ITU Statement on TAC

Please find below the ITU statement on TAC.

It's not clear to me what the next step should be.  Should ITU submit this
comment directly to ICANN, or will the PSO Secretariat submit all the
individual comments in one block, as has been done in the past?

Thanks and best,
Richard

-----------------------------------------
Richard Hill
Counsellor, ITU-T SG2
International Telecommunication Union
Place des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
tel: +41 22 730 5887
FAX: +41 22 730 5853
Email: richard.hill@itu.int
Study Group 2 email: tsbsg2@itu.int
 
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The ITU-T representatives to the PSO have reviewed the sections on the
proposed Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) in the ICANN Evolution and
Reform Committee (ERC) Second
Interim Implementation Report at:

http://www.icann.org/committees/evol-reform/second-implementation-report-02s
ep02.htm 

The ITU-T thanks the ERC for its extensive work and the clear and
comprehensive report.  It generally supports the proposals of the ERC with
respect to TAC, with the exceptions noted below.

Technical issues often require specific expertise to properly address and a
standing committee would, by necessity, not be able to bring appropriate
levels of expertise to every issue that may be referred to the committee.
There is also the weakness of having a technical committee operate under an
assumption that differences of perspective should be resolved within the
committee, and that a committee would be driven by a need to arrive at a
single answer, whereas the issue of evaluating alternate technically
feasible solutions often has a significant policy component.  The concept of
a standing committee exposes these weaknesses, whereas the alternative of
using a number of technically focused organizations and individuals on an ad
hoc basis to provide comment upon request should be considered by ICANN.

It is not clear why the ERC is proposing to include members from both the
IETF and the IAB as members of TAC, given the nature of those organizations.
If a parallel were to be drawn with the ITU, then TAC should include members
of both ITU-T and TSAG.

TAC members are representatives of their respective organizations and their
role is to act as doorways into the respective pools of expertise, to help
ICANN.  TAC should not be seen as a group of individual experts meeting
amongst each other to make technical decisions.  Thus it is not clear why
more than two representatives would be required from each member of TAC.

Also in that light, it is not clear why the membership of TAC should be
expanded to include members nominated by the NomCom.  Unless some particular
reason is given, the ITU-T proposes that the membership of TAC consist of
two representatives from each of the PSO member organizations, which at this
time are ETSI, IETF, ITU, and W3C.

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Received on Monday, 9 September 2002 11:24:08 UTC