There have been a number of changes to the DRS since the last review in 2003. In part these are drawn from our own knowledge, and partly from extensive feedback received from (amongst others):

1. the PAB
2. email groups such as 'nom-steer'
3. direct from members and domainers at member lunches, events, presentations, and individual phone calls
4. one-off surveys and the ongoing process of sending questionnaires to parties
5. discussions on discussion boards;
   
6. comments made by parties in particular cases;
7. the experts; and
8. survey feedback.

Some of this information has led to changes, while other views are reflected in the consultation for wider discussion, or in order to allow changes to go ahead. We cannot act on all feedback at the time it is given, but it does feed into our thinking for reviews.

Web site

There have been a number of changes to the web site. We have:

1. adopted a new format which tries to lead users through the site in a more intuitive way.
2. extensively reworded it into less complicated language;
3. re-written and expanded much of the help documentation to make it more useful to all users;
4. expanded sections to provide more detail on experts, appeals and general topics within the DRS;
5. addressed particular problems that users have experienced with particular changes;
6. expanded the legal sections of the site to give much more information about court cases involving domain names and how the law treats them (a process that is ongoing);
7. started to provide other information in the section for particular users, such as students;
8. tested usability and have various changes in mind for the online forms.

Clearly, if there are sections of the web site that users think could be improved, we would be interested to hear suggestions.

Experts

We have continued to have annual conferences with them where we have discussed the issues that have arisen, and have continued those discussions on a closed expert list.

We have introduced the Expert's Review Group, a new structure to allow the experts to provide more self-regulation and standardisation, and to allow the Chairman of Experts to raise more issues with the experts.

Communications

We have recently rewritten the letters we use to communicate with parties to make them easier to understand and to provide more help information in the letters themselves.

We have introduced a system where if a party submits a complaint or response which is particularly short or lacking in evidence they are sent a standard letter from the Chair of the DRS Experts warning them of the dangers of this approach. This helps unrepresented parties who might otherwise be unaware of the risks of such short submissions.

We have rewritten the DRS help booklet, which is sent to all parties to make it more accessible.

Processes

We have changed other internal processes to make them more flexible - however, we are more restricted than the rest of the company in this respect because the DRS Procedure sets very strict rules on the paperwork.

Publicity

We have tried hard to publicise the service so that as many people as possible who have need of it can use it.

Remaining Work

We have a number of outstanding work items, but for the time being the priority is the DRS consultation and subsequent changes.