitate the committee review of the proposed questions.
      • Staff to modify the project to ensure that outreach and recruitment is done in a way that allowed success to be measured, and in particular that the objective should be a larger number of participants from more diverse interests active in policy development work and a greater diversity of voices engaged therein.

  5. Received an update from staff on the plan for moving forward to the Nairobi meeting.
    • Action:
      • Staff to, within seven days, provide a proposal for a standardized suite of distance participation tools to use at the Nairobi meeting, including instituting common tools for specific types of meeting sessions.

  6. Discussed the PPC schedule of meetings through Nairobi.
    • Action:
      • Staff to provide PPC with two proposed schedules, one with two meetings per month, the other with a single meeting per month, for PPC consideration and online discussion.