Strategic Planning

 Wednesday, 31 October 2007

 ICANN Meeting - Los Angeles

 

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  We're just waiting for the translators to come up 
from downstairs so it will be another few minutes before we start.  
We'll start in a few minutes, once the translators have settled in.  
Even if you are an English speaker, or perhaps especially if you are an 
English speaker, you'll need to get yourself a headset from down the 
back there.  As Sarah is doing at the moment.  Because we'll be 
allowing people to speak during the session this afternoon in English, 
Spanish, French, and Russian.  The English translation will be on 
Channel 1 of your headset, and I'll just check with the translators 
what other channels other languages will be on.  

 For those who are just arriving, you'll need to pick yourself up a 
headset from the table near the door.  We'll be speaking to each other 
this afternoon in French, Spanish, Russian, and English.  English will 
be on Channel 1.  For those just arriving, you'll need to pick yourself 
up a headset from the door, or near the door, sorry.  We'll be speaking 
to each other this afternoon in French, Spanish, Russian, and English.  
English will be on Channel 1, Russian will be on Channel 0.  French 
will be on Channel 2.  And Spanish will be on Channel 6.

 >> My name is [speaking in French]

 [Speaking in Russian]

 >> I will now make an announcement for the Spanish speaker.  [speaking 
in Spanish]

  >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome.  My name 
is Patrick Sharry.  I'm a consultant who works for ICANN, and I'm here 
this afternoon because I've been involved with the management operating 
principles and also with the strategic plan.

 I'd like, first of all, to say how excited I am to be here for this 
session, because it is, in fact, with the exception of the translation 
session which one might have hoped would run in several languages, to 
my knowledge, the first time ever that ICANN will be running a working 
consultation session in multiple languages.

 [Applause]

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  And that's a great thing.

 [Applause]

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Those of you who have been following the strategic 
plan for a number of years will know that over the last few years, 
we've run sessions individually for the French-speaking community and 
the Spanish-speaking community, the Arabic-speaking community and 
that's been very, very useful.  I see today as a really important step 
forward that we're actually able to do it in a true multilingual 
environment.

 I'll just pause at this time and check that for the translators 
everything is working okay.

 Thank you, Peter, they are.

 Okay.  We're going to start this afternoon by looking at ICANN's 
management operating principles for accountability and transparency, 
and in a moment I will hand over to Paul Levins, who is going to take 
us through a short presentation, and then we'll have time for comment 
on that.

 After that, I'll hand over to Doug Brent, the chief operating officer, 
and he will take us through a short presentation on the strategic plan 
and we'll have time for comment on that.

 If at any stage we seem to be having problems with headsets and 
interpretation and so forth, if you can just let us know, we'll try and 
get that working.  We've just run a session downstairs on the 
translation policy, and after a few initial hiccups, it all ran 
extremely smoothly, and I'm hoping we can repeat that up here.

 Thank you.  Paul?

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Thank you, Patrick.  Ooh.  How to use this mic, 
probably.  Is that too loud or is that okay?  That's okay?  Good.  
Firstly, just want to echo Patrick's comments about how good it is to 
have this in a multilingual session.  Although for those of us not 
wearing the headsets, at least at this end of the room it's the 
equivalent of being in a cocktail party with all of the -- with all of 
the translations occurring at the back of the room.

 I normally dress like this.  But it's starting to give me a headache 
so I'm going to take this off.

 This session's about accountability and transparency.  It's to consult 
you on some -- and to inform you about measures that we are taking in 
relation to improve our accountability and transparency.  And so I want 
to give you a brief summary of what we have done so far to try and 
improve our performance on these two crucial issues.

 As I mentioned, it's Halloween.  These are my children.  Before they 
got dressed for Halloween.

 [Laughter]

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  The questions for today are twofold.

 You may have many more in your head, but what I particularly like is 
to focus on -- and I'll come back to this at the end of the session -- 
is:  What is working well in relation to ICANN's accountability and 
transparency?  I'd like to get a feel for that, because so often we do 
focus on the work still to be done.  And rightly so.

 What more needs to be done is the second question.

 So posing those questions now, so that you can keep them in your 
subconscious during the course of this hopefully short presentation, 
and we'll come back to them at the end.

 So some background.  September 29th, 2006 saw the board developing an 
affirmation of responsibilities as part of the joint project agreement 
with the United States Department of Commerce.

 There are 10 points or elements to that affirmation of 
responsibilities.  Two of them focus particularly on accountability and 
transparency.  They use the same phraseology in introducing themselves.  
ICANN shall continue to develop, test, and improve processes and 
procedures to encourage improved transparency and accountability.  And 
there's a slightly more elaborative set of words which you can read and 
I can point you to that JPA.

 Historically, there have been concerns about ICANN's accountability 
and transparency.  I think those have been accurate.  But as I hope 
you'll see during the course of this presentation, there's a lot more 
being done than people may realize.

 We've commenced a consultation on the development of a set of 
frameworks for accountability and transparency commencing back in 
October 2006.

 So here is what we're talking about.

 You'll find this document on the ICANN Web site.  This document here 
is the set of accountability and transparency frameworks.  This most 
recent posting opens up those documents for a second period of 
consultation, and I'll explain a little bit more about that as we 
progress.

 What's the input from the community that we've had so far?

 Very clearly, don't rush this.  It's very important.  So we haven't.  
Commencing, as I said, back in October 2006, what have been some of the 
suggestions as we've gone through this process so far?  Certainly Web 
site improvement, certainly better communication, improvements to 
appeal and review have been some of the suggestions that have been made 
along the way.

 There were suggestions that we needed expert advice on transparency 
and accountability.  And also a suggestion that we really needed to 
clarify how inputs are considered.

 I'm seeing a few concerned looks around the room.  Is that to do with 
the volume of the translators at the back?  Now, we're learning with 
all this.  Is there a -- ah.  And the gentleman from France is saying 
nothing much I can do about it.  Yeah.  I appreciate that.  I 
appreciate -- yes.  Thank you.

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  [Speaker is off microphone]

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Great idea, Peter.  That's a great idea.  If people 
could hug up a bit, move up in the room, I know this is not -- we're 
not used to this, but if you could do that, I think that's a really 
good suggestion.  If you could move up in your seats, if it's 
disturbing you, closer to the front, that would be really, really 
helpful.  [speaking in French]

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  I think I understand you, Sebastian.  We need more of 
those in English, yeah.

 >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET:  Even in English, it will decrease the noise 
from the back that as the cabins are not closed, it's inevitable that 
we have a lot of noise but if you use that in English, it will be 
better, I assure you.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  So it's moments like you, everybody wishes to think of 
it as poor planning or mistakes.  I like to think of it as improvement.  
And we will be better at this as we travel along.  So we're learning as 
we go.

 So we'll proceed on this.

 The other comment that was made was that we needed a set of 
principles.  That is, a set of frameworks that were all in one place.  
Something about our accountabilities and transparency information that 
was all in one place.

 We took the advice of the community, as I said.  We commenced an 
independent review by an organization called One World Trust.  One 
World Trust works with global organizations to make them answerable to 
people that they affect is their mission.  They said that 
accountability is based on -- now, this is the premise of their -- of 
their research, especially in relation to ICANN.  Accountability is 
based on transparency, participation, evaluation, complaint, and 
response mechanisms.

 A very long report that you can find on the ICANN Web site, but the 
good head line in the document was that ICANN is already, in many ways, 
a very transparent organization.  It discloses a very large quantity of 
information, probably more than any other global organization.  I've 
likened this -- my observation is to liken the amount of information 
that we have on the Web site a bit like credit card or software 
agreements.  You know, we all know there's essential information there, 
but it's completely impenetrable and we just press "agree" at the 
bottom and proceed to get what we want.  Often not knowing what is 
actually in the agreement.

 So what have we done to try and address some of these problems?

 Certainly historically, we've had strategic and operating plans.  I 
think that's an important thing, even though it's something we've had 
for some while.  It's not something that we have magically invented in 
the last year or so, but we have had those processes in place and, 
indeed, we'll be discussing the strategic plan when I -- when I close 
up.

 A budget planning process.

 Better board reporting.  And I think this is a crucial element.  Oops.  
I'm sorry.  I think this is a crucial element.  We moved from a 
situation where rightly, I think, there was a critique about ICANN's 
performance in producing, firstly, minutes that explained in some 
detail what the thoughts and the interactions between board members 
were, as well as distribute them in a timely fashion.

 So under the bylaws, ICANN -- the ICANN board is required to 
distribute minutes of its meetings, or at least the report of the 
meeting, within five days.  There was some history about the fact that 
some of the -- some of the minutes were not delivered within that time 
frame.

 We've now reached a position where, as of January this year, we now 
post a preliminary report which almost always, with some amendments, 
becomes the minutes of the meeting within a 72-hour posting period to 
the community.

 And you'll see, when you go to that Web site, I thought I had included 
it as a link.  I'm sorry, but I haven't.

 You'll see, when you go to that Web site, that it is a very fulsome 
documentation of the -- sorry, reporting of the meeting.

 What else have you we done?  An ICANN blog, a public participation 
site, newsletters, the appointment importantly of a general manager of 
public participation.  That's a bylaws requirement which we hadn't 
fulfilled for quite some time, which we've now done with Kieren 
McCarthy.  Well-known ICANN participant.

 Dare I say critic over the years?  Being appointed to that position.  
Web site improvements which I think have been very important to access 
to the information.

 This Web site is the same size as a small newspaper.  It's a 
dramatically large number of pages.

 It's been made more navigable, a little clearer, a little easier on 
the eye.  We've got some improvement to be made, still.

 We open posting of all -- there is open posting of all correspondence 
inbound and outbound, and we've added some -- some additional data 
about the staff which you would -- which you can see by way of this 
link.  Which is a mapping exercise, effectively.  Which I quite like.  
And that's why I wanted to show it.

 So you can look at, you know, where the staff are located, where board 
members are located, and so on.  You can go to the various 
representations there.

 Importantly, we developed a set of consultation principles based -- 
I'm sorry.  I'm going to start that again.

 Importantly, we said that we wanted to try and lift our process of 
consultation.  We did that by saying that we would have -- develop a 
set of consultation principles which were in that document that I 
referred you to earlier, the set of frameworks and principles for 
accountability and transparency.  Based on ICANN community requirements 
and the OECD best practice.  Now, what I mean by that is, we looked 
very carefully at using OECD best practice, and, in fact, you could 
arguably make the case that for something like this process, we have 
accorded with the OECD best practice, but the thing about the OECD best 
practice is that the time frames are very, very long.

 And that's why there's a reference there, at the beginning of that 
first bullet point, to the fact that our consultation principles are 
based on ICANN community requirement.  That is, the need to be able to 
produce consultations, run consultations, and produce output in fairly 
rapid term.

 We've introduced a public comment page which I think is a relatively 
unknown but very, very significant move.  It is where you -- once 
again, you will find in one place all of the public consultations we're 
running, all of the summaries and the summaries are a lot better than 
just simply there were 37 inputs and we will get back to you.

 They're actually at a small analysis of what has taken place, and then 
very importantly, what the next step in the process is.

 We developed -- as a result of the joint project agreement, we now 
have one reporting requirement, and that is the annual report.  That's 
externally, that is.  We've produced a magazine which I'm sure many of 
you have subscribed to which is some attempt to access a lot of the 
issues that ICANN deals with in a common language, if I can put it that 
way.

 And as I said, we've released these draft frameworks press release for 
accountability and transparency for discussion.  This is the second 
draft, with a November 12 close on the input on the second draft.

 What are some future developments?  An annual review of compliance 
with the information disclosure policy, which is included -- I'm being 
told to slow down, so I'll slow down.

 Which are being included in the frameworks for information and 
transparency, information disclosure and transparency, the development 
of a whistle-blower policy.  Simply better assistance in locating 
documents on the Web site.  We've already made steps in that direction, 
but we will be making some improvements.

 Improvements to translations which we said we're -- I won't say 
trialing.  We're implementing here.  And we're firmly committed to it.  
As Patrick said at the beginning of the session, French, Spanish, 
Russian, English too, but sadly no Australian.  An independent annual 
review of ICANN accountability and transparency.

 So what are these frameworks that I've been talking about and that 
I've pointed you to?  ICANN already has a set of external legal and 
internal rule-based accountabilities.  It's got, as we've seen, a set 
of consultative planning and budgeting processes, and it's got a fairly 
robust dispute resolution process.

 But we've never had -- if you wanted to find those accountabilities, 
we've never had them in one location, in one place.  And I think that 
has made -- I won't say "a world of difference."  I'll say it has made 
a significant difference to people's understanding about exactly what 
ICANN's responsibilities and accountabilities are.

 So if the existing accountabilities remain unchanged but are clarified 
and placed in one place, we've also developed, then, in consultation 
with the community -- and recognizing areas where we've been weak 
historically -- a new set of draft principles.

 This is also something that the One World Trust review identified as 
well, and those were a documentary information disclosure policy, a set 
of consultation principles, translation principles, and a code of 
conduct or behavior.

 I just want to jump back to that one for a moment.

 Yes, that's all I wanted to say on that, for the time being.

 What are the next steps in this process?  We're seeking comments, as 
I've mentioned before, at that forum on November 12 -- until November 
12.

 We will summarize and analyze the results and we'll post those in the 
public comment forum, in the one place, to inform a final draft.

 Bear in mind this is the second consultation process that we're going 
through on these draft documents.

 We then do hope to put a set of final frameworks and principles 
through to the board at its December 2007 meeting.

 What are the changes between the first draft and the second draft?  
The key changes between those versions are, firstly, under financial 
accountability at ICANN.

 There is now a separate section within that section on financial 
accountability on external audit, which we hadn't included before.

 On dispute resolution, there's been some small changes to clarify 
meaning.  We've had that through a number of the frameworks and 
principles, so I won't -- I'll refer to it a number of times here.  I 
won't do it again.  Just so you understand that, it will be anything 
from grammatical error through to clarity of wording, but not 
substantive change.

 Under dispute resolution, we included a section on -- an additional 
section on registry and registrar dispute resolution processes.  Under 
the consultation principles, again, small changes around meaning but 
changes in response to community comment, mainly around clarity.  The 
translation principles have been significantly rewritten, based on 
feedback from the community.  And work that was developed by the ICANN 
staff translation committee as a standing committee, I suppose you'd 
term it, within the staff working on translation issues and 
interpretation issues.

 Finally, ICANN -- we've -- we had, in an earlier draft, termed this 
particular framework a code of conduct and we've decided to expand that 
to "expected standards of behavior."  To ensure that the standards 
listed apply to all forms of exchange within the community and they're 
not somehow solely legalistically bound.  And, again, some small 
changes to clarify meaning.

 So we're back to where we started, which is I'd be very keen to have a 
conversation with you -- and the size of the room makes that possible 
to have a conversation -- what is working well, and what more needs to 
be done.

 Now, Mr. Facilitator, are we -- are you wanting to take questions now 
on this or would you prefer that we took questions all in one bunch at 
the end of the session?  What's your preference?

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  I think we should take questions now, Paul.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Okay.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Before I do that, a small technical announcement.  
The way this system works, if you're experiencing buzz in your headset, 
there's a good chance that it may be due to the proximity of your 
mobile phone to the headset, so if you're feeling that you're getting a 
lot of buzz, separate the mobile phone a little further from the 
headset and you may get better reception.

 Next thing, we'll follow the usual ICANN convention.  I'll run around 
and hand the mic around.  And if you could please introduce yourself 
when you start to make a comment, and also, because we're working in 
several languages, we may need just to pause briefly between comments, 
to do some quick technical things that need to happen down the back of 
the room.  It's only a matter of a few seconds, but we'll just take 
that pace rather than racing through.

 So any comments at all?  Paul's question there is:  What are the 
things that are working well in terms of accountability and 
transparency?

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  So nothing's working well.

 [Laughter]

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  As far as accountability and transparency.  Start 
again.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  No, no.  You're just looking for someone to break the 
ice, Paul.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Thank you, Marilyn.  And a better person to do that, I 
couldn't have nominated, so thank you.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  My name is Marilyn Cade.  I'm speaking as an 
individual.  I'm a member of the business community.  I just want to 
say that, you know, what is working well, I think, is the increasing 
progression of improvement that we're all seeing.  And I opened my 
comments in a previous meeting reminding some people in that meeting 
that I was in that the first time the strat plan was announced, it was 
Version 19 because it was the first time it had ever been done, and, in 
fact, the community organized the first review and comments on the 
strat plan, and now in a very short period of time, we have a 
formalized process, and an organized process, and a predictable 
process.  So let me say, I think the progression of improvement is 
definitely in the right direction, and is also accelerating and that, I 
think, is something that we all should take note of.

 Sometimes if you're brand new to an organization, you might not 
recognize how hard it is, as a brand new organization, to build all 
these structures, so I think that is generally working very well.

 Of course by having spoken first and said these nice things, I'm 
reserving a place later for:  What else needs to be done.

 [Laughter]

 >>MARILYN CADE:  But let me say one more thing about what's working 
well.

 You received a round of applause when you -- when the acknowledgment 
of translation -- sorry, when the acknowledgment of interpretation was 
referenced.  But I think you also deserve a round of applause for 
progress on translation as well.

 And making documents like the strat plan and other fundamental 
documents that help the broad, diverse community, to understand the 
organization better available and accessible in a multitude of 
languages, but also accessible in a timely manner.  I'll say more about 
timeliness in my next comment.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Thank you, Marilyn.  Appreciate that very much.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Are there other things that are working well?

 [Speaker is off microphone]

 >>VANDA SCARTEZINI:  As a member of the board, it's better not to, you 
know, be so enthusiastic about the good things.  So I prefer others to 
do that.

 [Laughter]

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Vanda.  Let's hope there are some others.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Is Bill Graham here?  Are you here, Bill?  Thank you.

 [Speaker is off microphone]

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Yeah, of course, of course.  I want to make a -- Bill 
Graham is the -- I'm sorry, go ahead, Marilyn.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  I just want to say one more good thing.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Keep going, Marilyn.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  I have been in sessions like this when the room has 
been filled, and Raimundo and I have been in some of those, and then 
I've been in rooms on this topic where Raimundo and I were there and we 
missed every -- one of the rest of you.  Just joking.

 But so the other thing that I think is working well really, Paul, and 
Patrick -- and I think this is a major -- to me, this is a major step 
forward, to have this consultation in multiple languages at the same 
time when it is not directly conflicting with other meetings is, I 
think, a very welcomed step.  So thank you.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Great.  Thanks, Marilyn.  Sebastien?

 >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET:  I'm going to be speaking in French.  My name 
is Sebastien Bachollet.  I would just like to say that I'm doing this 
just to have the opportunity to speak to you in French and that's why I 
am actually talking to you.  I could say that I'm just taking this 
opportunity to actually use the services provided by our interpreters.  
But beyond this idea of transparency, this debate on transparency, one 
of the ways that we can be really transparent is to be better 
understood by the international community, and that's why English was 
not enough.

 Now, when it comes to other issues like what's working well, what else 
could be done, I would just like to talk about the situation of the 
individual users in the at-large structure.  In ALAC, I believe there 
are a lot of things that remain to be done.  There are a lot of 
individuals who got together to create the regional organizations and 
structures.

 And in order to develop the individual participation of individual 
users, but I do want to mention that we still need to have all the 
other constituencies because their history is much longer and others as 
part of ICANN and their help is going to help us participate more and 
get more help.

 And another subject I would like to talk about is how much do we cost 
as individual participants?  In order to get an answer to this 
question, we need to understand the whole situation better.  So what's 
the budget?  And how can we actually have a positive impact on the 
budget in order to be better understood.  And thank you very much for 
your understanding and to give me the opportunity to speak to you in 
French.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Sebastien.  We will actually deal with 
some of those issues in strat plan situation where Doug will speak 
about the operating plan and the budget and so forth.  Peter?

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Hi, Peter Dengate Thrush from the board.  I 
agree with Vanda, it is not for us to say what was doing well.  I did 
want to put into the record thanks for a very comprehensive set of 
proposals in this regard that we received from the GAC and I will 
shortly receive in writing.  They take those accountability and 
transparency things seriously and have given us some great advice.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Peter.

 Steve?

 >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN:  Thank you, Patrick.  I'm Steve Goldstein, and I'm 
from the board also.  And I was trying to give everybody else a chance 
to say what's going well and having not heard about these things, maybe 
you don't know about some of these things or maybe you've just taken 
them for granted and hadn't noticed them.

 When I joined the board just about a year ago, it was hard to find 
almost anything on the Web page.  If you've looked at our Web pages 
lately, I think you will agree that it is pretty easy now to find 
things.

 If you're having any trouble, just realize right at the top there is a 
pull-down menu with -- I don't know -- maybe 100 different items on 
that could get you to almost any page you might have in mind.  It was a 
tremendously challenging job to get it to its present state.  It is 
going to improve over what is there now.  There will be major 
improvements.

 Yesterday -- it was quite funny.  Yesterday at the GAC meeting, one of 
the requests from the GAC was, gee, our Web site is in terrible shape, 
we could use some help with it.

 So I think when they said that, they were admitting that we had done a 
pretty good job with ours.  So that's one thing.

 A year ago when I joined, the people who were doing the financial 
recordkeeping within the organization really would have been hard-
pressed to come up with an easy way of illustrating just what we were 
spending our money on.  They could give you great big, complicated 
printouts but it wouldn't roll it out very easily.

 Now I know if you look at our Web pages, you can see pie charts which 
show you where our money's coming from and how we're spending our 
money.

 This is information that just a few years ago people on the board 
couldn't even get.  It's not that the management was hiding it from us, 
it's just that it wasn't available.  Recordkeeping wasn't that good.  
We were growing up from an organization which was small where, I 
understand, four years ago or five, whatever the number is, they were 
worried could they even meet payroll.  So it was pretty much a 
volunteer organization with a few paid staff and they just didn't have 
that capability.

 Now they have that capability and the information is being shared in 
the open, so if you want to know where the money is coming from, what 
we're spending it on, it is on the Web page and it is there in pie 
charts so that you can see it very easily.

 Another thing that I think is going very well is that Kieren McCarthy 
is putting out fact sheets, the latest one that just came out was a 
fact sheet about IP version 6 written in layman's language, telling you 
the things you need to know to understand why we're doing what we may 
be doing and why we won't be doing things that other people should do.  
But at least understanding the technology enough.

 He had put out fact sheets on the DDOS attacks that happened earlier, 
so we are reporting that.

 In addition to that, I get more stuff from ICANN than I can possibly 
read in terms of alerts and newsletters and magazines, so all kinds of 
stuff is coming out in terms of openness, transparency.

 When it comes to accountability, we are going to be working on that.  
We realize we have a ways to go but that's something which is very much 
going to be targeted in our upcoming year.

 So I hope you've taken note of that, but if not, I hope I've piqued 
your interest enough so that you will look at some of those things.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Steve.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  I just wanted to respond to a couple of those things.

 >>WOLFGANG KLEINWAECHTER:  If this is the round that you are phishing 
for compliments, here are two more compliments.  This is really a great 
achievement and it was a step in new territory for transparency that 
now all the discussions, not only in the plenary but also in this 
meeting is transcribed and people can go to this later after the 
meeting.  And at the same time, you have started with this remote 
participation.  And it's worth to note that the Internet Governance 
Forum earlier in meetings have stolen this practice from ICANN.  So 
ICANN has opened the door and now a lot of other organizations discover 
this is very useful.  And if you go in the government conference and 
look at how they deal with this issue, then you are ages ahead of this 
process.  Certainly, a lot has to be improved.  And to go through the 
150 pages of a transcript, it is easy -- it is not so easy for a reader 
and probably we can go one step further to identify catch words so you 
can easier have intervention.  This has to be done in the future.  

 Anyhow, if you compare with existing practices and intergovernmental 
organizations and the United Nations framework on other conferences, 
you are really a pioneer in this field.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  I will briefly interject recognizing that Stephane 
wanted to make a comment.  I was very conscious I don't want this to be 
about self-aggrandizement.  I am very pleased to hear the comments 
about things are going well.  Just conscious it might sound a bit like 
that's what we're trying to achieve here.  It's not that.

 What I am very conscious of those in asking the question is that there 
is a little of the "what next" feeling going on in lots of communities.

 What I mean by that is when I joined there was a great clamor for a 
blog.  There was a great clamor for improvement to the board minutes.  
There was a great clamor for a magazine that was a push magazine that 
pushed information to the community rather than was just simply 
available on the Web site.

 There was a great clamor for an improved consultations process.

 And I just don't want us to lose sight of the fact that those things 
exist because as we have seen in the process of the development of the 
frameworks around accountability, until we occasionally remind 
ourselves about the existence of some of these things, we can find 
ourselves in confused debates.

 So that was my purpose in this.  I would really like to shift into "so 
what's broken"?

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  And we will take a few comments that are 
outstanding and then any comments on what's working well or what's 
broken.

 Lesley?

 >>LESLEY COWLEY:  Lesley Cowley, Nominet U.K.  I would like to make 
comments about transparency.  Having been in the ICANN arena for some 
time, there have been some real marked improvements there.  In fact, if 
anything, we are probably headed in the other direction in that people 
will complain there is too much information coming out.  Perhaps, we 
need to work towards a greater summary level with the ability to drill 
down, if needed.

 The area, though, I do think there is more work to do on is in terms 
of accountability moving forward, particularly in linking to the strat 
plan session later, if ICANN is to move towards a more independent 
existence, how accountability might work in that context really is 
quite a challenge.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  So can I be provocative in that, if we're moving into 
-- we're shifting into what can we do better, how can we improve, 
especially on accountability.  In our last consultation on this in 
Puerto Rico, we had quite a good, I think, interactive session with 
many people, board members included, number of people who provided 
presentations around accountability and transparency.

 One of the things, I think, we identified was the need to have some 
kind of accountability mechanism which envisioned the potential to 
remove the board.  So if they all woke up one morning and started 
wearing these and doing other sort of weird and wonderful things, that, 
perhaps, a supermajority of the constituency groups may be able to 
observe that they're all doing strange things.  And after a process of 
inquiry and investigation, remove them.

 I'm just interested in exploring that.  I'm interested in exploring 
that as a mechanism, whether it's -- also whether there are others and 
what the pitfalls with that kind of mechanism might be and what the 
positives are in relation to that kind of mechanism.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Paul Twomey.

 >>PAUL TWOMEY:  Thanks.  I wonder if I can follow up on that 
accountability issues.  First of all, I would like to say for those who 
weren't there yesterday, the Canadian government representative handed 
down a -- or delivered a very carefully thought-through analysis of 
what is accountability in the eyes of his government, and I understand 
may well become a GAC document.  And it was a very careful analysis 
based on, if you like, fiduciary or business accountability, political 
accountability and -- I've forgotten the third heading.  And non-profit 
accountability.

 And we've had good discussions with Bill.  It has been a very 
interactive process.

 The document that we released earlier this week or the writing up of 
the existing accountabilities in the management operating principles 
draft, we intend to recut and reanalyze under those headings to be able 
to respond to the three things that Bill said and have a look at those.  
So that's the first comment I'd make.

 The second one, just to pick up the gauntlet you have thrown down, 
Paul, I would just make the following observations.  The existing board 
structure is such that a bare minority of the board is elected directly 
by the constituencies.

 There was -- I think, more as an aside or referential comment in the 
NomCom review which is still out for consultation some change of 
election patents for the board.  You just talked about this issue of 
wholesale board replacement.  I just want to point out there could 
potentially be a subset model which is if, for instance, the at-large, 
as they would all like to directly lead to boards, that you would go 
from a bare minority that's elected to a bare majority or some majority 
that's elected which gives that opportunity.  I just wanted to make 
that clear.  There is comment already out because I think that's a 
different question than the sort of wholesale -- what I heard you 
saying, which was wholesale.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  Yeah.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Paul.

 >>PAUL LEVINS:  My point in raising that was that it was raised the 
last time we got together on this topic, yep.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Stephane.

 >> STEPHANE van GELDER:  Just an advisory to the translators, I will 
be saying this in French.  Considering I have the opportunity to talk 
to you in French, my name is Stephane and I would just like to come 
back a very basic point which is the following, when we talk about 
transparency, transparency means clarity.  And even though many, many 
efforts were actually made and it needs to be recognized regarding 
transparency and clarity, in order to make sure the function of ICANN 
be clearer, there's still a problem when it comes to terminology who is 
outside of the ICANN circle.  And these people don't actually -- are 
not capable of understanding the jargon, the vocabulary, the lexicon of 
ICANN.  And I believe that this is something that is a barrier to 
clarity and transparency.

 Many people actually worked on documents in order for people to 
understand the jargon, the lexicon, the vocabulary, and I believe this 
is absolutely crucial for other people who do not speak English to 
understand such terms as "GAC," "comedy" constituency which do not even 
exist in French.  It is very difficult to actually find a translation 
into French for these words or into any other language.  So I believe 
there is a lot of work that needs to be done in this regard.  Thank you 
very much.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Stephane.  

 Raimundo?

 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:  Raimundo Beca, board member.  Just for the pleasure 
of speaking to ICANN in a meeting like this, I'm going to do it again.  
I have done it once before, but I am going to do it again but I am not 
going to make any reference to everything that has been done well 
because there are a lot of things that could still be improved.

 I want to concentrate on one topic, and that topic is -- I'm sorry.  
We've had a notable growth -- as far as -- and nevertheless, there's 
something that can still be improved.  It must be, in fact.

 You have to take into account public consultations.  Even more 
difficult in understanding the documents in public consultation is to 
express concept at this level.  There is a lot of people that do it 
unsolicited way.  A lot of people have fun trying to do it.  And I 
would like to see -- open the possibility of opening to commentaries, 
commentaries in a whole in an array of foreign languages.

 Now, I understand that this could incur costs that might be excessive.  
Now, the summary you're doing today in English, the summaries are 
wonderful.  They're remarkable.  They're so remarkable that you could 
read the summaries and just completely skip the documents.

 So it is essential that public comments, written in foreign languages, 
be accompanied also by a summary in their own language and that summary 
be accompanied by translation.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  That you, Raimundo.  Marilyn and then Liz and then 
we're going to change topics.  Okay.  Just Marilyn and then we'll 
change topics.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  The topic -- well, let me make sure the topic is 
improvement, yes?

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Or changes.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  I have a few I'd like to suggest.  I made a comment, 
again, earlier in a public forum about -- let me summarize it here -- 
transparency and participation don't equate to accountability.  And 
ICANN is doing a really good job -- are you okay?

 >>DOUG BRENT:  Yeah.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  Are you okay?  Okay.  ICANN is doing a really good 
job of trying to think through about how to improve transparency and 
we've heard comments about, you know, maybe sometimes a flood of data 
may not be as useful as a flood of data accompanied by a really good, 
crisp executive summary.  So I'm not going to comment on that.

 Participation, I think ICANN is talking to itself in some circles 
about how to enhance participation, but I think it may be missing some 
key points about enhancing participation that I'm going to reference 
later.  But my point right now is that transparency of materials -- 
access to materials -- and participation do not equate to 
accountability.

 So I want to talk about accountability.

 The question, of course, that we're all struggling with is:  
Accountable to whom and how are we accountable?  I think we -- in my 
own view in looking at this document, I note that we talk about a 
dispute and review -- review -- sorry, dispute and review mechanisms.  
We do not talk about appeal and recall mechanisms.  And I think we need 
to do that, and that goes to the point that was raised earlier.  I 
think I may have been one of the people who suggested there may need to 
be a mechanism by which a board decision could be recalled, and even 
board members or councillors could be recalled.

 I think the bar would need to be high in order to do that, and I mean 
high.  And I don't think that you should be able to mount a spurious 
complaint, but I think that for accountability purposes, let me give 
you an example.

 Let's say that the board voted on something and two out of three of 
the supporting organizations passed a vote of no confidence in the 
decision.  I didn't say a vote of no confidence in the board; I said a 
vote of no confidence in the decision.

 It seems to me there should be a mechanism by which a subcommittee of 
the board and a subcommittee from the supporting organizations could 
meet in a mediated session and try to figure out what it is that has so 
impaired the support of the community for that decision.

 It could be that the board would decide there was a better solution to 
be found.

 I do think it's going to be necessary to be able to recall both 
appointed -- since we today appoint a majority of our leadership 
positions at the board level.  I think it's necessary to have a repeal 
process, or a recall process.  Whatever it is.

 It needs to have a high bar.  But it has to be thought about, I think, 
in order to say, "There are, after all, at the end of the day, both 
appeal and recall mechanisms but they have to be, of course, thought 
through very, very carefully."

 I want to make one other point that I'll talk about more in depth in 
the strategic plan.

 It addresses the issue of participation.  There's a decision proposed 
in another document that I have strong opposition to.  I'm not going to 
talk about that decision here.  I'm just going to mention it.

 It is the idea that everyone from a commercial environment since -- 
must be a duck, since they all have feathers.  But the issue here is 
participation.

 In order for us to draw from qualified leaders who will spend 40 to 
60% of their time either on a -- as a councillor, on the GNSO -- and I 
feel qualified only to speak about the GNSO, as a former councillor -- 
or to spend that amount of their time on the board.  I think we must 
look at a compensation program for the board, and we must look at a 
balanced travel approach for funding for the face-to-face meetings for 
the GNSO Councillors.

 It may be that needs to be done, by the way, for all of the councils.  
I just would need for someone more qualified than me to comment on 
that.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's great.  Thanks, Marilyn.

 We'll move on to the strategic plan now.  Paul, do you just want to 
make --

 >>PAUL TWOMEY:  Sorry.  I just want -- I think that was really 
excellent, the suggestions.  I just wanted to share the context which 
was quite clear.  We'll have to think about accountability.  Is that we 
have multiple things to manage for.

 So when we think about recalls and appeals and things, first of all, 
there are appeal mechanisms in the contracts, and so if the boards make 
decisions vis-a-vis contracts, there are appeals for some parties.  Let 
me just put that on the table.

 But the other one, we'll have to be very careful about, is our very 
successful thinking 10 years ago of structuring to ensure antitrust 
issues are not -- so I just want to -- that's one of the things that 
most people who are responding on accountability don't know very much 
about, and don't think about.  But we will have to be very careful 
about antitrust structures.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Paul.  While this is the end of our 
consultation this afternoon, it's actually not the end of our 
consultation on the management operating principles.  As Paul mentioned 
earlier, the documents are posted on the Web site.  There's a public 
comment forum that's open until the 12th of November, and we'd really 
encourage you and your friends and relatives to make comments on 
anything that you feel is important.

 These are very, very important documents for the organization, and we 
need to be sure that the community understands and supports them.

 I'd like to move now to a conversation about the strategic plan, and 
we'll start that with Doug Brent, the chief operating officer, who is 
going to take us through a very short presentation and then we'll open 
the floor to comments.  Doug?

 >>DOUG BRENT:  How much time do we have?

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  

 [Speaker is off microphone]

 >>DOUG BRENT:  Hello.  And I'm going to say in Spanish, since we're in 
California, [speaking in Spanish].

 I'm going to talk about the strategic plan.  I am the enemy of the 
transcribers.  I talk too fast.  So I will do my best to speak slowly, 
and I would ask the translators or transcribers to please wave and stop 
me if I'm going too fast.  But I'll do my best.

 The purpose of this session, at least from my point of view today, is 
to -- if you read to the bottom of this list, would be to spark your 
interest to read the plan.  As I'll say in a minute, the strategic plan 
was posted in six languages simultaneously for the first time ever in 
ICANN's experience.  One of the ways to sort of drive the importance of 
that is particularly for the non-English-speaking community to actually 
read the plan and get us your feedback on that plan.

 I'm going to talk a bit about the process of the plan later, but just 
to give you a feeling what's happened this week, you know, there's been 
ongoing discussions.  On Sunday, we met with the GNSO Council.  On 
Tuesday, six meetings with several constituencies -- registrars, 
registries, NCUC, ISPs, IP constituency as well on that day.  So we've 
gotten broad consultation, and in some sense, probably broader input 
and activity than ever in the experience of ICANN to date.

 And since I just took a presentation skills class, I'm going to 
reemphasize again:  The purpose really, in my mind, would be to spark 
your interest, read the plan, get your feedback.

 Going a bit over the plan process, how did we get where we are today, 
this actually started in June at San Juan, the strategic planning 
process.  It's a six-month process that then blends into six months of 
operating plan where to Sebastien's point earlier, we get to budget and 
actual, you know, operating outcomes.

 The consultation started and actually we did them in French, English, 
Spanish, and I think that those were the only languages in San Juan.

 We received responses and took that input, collated it into an issues 
paper.  That issues paper was posted in September.

 The issues paper feedback and consultation process we sought input 
from every supporting organization and advisory committee, took that 
and melded that input into the strategic plan posted October 19th in 
six languages.  Obviously, we're having this session today.

 The next step of the process will be input continues through November 
10th, so we'd welcome input from anyone in this room.  Did I say read 
the plan, please?  And give us your input.  And get that back to us, 
and then by November 10th, we'll close off input on the plan and submit 
a plan for board review and approval in December.

 So why should you care about the plan?

 And when Sebastien asked this question, that was the first thought 
that occurred to me.  As I was sitting on the side of the room, 
Raimundo Beca came up to me and said, "Doug, remember in the operating 
plan process, we allocated an additional" -- I think he said a hundred 
thousand dollars but I think it was more than a hundred thousand 
dollars -- to the translation program of ICANN.

 That input from the non-English-speaking community drove the budget.  
That budget drove meetings like this.  That makes this a reality.

 So in the end, the reason why you should care about the strategic plan 
is:  That is the community roadmap driving the operating plan.  I'm 
going to slow down again.  And then from the operating plan to 
individual actions within ICANN.

 If you start at the top of this slide, I can tell you there's great 
intensity within the ICANN staff, within the board, and within the 
community on us clearly identifying the tasks, what we're doing at 
ICANN as a community, as a staff, and as a community, and being able to 
measure those tasks.

 Ultimately, the measurement of those is adherence to the operating 
plan, which is driven from our community roadmap.

 The strategic plan document itself looks very much like it's looked in 
every year -- or in many recent years.  There's a portion of the plan 
towards the beginning that looks at strategic context.  It's a very 
common planning tool.  What's the environment that ICANN is operating 
in?

 If you take a look at this context in the existing plan, what you'll 
see is it looks a lot like last year's context.  The differences are 
the near introduction of Internationalized Domain Names, IDNs, and the 
process for new generic top-level domains.

 Within the three-year time horizon of the strategic plan, we're not 
just talking about introduction of those items, but I think 
interestingly -- and I think sort of different than the way the ICANN 
community sometimes thinks about it -- the actual sort of routine 
running of new IDNs and new gTLDs.  And I think as the community gets 
closer and closer to that moment where this becomes real, people are 
starting to realize the implications of scale, operating globally, 
processes that scale to languages other than English, and this is 
probably the single biggest overriding environmental factor that you'll 
see different in this current strategic plan.

 I also think if you ask virtually anyone at the ICANN meeting today 
what's the biggest strategic change coming and facing us, probably one 
of the first two things they'll say is:  IDNs or new gTLDs.

 In the interest of time, I'm going to spend a little bit of time on 
this slide and probably skip quickly through subsequent slides.

 The middle section of today's plan, of the strategic plan that you'll 
see posted that I'm encouraging you to read, particularly Pages 10 and 
11, identify strategic priorities for ICANN.

 They are these five priorities shown here.

 No. 1:  Implementing new TLDs and IDNs.

 Continuing to improve core operations of ICANN.  Strengthening the 
multistakeholder model.

 Enhancing security and stability.

 And strengthening accountability and governance.  And I guess this was 
one of the points Lesley wants to raise later.

 The last part of the plan -- so that's Pages 10 and 11.  The last part 
of the plan that you'll see is a bunch of bullet points which I call 
"connective tissue" that allow you, when you're reading this plan, to 
connect it up with the operating plan.  Ultimately, the measure of our 
plan will be the ability -- thank you, Sebastien -- the ability to see 
the elements of the strategic plan well-represented in the operating 
plan.

 Just giving the highlights of each of these five points, so we can 
move to comments and questions, again, the number one change that we're 
facing is this IDN introduction.  I personally think it's very exciting 
that we come to this meeting with IDNs in the root.  This is no longer 
theoretical.  There are 11 IDN test strings in the root.  Security and 
stability issues at some level are showing that for those test strings, 
all is working and I think that's very exciting.

 Also, probably many people are aware in the room about the great work 
ccNSO is doing on IDN policy to help move these things ahead.

 This is the major change of context for us:  Multi-language, global, 
scale of many new TLDs in the root.

 The list of items in terms of improving core operations are sort of 
the things you would expect:  IANA, registry operations, registrar 
operations, and compliance.  And actually, we're hearing -- I'm 
personally hearing at this meeting that compliance is an area of major 
concern.

 One piece of feedback that we've received on the plan at the meeting, 
which I think is interesting, is that the question is:  Why should we 
improve operations?  Operational improvement in service of what?  We're 
not a profit-making organization.  It's not -- it's not pursuit of 
excellence simply for the pursuit of excellence.  Really a lot of this 
is about making the market and the environment for the registrant work.

 So if you look at many of these operational items for ICANN, they are 
things like registrar data escrow, which definitely improves the 
resilience of the system and the rights of the registrants.  Things 
like registry failover, IANA operations.  All of these are really in 
service of an effectively functioning marketplace and an effect world 
for the registrant.

 I think actually in the context of the management operating principles 
discussion, many of these points were covered, but the multistakeholder 
model in making -- and continuing to strengthen that is absolutely key.

 Another comment that I'll say that I've heard as I was in six 
different constituency meetings yesterday, is an area of efficiency is 
just making the work tractable for a volunteer organization.

 When we talk about accountability and transparency, I like to add a 
third word, which is "accessibility," and really for this to be an 
effective community -- an effective multistakeholder community, 
ultimately we need to make sure we can deal with the work and 
priorities that's ahead of us.

 Actually, one more brief comment on this.

 Again, listening to many different constituencies, it's interesting 
that this idea of development, of organizational and skill development, 
which sometimes is thought of as a staff or corporate thing, is 
something that may well be relevant to the community as a whole.  In 
the GNSO, talking about working groups and leaders of working groups, 
another interesting question is what the ICANN community could do for 
organizational development to help grow those skills.

 I'm pausing.

 [Laughter]

 >>DOUG BRENT:  If it takes people 20 seconds to catch up after I stop 
talking, I'm talking too fast.

 I think the number one thing you'll hear when you talk to most ICANN 
participants today is:  IDNs, new gTLDs.

 Number two is enhancing security and stability.

 I think as a community, there is no doubt that the threat environment 
and the number of issues around security and stability are increasing.  
I think there's a real dialogue about what ICANN's appropriate role in 
that world is.

 There's a lot of discussion now about botnets and how those could be 
used to attack the DNS.  One view of botnets would be ICANN is not in 
virus protection.  We don't have to worry about that.

 At the same time, botnet where's a key attack vector on something we 
care about very much, which is the effective functioning of DNS, so 
finding the right partnership, the right way to work with an overall 
community to solve these kinds of problems is very important and 
certainly that's the feedback we've gotten in the plan process.

 To state an obvious one in this area, the first three letters of 
DNSsec are DNS.  This is clearly in the purview of ICANN and something 
that we need to move ahead on and take seriously.

 On Monday, we got some discussion about steps towards JPA completion, 
and this is very important as well as Lesley's point how we move toward 
a model of global accountability and what that looks like, in what time 
frame clearly in this three-year strategic time frame it is very 
important.  And number of board members are getting together at 7:00 
a.m. at great sacrifice tomorrow morning to further this conversation 
around strategic plan and some of these issues.

 In fact, looking around at the board members in this room, I think it 
is practically every one.

 So to share just two more slides, share some observations, these are 
not my personal observations, but some observations I think about the 
plan and the plan process.  Then, secondly, I will share some of the 
feedback we've received to date.

 This rollout of IDNs and new gTLDs really changes the way -- changes 
the DNS in a way that's very fundamental.  If you think about it, I 
think there is 21 generic TLDs.  Someone probably knows.  I think 
that's the right number.  21 generics.  Last month we added 11 new TLDs 
for IDNs, so that's sort of 50% of the number of generic names.

 The scale of all of this is going to increase and it is in a global 
world.  The security and stability concerns are at the forefront and 
ICANN needs to partner appropriately and find its role to address those 
concerns.

 I didn't write this point for this group, but clearly how ICANN 
participates effectively in a community, in a stakeholder base that's 
increasingly larger groups are non-English speaking is very critical.

 And, finally, the community wants ICANN to be well-run.  And that 
doesn't mean ICANN staff only, although in my job this is something I 
care very much about personally, but the community as a whole to be 
well-run.  People volunteer their time.  They have high expectations 
that that time be used effectively and that this is an important 
element of a functioning, well-functioning community.

 You can look on the strategic plan Web page and see that there's a 
fair amount of response posted.  Some positive, some questions and 
concerns.

 At the top of this is some people say "is this a plan"?  Do we 
sufficiently identify outcomes and deadlines and deliverables?  And I 
think that's -- that point has been taken on.  That's one piece of 
feedback.

 I think there's some feedback that we need to be more precise and 
state more about what ICANN's path is towards -- what's the 
evolutionary path towards more independence, toward a global 
accountability?

 That the domain name market changes rapidly.  Is the ICANN structure 
as an institution, are we responding rapidly enough to those changes in 
the domain name marketplace?

 I'll add a few others that we've gotten just in the last days.  In the 
plan today, is there enough emphasis in IPv6 transition and support?  
IPv4 depletion and ICANN's appropriate role there.  I will say that's 
not an issue of community consonance but definitely one of discussion 
and question.  

 And then I think I just would add at the end how we measure the 
success of a strategic plan.  An operating plan, relatively easy.  Did 
we achieve the objectives that were set out in the operating plan?  The 
strategic plan is harder.

 So I'll top there and, Patrick, do you want to emcee questions?

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  That's fine.  Thanks, Doug.

 I promised the microphone first to Lesley because she has to dash out 
to a ccNSO council meeting and then next it will be Raimundo and then 
we will let the microphone rove the room.

 >>LESLEY COWLEY:  Thank you, Patrick.  And I apologize for queue 
jumping.  I just didn't want to give the impression I was walking out 
in a fit of pique or something.  We will be making a series of comments 
on the strategic plan so I would just limit myself to three major 
points today.

 Firstly, I think the document has a very good analysis of the 
environmental and organizational challenges and probably what it 
doesn't do so well, however, is to see how each of those are addressed 
in the later sections.

 And where they are addressed, the sections do not wastefully respond 
to the opportunity or to the challenge.

 Secondly, the points I made earlier, I think the key challenge going 
forward is how ICANN evolves to independence.  And one of my inputs on 
that that people will have heard previously is about getting a board of 
sufficient caliber and experience which links closely to Marilyn's 
point earlier about the possibility of board remuneration in order to 
attract people with that experience.

 Now, this may well be an operating plan-type question, but it needs to 
be covered somewhere.

 And, finally, as a ccTLD, I have a big reliance on IANA.  Therefore, I 
always look very carefully at the sections that cover IANA, and I 
noticed some changing in words.  The "continuing to improve operations" 
sounds great.  But that's actually less pleasing than the "excellence 
in operations" that there was previously.  And I would encourage 
greater aspirations in operational excellence than currently seem to be 
reflected in the plan.  Thank you.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Raimundo?

 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:  I would like to say two things about the document.  
The first one has to do with something that, in my opinion, appears 
there in very good form which is the process.

 In all the business schools that I studied in, in the ones where I've 
taught and where people I have worked with have studied as well, one of 
the first points of a strategic plan is that the process is more 
important than the content.  It doesn't matter that the content at the 
beginning isn't perfect, but if you comply with the timelines and if 
people talk about strategic plans within these time lanes and to talk 
about an appropriate budget, that is very good.

 And this year in San Juan we finished with a complete process of 
having approved a process that had been studied during the first 
semester of the fiscal year.  You have to talk about strategy.  And 
during the second semester, you have to talk about the operational plan 
and budget and you have to approve those two together so that they 
complement each other.

 I think we've done very well regarding that.  Now, that we're okay 
regarding the process, I would like to make some comments about the 
content.  I think that this is the occasion to start to improve the 
content quite a bit.  And I would say that there are three points that 
we have to improve quite a lot.

 First point -- and this is also taught in all the business schools.  
We don't have a shared vision of the future.  The shared vision of the 
future does not mean that somebody has a crystal ball and finds out 
what the future has for us.  No, it means that a group of people agrees 
upon what is the best future that we can build together?  That is a 
shared vision of the future.

 However, within that shared vision of the future, there are very 
important topics that lately have not been developed too well.

 I'm going to give you a couple of examples.  What has to do with IPv4.  
All of a sudden the timeline has been shortened.  A couple of years ago 
at these meetings of ICANN, we had until a certain year to finish.  And 
now they're telling us it's 2010.  First, it was 2020.  Now it's 2010.  
The strategic plan has to take that into account to see when this is 
going to be done and how this organization is being prepared.

 And the denial of services is something new and the magnitude is so 
enormous that we have to talk about this.

 ICANN is going through a process of internationalization, and ICANN 
created guidance committee for this regarding this process.  And there 
are several people that are present here, like Marilyn, who are part of 
that committee and they are arriving at these conclusions.

 My suggestion for this committee is that these suggestions should be 
part of this document.

 Third point -- oh, I forgot.  Okay, that's it.  Thank you.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  I'm afraid we've become a team here.  My name is 
Marilyn Cade.  Doug, I want to comment, first of all, on something that 
you said that builds on something that -- my comment, I think, is going 
to build on something that Raimundo said.

 I actually don't think that the first priority for ICANN anymore can 
be new gTLDs.  I think that the security and stability of the Internet, 
the imperative issues and challenges we're facing in the security and 
stability of the Internet and in the unique indicators has begun to 
take on the first priority to any business person that I speak to.

 And expanding the name space is incredibly important and I would put 
IDNs at the priority of that.  But I would actually put new gTLDs, if 
we get into a prioritization issue, I would put new gTLDs in a 
different priority.  I know -- it is because I am not standing in line 
wanting to bid to be a registry, but I am standing in line with 
business users wanting to be sure that not just can I access a new Web 
site but I can use every other feature of the Internet.

 So I agree with what Raimundo is saying, that there are some new 
shifts here that our strategic plan has the opportunity because it is a 
rolling plan.  It has the opportunity to let us reprioritize where we 
direct some of our critical resources and hopefully not -- it doesn't 
mean that we don't do something as important as new gTLDs, right?  It 
just means that if we get new information about IPv6 and IPv4, denial 
of service attacks, bot net attacks, other kinds of things that are 
related to us, maybe not our sole responsibility but related to us, 
we're able then to take that into account.

 And I believe the flexibility of the plan allows for that.

 But I had a couple of other points which you will be shocked to hear.  
One of them is throughout the plan and everything else, I just want to 
point something out.

 And, Doug, I think this message is particularly for you.  You've heard 
it already so I am going to say it again.

 Of the 125 to 129 million top-level domains that are registered, the 
majority of the revenue that comes to ICANN comes from registrants in 
gTLD space.  And the policy development process and the process in that 
S.O. has got to receive additional resourcing.  And I know everyone 
knows that, but I want to mention it because I think it is apparent to 
many on the staff that the demands of IDNs on the policy side, the 
demands of IDNs, the demands of new gTLDs, the demands of dealing with 
other issues are really growing the policy staff's work exponentially.

 And I just -- I don't -- it is too early for me to predict, that I can 
actually tell that that is understood by the community and, therefore, 
supported in the strategic plan.  But I think it is a very important 
point.

 I would support what Raimundo just said, that I do think that the work 
of the President's Strategy Committee, which is referenced here, 
probably needs to -- as we now move forward with the next stage report, 
probably does need to be more incorporated in the strategic plan.

 >>DOUG BRENT:  Can I just briefly respond to something?  So just 
responding to one of your points, Marilyn, independent of the sources 
of revenue flowing into ICANN, I think something -- either you or 
someone else brought up -- I think it's very important to look across 
all supporting organizations and advisory committees, look at what 
level of support and what types of support are being provided to each, 
and try to come up with principles that make sense for determining how 
much support should be there.  Excuse me.

 Just -- I think the second part of that is that it's somewhat of a 
Band-Aid to only talk about staff support as an answer to all these 
problems.  I don't think we want an ICANN staff of a thousand people, 
so that it's very -- it's a very important point and I'm not 
trivializing that by saying it's a Band-Aid, but I think we need to 
look at both structural improvement and then a consistent look across 
staff improvement to support these better.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  

 [Speaker is off microphone]

 >>MARILYN CADE:  I probably should have use the word "support" as 
opposed to staff report because I actually like your edits very much.

 >>DOUG BRENT:  Okay.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thomas.

 >>THOMAS NARTEN:  So just a quick comment, Marilyn.  One of the things 
you said that kind of got my alarm bells going was the suggestion that 
the security and stability of the Internet was paramount and might even 
be more important or higher in the priority of new gTLDs.  And I don't 
want to really have a discussion about that right now, but let me -- 
you know, maybe we can tease this out off line but I would be very 
concerned about thinking that the security and stability of the 
Internet is ICANN's mandate.

 >>MARILYN CADE:  No, no, no.  That's not what I -- that's not what I 
was pointing at.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Thomas.  Peter?

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Yeah.  I just wanted to respond to Marilyn's 
point, and the same way really that Doug did, and that's just to 
comment that -- to confirm that the board heard that message yesterday.  
When the board broke itself up into various bits, instead of arriving 
en bloc at each constituency for an hour, board members were delegated 
to go and spend all day or a big chunk of the day at each of the 
constituencies.  When we reported back, I think we agree that all of 
the constituencies had all said to us that further resources were 
required in the policy-making area.  In my case, I heard that expressly 
from Jon Nevett, the chair of the registrars constituency and I think 
that was understood.  They're already talking about mechanisms for 
doing that.  You know, would we allocate funding and allow them to 
spend it according to their own process or would we be providing, you 
know, additional resources, et cetera.  So yes, there is a -- I think 
we've moved past the -- the idea of this, and we need to be getting 
into that at an implementation stage.

 I think just to pass the microphone back, that was Recommendation 27 
or 24, I think, in the LSE report and I think it's also been picked up 
again in the GNSO improvements report, that there will be funding or 
support of various sorts.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, Peter.  Since we started a little bit late, 
we do have a little bit of extra time.  Raimundo has got his hand up.  
Are there any other people wanting to comment?  Okay.  Raimundo.  The 
floor is yours.

 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:  I remember just now --

 >>DOUG BRENT:  [speaking in Spanish]

 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:  I just remembered a point I had forgotten before.  
And it would be in regard to the following:

 It was a project and agreement --

 >>DOUG BRENT:  [speaking in Spanish].

 >>RAIMUNDO BECA:  The JPA is built, if I remember the number 
correctly, is based upon 13 principles.  Those principles were 
negotiated using a language of the DOC and it's not a perfect language 
from the point of view of ICANN.

 They have to comply with the agreement and they're doing it, but they 
also have to keep on thinking about how to make those principles more 
adequate to what we want, and I think it had been said, when the JPA 
was signed, that this subject was going to be incorporated to the 
strategic plan, so I think that my recommendation is to take each one 
of those principles and say what we want to do in the future because 
that is -- when we reach an agreement, we'll see that there are going 
to be ICANN's principles and not somebody -- something, I'm sorry, that 
was negotiated with third parties.

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thank you, Raimundo.  Any other comments from the 
floor?  Thank you very much for your attendancy today.  As I mentioned 
with the management operating principles for accountability and 
transparency, we're closing the consultation this afternoon when we 
have, in fact, not closed the consultation, and we really welcome 
comments until the 10th of November.  We'll take all of those comments, 
write them up as an issues paper, and redraft the plan based on the 
comments that we've received with a view to having a plan for the board 
to consider at their December meeting.

 Can I suggest that we might give a round of applause for our 
interpreters who have made this afternoon very workable.

 [Applause]

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  And I'd also like to say a special thank you to 
people who are often forgotten, our scribes.  One of my jobs will be to 
take all these comments and turn them into an issues paper, and it's so 
much easier for me to do, given that we now have an accurate record of 
what's happened here today, and we thank you very much for your good 
work.

 [Applause]

 >>PATRICK SHARRY:  Thanks, everyone.

 >>SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET:  We must thank you, Patrick, for the 
organization of this session.

 [Applause]