Webinars Scheduled to Explain Public Comment Enhancements

In addressing recommendations from the recent efforts of the second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2), the ICANN staff has developed enhancements to the organization’s public comment proceeding processes. These enhancements will launch on 26 January 2015.

Two major changes will be implemented: 1) suspending the public comment reply cycle, and 2) launching an inquiry feature to allow for community feedback on staff summary reports of submitted comments. These improvements will be featured in redesigned landing pages for future public comment proceedings.

As part of these enhancements, the standard comment period will now be extended to a target of 40 days (minimum) and staff summary reports will be targeted for completion within two weeks of the comment period close date.

Two webinars will be held on Thursday 22 January 2015 at 10:00 UTC and 19:00 UTC to explain these changes in more detail. The two sessions are intended to be duplicates, scheduled to accommodate interested stakeholders in different time zones. Each session is scheduled for 60 minutes. During the course of the webinar, questions may be submitted using the chat function in Adobe Connect.

The presentation slides and recordings and transcripts of the webinars will be made available on the Public Comment Enhancements Webinar Reference Materials page. Additionally, ICANN staff is available to answer any questions about these changes via email at policyinfo@icann.org.

In 2014, the staff Policy Development Support Team assumed day-to-day oversight of ICANN's public comment proceedings. The team spent considerable time reviewing the existing public comment infrastructure, processes, and procedures and gathering data on community comment activity to determine what changes inspired by the original recommendations of ATRT1 have been effective and to determine the best way to implement the ATRT2 recommendations.

Since then, the team has worked closely with the staff Online Community Services staff to evolve and enhance the existing infrastructure of the public comment pages on the ICANN website.