Prioritization Framework

In November 2020, the ICANN Board approved a recommendation from ATRT3 to create a Prioritization Framework to integrate community, board, and org priorities into annual strategic & budget planning. The prioritization framework was intended to "achiev[e] an agreed upon definition of what it would mean for the prioritization process to “operate by consensus of the individual SO/ACs, Board, and org members that are participating in the prioritization process.” ICANN's planning department is responsible for facilitating prioritization at an organizational level to ensure that prioritized projects are included the annual Operating and Financial plans.

History

ICANN's Multistakeholder Model provides for the development of consensus-driven, bottom-up policy and recommendations from the community of stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. Over time, the generation of policy proposals, consensus advice, and recommendations has outstripped the ICANN board and orginization's ability to implement such proposals. This has resulted in bottlenecks at the board and org levels around policy implementation: the attention of the board is strained by the number of inputs from constituent bodies; and within the organization, resource limitations make it challenging to respond to all of the mandates generated by board approval of recommendations. The

The Third Accountability and Transparency Review made several recommendations regarding the transparency of ICANN's decision-making process, as well as the creation of engagement processes for community-wide concerns. These included a proposed holistic review of ICANN's constituent organizations and re-factoring of existing Organizational Reviews into continuous improvement processes. In addition, the review team proposed the creation of a "consensus model" for prioritizing the work of ICANN org and the recommendations derived from policy development processes, cross-community working groups, organizational and specific reviews, and other sources.

Project Timeline

Pilot

The prioritization project ran a pilot within the planning process for fiscal year 2023. The pilot will be used to assess the process design and identify improvements. The current plan, subject to process design and consultation, is for the prioritization process to be inserted into the early phases of the strategic and budget planning arc. The Briefing Paper and the Pilot will both present opportunities for public comment on the process. During ICANN 73's Prep Week, the Planning & Prioritization update reported that the briefing paper would be delivered by the end of February 2022. This was later than the initially proposed timeline. The timing of the pilot program timing remained the same. The pilot included five sessions in March 2022, during which participants reviewed a list of Board-approved recommendations from Specific Reviews pending ICANN Org implementation. Each recommendation was evaluated in terms of its levels of urgency and importance. Participants needed to either (#) agree with the prioritization level provided by the org and provide an explanation, or (#) adjust the level of prioritization and explain their reasoning. In early April, the org held a wrap-up session with all of the participants to discuss and identify lessons learned from the pilot for the next version of the framework.

Planning Prioritization Group

Planning Prioritization Group (PPG) members were appointed by participating community groups to discuss and agree on a pilot version of prioritizing a list of activities, as described in the Draft Planning Prioritization Framework on 22 February 2022. The group has nine members and nine alternates. One of each from the ASO, ALAC, ccNSO, GAC, RSSAC, and SSAC, and three from the GNSO (one from the CSG, CPH, and NCSG). Members include:

• ALAC M: Cheryl Langdon-Orr, A: Jonathan Zuck
• ccNSO M: Chris Disspain, A: Irina Danelia
• GAC M: Susan Chalmers, A: Manal Ismail
• GNSO (CPH) M: Donna Austin, A: Jothan Frakes

  (CSG) M: Susan Payne, A: Wolf-Ulrich Knoben

  (NCSG) M: Rafik Dammak, A: Dr A M Sudhakara

• RSSAC M: Ken Renard, N.A.
• SSAC M: Barry Leiba, A: Chris Roosenraad

Recommendations Considered during the Pilot

In total, 45 recommendations were considered during the pilot, of which the following were deemed urgent and important (and thus, priority level 1):

Priority Level 1

• Recs 3.1-3.6 from the ATRT3
  • Suspend RDS reviews
  • One clearly scoped CCT Review that starts two years after the next round of new gTLDs and lasts one year. A framework of data collection must precede the next round of gTLDs prior to review member selection
  • ATRT Reviews should continue but shall start no later than two years after the approval by the Board of the first recommendation of the Holistic Review; recommend whether the Board should terminate or amend other periodic reviews or create periodic reviews; all documentation required for the review shall be available at the first meeting of the review team when terms of reference shall be established.
  • The holistic review should: start no later than a year after the board's approval of the ATRT3 recommendation and then every two-and-a-half years after and all other reviews should be suspended while a Holistic Review is active (a maximum of 18 months; review continuous improvement efforts of SO/AC/NC based on good practices, the effectiveness of collaboration mechanisms, accountability of ICANN Community to their members/constituencies (survey results), and SO/AC/NCs' purpose in the ICANN structure, possible changes in structures and operations to reflect the representation of community views
• Recs 1, 8, 11, and 13.1,2,4 from the CCT
• Rec 11.2 from the RDS-Whois2
• Recs 10.1 and 21.1 from the SSR2