Call recording: CSG and NCSG - Q&A with Sebastien Ducos regarding GNSO Council Chair Election meeting on 6 September 2022

[Brenda Brewer]

Good day CSG and NCSG Members,

I am pleased to share Sebastien Ducos’ responses to questions from the Q&A on Tuesday, 6 September 2022 as follows;

Thank you again for your invitation. I look forward to joining your groups again in the future, I find these discussions really helpful to better understand everyone’s concerns and priorities.

To your questions – and apologies in advance for the very long answers:
·         Chat question: What is the role of the GNSO to ensure that things move along after the policy development process?
I have touched upon this briefly during our call, and separately in my candidate statement.
I think that we need to remain cognisant of the Council’s position and purview in the course of Policy Development on its way to Implementation, and respect that of others, the AC’s, the Board and Staff.
As non-managers of these further processes but in large part their clients, I believe the GNSO has a right and duty to speak and share its views on how this work is prioritised, provided it is done in full respect and understanding of the rest of the work that lays on our colleagues’ table.
To that extent, I understand that the Project Management Tools we developed to manage our work, are being now rolled out to manage the rest of the process. Not all work is being this finely tracked, but any additional light shone on this work will help us uncover and hopefully resorb bottlenecks.
Please find the suite here : https://gnso.icann.org/en/council/project [gnso.icann.org]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/gnso.icann.org/en/council/project__;!!PtGJab4!-WjG5iRSy_F7qVCXoP5myWDNlHd47mih0i6NiAKY3KBsYK7b98iCvMccLEDRm4IvyTTH-qvnEUyAc1TaNOdiSe2V-ue6$> and in particular the Portfolio Management Tool which covers work beyond our remit.
I also think that historically, the Council very much relied on more formal interactions with the ACs and the Board. This was done for the benefit of openness and transparency, resulting in very public formal exchanges of letters and bilateral meetings. While these are important and achieve much, sometimes the harder more pointed discussions require some level of discretion to wade through issues, before returning to a public path. Finding the right balance to get a number of the issues that delay some of these decisions from being resolved, will often benefit from temporary closed doors.
Rarely are easy – low hanging fruit – decisions left to linger. I think we can assure each delay has its reasons and only a number of them will only be due to lack of bandwidth.
Close to my experience I can point to the EPDP Phase 1 Rec 12 discussions, or this year in the handling of the SSAD ODA, but there are a number of such topics where one party’s point of view largely depends on the predicted response of the other, and benefit from being able to test each other’s point of view out of immediate public scrutiny. I am not advocating for closed doors negotiations, but allowing breaks from carefully worded interactions to get to the bottom of things.
In this, the pandemic has been detrimental, largely removing our hallway conversations and other more informal interactions. We did end up finding some coping mechanisms, such as allowing ourselves some restricted if not closed meetings. At the same time, the temporary absence of in-person ICANN meetings, meant that we didn’t need to wait months to meet again, a Zoom call can be organised much faster.
I don’t think we are reinventing anything here, these were things we use to get through seamlessly in a smaller community, but we lost track of as we grew with the work we try to tackle. I really count on these conversations to help us all find the space to resolve these blockers and see our work through to completion.

·         ISPCP question: Please provide your opinion on an ICANN Holistic Review and the impact it may have on the GNSO structure?
I want to be careful as this process is in its early days and won’t be completed until I am gone from Council. So early in fact that I clearly demonstrated on our call last week that I had prepared nothing on the topic. These are only my personal views, offered before any survey of the Community is conducted or even agreed.
The item is tracked in the lasted Portfolio Management Tool as referred above in lines 176 and below.

Reviews are an important part of our bottom up approach, to uncover issues and course correct our processes. It may feel like we are jumping from one review to the next these days, but they are a necessary tool. Where deemed superfluous or too early, we have been able to agree to postpone. I trust in this case that the same test is being applied, and that the exercise will in the end help us improve.

I don’t expect drastic changes in the way the GNSO operates, but can imagine calls for improvements on our interactions with other groups in the Community, or the balance of power for the GNSO and within its constituents. Not a revolution, but a continuation of the challenges to the current status quo we have seen in the past, and the evolutions we are constantly applying. The difficulty with these exercises is that as all parties tend to promote their interests while defending their ground, divergent opinions end up cancelling each other and only the issues that find consensus tend to rise to attention; an outcome that in itself is in line with the way we operate in the community. Hearing/reading everyone else’s opinion is always an enriching exercise, but this is not to say that all can end up as recommendation, if only mechanically due to their divergent aims.

What my limited experience in Policy Development and 3 years on Council have taught me is that by and large we do agree on most things. The vast majority of the decisions we have taken to a vote have been agreed unanimously, not to mentions all the decisions past through Consensus Agenda. There are cleaving topics in the GNSO, as Liaison to the EPDP Phase 1 IRT I have seen a few that required a fair amount of work to resolve. Some certainly did not meet unanimity, but were nevertheless voted at a significant majority or super majority as required. All in any case would require a significant change to our balance of power to be challenged again; significant enough not to come out as a recommendation from such a review. Calls might be made for it but not without calls to the contrary to balance them.

I might appear cynical writing this, as it could be concluded that I am comfortable with the status quo and would want to defend it. I am rather, genuinely convinced that we reached our current equilibrium out of a consensus found by our predecessors, that it may like anything else, be reviewed and challenged, but should be altered only in consensus.
More concerning to me, is the way we will conduct ourselves while we run these reviews. Much like in the political area, there is a fine line to maintain between airing legitimate differences and being able to regroup as one after the verdict of a vote. We are regularly challenged outside of the ICANN Community for our inertial and apparent lack of results, I wouldn’t want the necessary exercise of introspection to end up fuelling these external pressures.


I hope I was able to answer your questions in a meaningful way.
I remain available for any questions and discussions.

Kindly,




Sebastien Ducos
GoDaddy Registry | Senior Client Services Manager
[signature_872240105]
+33612284445
France & Australia

sebastien at registry.godaddy<mailto:sebastien at registry.godaddy>



From: Brenda Brewer <brenda.brewer at icann.org>
Date: Thursday, September 8, 2022 at 9:32 PM
To: Csg-private <csg-private at icann.org>, NCSG-Discuss <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
Subject: Call recording: CSG and NCSG - Q&A with Sebastien Ducos regarding GNSO Council Chair Election meeting on 6 September 2022

Dear CSG and NCSG Members,

Please find below the Zoom recordings & chat from the Q&A with Sebastien Ducos regarding GNSO Council Chair Election, which was held on Tuesday, 6 September 2022 at 19 UTC.   Thank you!


  *   Zoom Replay Link<https://icann.zoom.us/rec/play/Nf1Q5GvVTFTcR8A8TB--gz5in2l9XUHVhbOhkVhTvQSra7GoUQEz5PS73t8Xl8aawgSjBjnN6HsY4YVp.CckrJSzU9lO-6Pw3>
  *   Zoom Audio Link<https://icann.zoom.us/rec/play/U47RJ06Wpj42AOdTboApbUBPQColsSTHM-2xIcMqFrSBomDpoYGdts7JPvZ0LJXLh3OiOx1-hiZkryt8.pBJzWf63mwxNUMwO>
  *   Zoom Chat Link<https://icann.zoom.us/rec/sdownload/jmZ63wJdn6dnWW7gXzzymeDE6jC_8tBtjimGAyhZztWdL2SkFAgt3CZJ1GJ2CMS3rZCEiMYRmxFHozoz.IG-sOZzZ4mwjlyG8>

Kind regards,
Andrea and Brenda
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