GNSO Improvements Home Page

Organization of this Site:

Welcome to the GNSO Improvements Information Home Page. This page contains all of the basic information you need to learn about our ongoing initiative to improve and restructure the GNSO. The above drop-down menu structure is organized into five major sections which include:

• About: the Background of GNSO Improvements including an Overview of major recommendations as well as summaries of the various Reviews that have been conducted concerning the GNSO.
• GNSO Restructure: information about Council restructuring as well as Constituency and Stakeholder Group processes, forms/templates, charter activities, and related references/guidelines.
• Committees & Teams: approved documents and links associated with the GNSO Council Implementation Planning Team (IPT), Steering Committees, and Work Teams charged with GNSO implementation projects/tasks.
• Dashboard: Board actions, status reports, summaries, results, and accomplishments.
• News & Events: current events (3 months), public notices and links to other resources
• Outreach: One element of the GNSO Improvement is to improve outreach beyond the ICANN community to peoples.

Note: each link in the drop-down menus represents an individual page where additional content can be found.

Overview

The ICANN Board has approved a comprehensive set of recommendations to improve the structure and operations of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO). This effort is part of ICANN's own ongoing commitment to evolve and improve, and follows extensive independent review efforts and extensive public consultation.

The GNSO is the primary engine in the ICANN community for fashioning, recommending changes, and making modifications to generic top-level domain policies. At its core, the objective of the GNSO review process has been to identify ways to improve the inclusiveness and representativeness of the GNSO's work while increasing its effectiveness and efficiency.

The multi-year GNSO review process has been guided by several key objectives, including:

1. maximizing the ability for all interested stakeholders to participate in the GNSO's processes;
2. ensuring recommendations can continue to be developed on gTLD "consensus policies" for Board review, and that the subject matter of "consensus policies" is clearly defined;
3. ensuring policy development processes are based on thoroughly-researched, well-scoped objectives, and are run in a predictable manner that yields results that can be implemented effectively; and
4. improving communications and administrative support for GNSO objectives.

The GNSO Improvements approved by the Board, and being implemented by the GNSO, fall into five main areas:

Adopting a Working Group Model: A working group model should become the focal point for policy development and enhance the policy development process by making it more inclusive and representative, and – ultimately – more effective and efficient ...

Revising the PDP: The policy development process (PDP) needs to be revised to make it more effective and responsive to ICANN's policy development needs. It should be brought in-line with the time and effort actually required to develop policy, and made consistent with ICANN's existing contracts ...

Restructuring the GNSO Council: The Council should move away from being a legislative body concerned primarily with voting towards becoming a smaller, more focused strategic entity, composed of four broad stakeholder groups, with strengthened management and oversight of the policy development process, term limits for members of the Council, the elimination of weighted voting and a training and development curriculum for Council members ...

Enhancing Constituencies: Constituency procedures and operations should become more transparent, accountable and accessible ...

Improving Communication and Coordination with ICANN Structures: There should be more frequent contact and communication between the GNSO Council, GNSO constituencies and the members the Council elects to the Board, and among the Chairs of the GNSO, other Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs) ...

Click here to continue reading an Overview of GNSO Improvements.

We also suggest that new visitors wishing to learn about the GNSO Improvements effort read:

1. A comprehensive summary of GNSO Improvements Approved by the ICANN Board
   • English
   • Spanish
   • French
2. Slide presentations summarizing GNSO Improvements are available at the links below.
   • Seoul, Oct 2009
   • Sydney, Jun 2009
   • Mexico City, Mar 2009
   • Cairo, Nov 2008
3. About > Background
4. New & Events > Current Events

Please contact ICANN Policy Staff if you have questions or need more information.