[ga] Transfers and the Policy-Development Process

[DannyYounger@cs.com]

I have to ask:  Why can't the DNSO arrive at policy recommendations in a 
timely manner?  What is it about the process that has gone so awry that it 
takes a year or longer just to arrive at a recommendation?  Do participants 
in the process even understand the nature of policy development, their own 
role, and the roles of others in bringing an effort to fruition?  

I recently had occasion to review the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a piece 
of legislation that should be quite familiar to the Chair of the Transfers 
Task Force (in that she also functions as a paid lobbyist for AT&T), as there 
are undeniably clear parallels between domain name portability issues 
(transfers) and telephone number portability issues.  This is what I was able 
to discern:

Congress recognized that to increase competition in the local telephone 
market service, certain barriers to competition needed to be eliminated. One 
of the major barriers was the inability of customers to switch from one 
telephone company to another and still keep the same number.  It was realized 
that customers would be hesitant to switch to new telephone service providers 
if they were unable to keep their existing telephone numbers. Congress 
therefore directed local telephone companies to offer "telephone number 
portability" in accordance with requirements prescribed by the FCC.

How was the initial policy development process handled?  

1.  The issue was first discussed within the industry.  The industry did not 
succeed in its own self-regulatory efforts and this led to the "slamming 
wars" (a phenomenon now manifest as well in the domain name industry).

2.  The public became involved (generating a slew of hate mail and complaints 
similar to that received on the ICANN Public Forums and on the GA list).

3.  Legislators took notice and discussed the matter within their chambers 
(comparable to NC members discussing the issue within the Council).

4.  A legislative committee was formed to further review the matter and to 
draft policy (this equates to the NC launching its transfers task force).

5.  The committee prepared a law for consideration by Congress (this 
corresponds to a TF Final report) and the Congress, after debate, voted upon 
the law and sent it to the President for signature (akin to NC report 
ratification that is then sent to the ICANN Board for action).

But what did the actual policy (law) on portability look like?  It was no 
more than this:

"Each local exchange carrier has the following duties:  NUMBER PORTABILITY- 
The duty to provide, to the extent               technically feasible, number 
portability in accordance with requirements prescribed by the Commission."

The policy itself was simple.  Extremely simple.

The implementation of that policy was left to the appropriate body (the FCC 
that would set the requirements).  Extending the analogy to ICANN, this would 
mean a Resolution that stated:

Resolved [02.XX] that the President and General Counsel are authorized to 
conduct negotiations on behalf of ICANN toward appropriate revisions to 
agreements between ICANN, registries, and registrars to implement Domain Name 
Portability in a manner consistent with recommendations to be devised by a 
Technical Steering Group to be convened under the auspices of ICANN Staff.

Just as we had a Technical Steering Group that attended to the "details" of 
the Redemption Grace Period, so too should there be such a group to attend to 
the implementation details on transfers.  This portion of the work-load is 
not the responsibility of the DNSO or its Task Force on Transfers -- their 
sole job is to determine appropriate policy which may, as in the case of the 
above example, be no more than one sentence.  It should not take ten months, 
or longer, to arrive at such "policy".

The current DNSO Transfers Task Force is attempting to wear too many hats.  
It has moved far beyond its mandate to develop policy recommendations and has 
entered the arena of implementation details.  All that they have been asked 
to do is to recommend a "policy", nothing more.  The policy could be as 
simple as:

In that ICANN as a matter of established policy is committed to reducing 
barriers to competition, and in that the inability of registrants to readily 
switch registrars constitutes a barrier to such competition, the Names 
Council advises the ICANN Board that a binding consensus policy should be 
established that states that each registrar has the duty to provide 
registrants with facile domain name portability in accordance with 
requirements prescribed by the Technical Steering Group assigned to this task 
and as approved by the ICANN Board.

Of course, a task force needs to collect input, it needs to arrive at a 
determination as to whether circumstances warrant the development of a 
policy, but the actual policy-development process itself need not consume an 
inordinate amount of time by straying into areas that are not rightfully 
within the purview of the policy-recommending organ -- there are indeed other 
groups that can be formed to deal with the technical implementation 
considerations.  

Keep it simple, and get the job done.  Focus on policy development, and on 
that alone.  That is all you were chartered to do.



                
--
This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list.
Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe
("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message).
Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html