ICANN GAC Meeting in Bucharest

Bret Fausett, notes today in his [icann.blog.us], that the GAC "met all day in closed session" and "even the ICANN Board members are not allowed to attend most of the GAC meetings". That's entirely correct and, as a participant in the GAC here in Bucharest, even if I may not agree with this policy, I have to respect the GAC operating procedures. That said, I think it's reasonable to give some general gist of the meeting. First, it's clear that the majority of GAC participants were extremely surprised to have to suddenly digest ICANN's Blueprint for Reform, released on June 20th. As most of the delegates had not even seen this document yet, the meeting had to be almost immediately suspended for an hour to allow everyone to read this document which contains some very substantive changes from earlier drafts. Afterwards, we had a session with Stuart Lynn and Alejandro Pisanty, who when directly asked, indicated that their expectations were that this basic Blueprint, perhaps with some changes based on conversations during the week, be adopted by the Board at the end of the week in Bucharest. I, for one, was immediately struck how this seemed to contradict the statement in the Blueprint that the "GAC should receive adequate notice and an opportunity to comment on all ICANN policy decisions before they are taken" as well as the existing provisions in the ICANN Bylaws that "The Board will notify the chairman of the Governmental Advisory Committee of any proposal for which it seeks comments under Article III, Section 3(b) and will consider any response to that notification prior to taking action."

11:41:18 PM    Google It!