Executive Summary

Recently, the Policy Advisory Body reviewed its own role and function and made recommendations on how the policy advisory process could be set-up and run to deliver improved .uk policy advice to the Nominet Board. This paper presents the Policy Advisory Body’s unanimous recommendations for the reform of the .uk policy advisory process and seeks stakeholder feedback on these proposals. 

The proposals¹ recommend that:

• Central to the new policy advisory function, there should be a stakeholder-led process. This should work through specific issues groups where all interested parties from the wider community are encouraged to engage in the policy advisory process.

This should be supported by:

• A standing committee of stakeholders enabling them to raise issues independently and help ensure that the process works effectively and coherently; and
  
• An enhanced Secretariat taking an active role in the standing committee of stakeholders and for engaging with external stakeholders

The Board welcome the PAB's proposals and believe that they provide a strong basis for engaging with the whole .uk community. They would like to implement the new framework as soon as possible.

Please watch the presentation below which talks you through the current policy advisory process and why the PAB recommends these changes

Please watch the presentation below which explains the proposed changes.

Overview of the new policy advisory function

The PAB's recommendations are focused on the active engagement of stakeholders, bringing experience, knowledge and understanding to the policy discussion.

a. Issues groups

In most cases, issues groups are expected to be set up to address specific concerns. They should be able to complete their work quickly, submit their recommendations to the Board and then disband.

Any person with an interest in the .uk domain name system – including Nominet members – could identify a policy issue and propose the creation of an issues group.  The PAB has suggested that an Impact Assessment  should be prepared at an early stage to help inform the discussion.

An issues group is expected to focus on a very clearly defined issue and should quickly identify the scope that the policy issue is set up to address.

It is expected that membership of issues groups will be open. An issues group would need to ensure it brings together sufficient interested parties for the group to be able to address all aspects of the issue and ensure its composition was properly representative. The issues groups should select their own chair.

Nominet members will be able to bring expertise to the work of many of the issues groups and should be encouraged to join issues groups where they can contribute to the discussion.

It is recognised that "permanent" groups may be appropriate in a very limited number of cases, for example on long-term issues like industry standards or responding to criminal activity.

It is also recognised that some stakeholders will have concerns about engaging in discussions in open groups on some topics (crime or security, are possible examples). In such cases it might be necessary to have closed membership issues groups – i.e. membership would be by invitation (although with the aim of pulling in expertise from all relevant areas).

Reports and recommendations from issues groups should be submitted to the Board. It is for the Board to make the final decision on whether to accept the recommendations or not. In making their decision, the Board might want to take into account factors like:

• Whether the issues group brought together representatives able to address all aspects of the issues and whether its composition was properly representative;
• Whether the outcome was policy related and the likely impact associated with the recommendation;  and
• Whether the output was a consensus.

The PAB suggested that the stakeholder-led policy advisory process should be supported by a standing committee of stakeholders and an enhanced secretariat.


b. The standing committee of stakeholders

The PAB identified the role of the standing committee of stakeholders as one of supporting the policy advisory process by:

• Providing an additional and independent route for stakeholders to raise issues and concerns;
• Encouraging consistency by assisting the Secretariat to promote communication between groups;
• Helping guard against misuse by assisting the Secretariat to ensure inclusiveness and objectivity in the work of the issues group;  and generally
• Being a custodian of the process to help ensure that the new advisory process works effectively.
• Testing consistency between groups and providing a forum for groups to get together;
• Providing an independent mechanism to help issue groups that had "got stuck";
• Discussing the impact assessment associated with policy decisions; and
• Looking at the wider .uk market context to identify potential issues.

In addition, the standing committee might collate best-practice guidelines for running issue groups.

It also identified possible membership for the standing committee as coming from:

• Nominet members:
  • ISPs;
  • Registrars;
  • Other interests;
• Government;
• Parliamentarians;
• Businesses;
• Intellectual property rights holders; and
• Consumers.

The PAB envisaged that Chairs of issues groups would be invited to participate in meetings of the standing committee.


c. An enhanced secretariat

The PAB recommended that the new policy advisory process should be supported by an enhanced secretariat (operational support function) which would be expected to take an active role in the standing committee of stakeholders and for engaging with external stakeholders (including working with others to raise the profile of the policy advisory function and market the new process to the wider stakeholder community).

The secretariat would also commission impact assessments and background research and studies to inform discussions, working in cooperation with issues-group Chairs.


d. Other issues associated with the proposal for introducing a new policy advisory process

The PAB and the Board are unanimous in seeing the approach proposed by the PAB as an important move forward in engaging relevant stakeholders in .uk policy debate. 
   
The process is intended to be inclusive engaging with Nominet members as well as with external stakeholders.
   
We recognise that the creation of the proposed policy advisory process will require a significant effort and that its success will depend on Nominet members and wider UK stakeholders committing to make the new system work.

Footnotes

1.www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/39480_BoardResponse_to_PAB_Resolutions_at65_jan10.pdf, supplemented by www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/40324_Draft-Jan10-pab-meeting-report.pdf item 6)a).

2. An example of how this process works, from the Government's Better Regulation Executive, is at www.berr.gov.uk/files/file44544.pdf

Responses

View responses to the consultation here.