OSC
The Operations Steering Committee (OSC) was established to coordinate, recommend, and review changes regarding the operational activities of the Generic Names Support Organization (GNSO) and its constituencies.[1]
Goals
The main goal of the OSC is to provide the necessary recommendations to help in implementing operational changes comprised in the Board Governance Committee Working Group (or BGC WG) Report, which are as follows:[2]
The OSC is responsible for assessing as well as reviewing the efficiency of the recommendations that have been implemented. It is also assigned with the task of providing the necessary further operational enhancements as and when they are required. The OSC is also assigned with responsibilities from the GNSO Council. For instance, the GNSO Council may ask the OSC to examine the process of enhancing the constituency support in the future as well as can ask OSC to identify the new training process. The GNSO Council can also ask the OSC to align the Council’s work in accordance with the strategic plan of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on a regular basis.[3]
Membership
The OSC comprises of a GNSO Council Chair or Vice Chair, one representative from every constituency who can even be a non council member and one member from the Nominating Committee or NomCom appointee to the GNSO. The OSC also contains some other participants, which mostly include the GNSO Secretariat, one ICANN policy staff representative, optional liaisons or appointed representatives from the GAC and the ALAC and OSC Work Team Chairs.
Working method
The Operations Steering Committee established three working teams to work on the three operational areas. The main reason behind establishing these teams was to reduce the volume of work which could arise out of the wide range of topic areas covered in the recommendations, as well as make sure that the implementation of any reported recommendations is successful.[4] These teams are:
- GNSO Operations Work Team, which is charged with determining steps to establish the Council’s role as a strategic manager of the policy process
- GNSO Stakeholder Group and Constituency Operations Work Team, which is assigned with the job of developing proposals that would help implement the recommendations for improving the stakeholder and constituency group operations
- Communications and Coordination Work Team, which is assigned with the task of developing proposals to enhance the communication and coordination for Council consideration.[5]
The OSC decisions are mostly taken on a full consensus of the members unless and until determined by the OSC members.[6]
OSC and ICANN
The staff of ICANN tasked with the OSC and its work teams provides all the necessary support in the working of the committee and its work teams as it is directed by the Chair. The ICANN staff provides all sorts of support which may include document drafting, editing and disseminating the documents and meeting support. [7]