[Ncsg-discuss] February 12th GNSO Council meeting summary

[Christabel Mebaghandu]

Dear Benjamin,

Thank you very much for the comprehensive summary! I take note of the discussion surrounding SSAD/RDRS and look forward to future developments. I appreciate the Council's efforts.

Kind Regards,


Christabel Mebaghandu, MIEEE MNCS fNSIG.

Chief Technology Officer

Civil Center for Peace Justice and Development
Floor 2, Senator Samuel Plaza
Opp. Customary Court of Appeal, Rumuogba, Port Harcourt
Rivers State, Nigeria.

+23408161278131

christabel.mebaghandu at ccpjd.org<mailto:%20christabel.mebaghandu at ccpjd.org>

www.ccpjd.org<https://www.ccpjd.org/>

________________________________
From: NCSG-Discuss <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU> on behalf of Benjamin Akinmoyeje <00001df8ed30e9c4-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, 18 February 2026 04:35
To: NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU <NCSG-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.SYR.EDU>
Subject: February 12th GNSO Council meeting summary

Dear NCSG members,
Good day, and I hope your day is going well.

As one of your elected representatives on the GNSO Council, I would like to share a quick recap of the last GNSO Council meeting.

There was a short update on the discussion from SPS about updating the projects list and the action decision radar for GNSO councilors to improve accessibility, based on suggestions from newer councillors who are endeavouring to highlight upcoming voting items by flagging them more clearly in those tools.
The chair also mentioned that during the SPS discussion, the Council leadership began drafting improvements to the GNSO Council liaison documents to help the Council's current and future liaisons understand the liaison role and provide updates.

The last GNSO council meeting was held on the 12th February 2026. The meeting was particularly unique, as it featured 3 councilors giving updates on their respective SOIs, and ICANN Board members in attendance as guests.

We had two voting items on the agenda: the first was the consent vote on the SSC's choice for the  GNSO-nominated ICANN Fellowship Program Mentor, Imran Hossen. The vote confirmed the choice.

The second Council voting agenda item was on the SCCI's proposed three (3) recommendations in its Final Report, as part of its review of the Standing Committee on Continuous Improvement (SCCI) Policy Status Report (PSR), proposed courses of action for each of the three processes - EPDP, GGP, and GIP. The Council previously reviewed the recommendations at the last meeting. The Council voted on the SCCI’s recommendations.

Thereafter, we had the ICANN Board caucus representative on SSAD, Wes Hardiker, David Lawrence, and Greg DiBiase, come to discuss the SSAD's next steps. The discussion was about the RDRS Standing Committee's recommendation (recommendation 5, non-adoption) that, following the RDRS pilot results, the SSAD 18 recommendations should not be adopted as a package by the ICANN board. Suggest that the GNSO Council develop supplemental recommendations addressing all concerns in the SSAD recommendation. ICANN Board member Wes Hardaker discussed the rationale behind the board's decision. Also, former council member and currently Gregory DiBiase, supported the same point and mentioned the alignment paper that ICANN published to align certain policies. The board members appreciated the support they have received from the GNSO council in moving forward with their non-adoption of the SSAD recommendations and managing the situation with the ICANN community.

We also discussed with the GNSO Liaison to the GAC  on the ICANN85 GAC and GNSO Bilateral Proposed Agenda, with the following topics as agenda items: DNS Abuse, RDRS/SSAD, Urgent Requests/Law Enforcement Authentication(top 3 important discussions they are interested in); there was a concern to make the meeting participatory instead of just reporting GNSO activities to the GAC. Also, the NCSG expressed a desire to include a discussion of Human Rights.

Finally, the GNSO Council vice chair led the discussion on prioritizing work. She mentioned that the council currently uses the Action Decision Radar (ADR) to display its current tasks. She shared some recent updates to the ADR, but it is not a prioritization tool. She also shared the three ideas currently being considered for the prioritization tool.
1. A scheduling tool that shows tasks and their due dates
2. A tool acts as a parking lot for tasks and items the council should consider.
3. A platform with a voting and ranking system allows the council to know which tasks to take on next.
The vice chair also listed some items for the updated prioritization document: RPM phase 2, the Next gTLD program, DNS Abuse mitigation, and the Expired domain deletion policy. She also highlighted NCSG's interest in prioritizing the Transfer Policy.
A portion of the council supported a numerical ranking of topics, followed by a substantive discussion to provide context. The NCSG pushed back on ranking as a means to prioritize topics. The vice chair encouraged the NCSG to articulate its preferred options for a prioritization mechanism.

I encourage other councillors to chime in. And I encourage community members to review the GNSO meeting recording to stay abreast of council deliberations.

I look forward to your feedback and discussions on some of these issues.


Kind regards,
Benjamin




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