Staff Guidelines for Initiating, Managing and Closing Public
Comments
Note: These Guidelines, all templates, and a process flow diagram depicting the tasks/activities are
available on the Community Wiki-Public Comments Documents & Forms Library.
I.
Steps for Opening a Public Comment Solicitation
1) Obtain approval from your supervisor to open a Public Comment solicitation.
2) Collect all information necessary and complete the template “Public Comments-Open,”
which contains two sections: (a) Announcement (brief) and (b) Public Comments Details.
The template contains instructions to follow that should be removed before saving the
form and forwarding to the Public Comments Staff.
a) To promote understanding and readability, please do not use complex technical
descriptions, jargon, or acronyms unless you support them with sufficient extra
information, pointers, or references. Please consider that English is not the native
language for a sizable percentage of ICANN Community members.
b) If translations are applicable, send an email to Language Services at translationrequest@icann.org. Please allow sufficient time such that translations are available as
close as possible to the solicitation’s open date.
c) Note that each Public Comment solicitation needs an explicit open and close
date/time. It is at Staff’s discretion to establish the exact close time always expressed
in UTC. Please use a 24-hour clock format (e.g., 13:00 instead of 1:00 pm). In addition,
please refrain from using 00:00, 12:00 or 24:00 UTC. These times are found to be
confusing by some participants. Instead, use 23:59, which makes it clear that it is a 24hour clock and it is referring to 1 minute before midnight UTC.
d) A minimum target period of 40 days is required for each comment cycle; however,
it is permissible to create longer periods, if warranted, due to topic length or
complexity. If you intend to open a topic for less than 40 days, the approval of two
ICANN Staff Global leaders is required. [Note: this policy does not override the 21 day
minimum period for certain Public Comments as specified in the Bylaws or other ICANN
contractual requirements].
e) If the intention is to have the Public Comment matter or results be considered by the
Board, the Comment Period should be set to satisfy the minimum lead times
established for Board meetings including any time necessary to prepare the Staff
Summary Report and an adequate period for the community to digest its contents
before any decision is taken. Board papers are typically due approximately two weeks
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prior to the Board meeting, and if the outcome of a solicitation is integral to the Board
paper, this timing should be taken into consideration. You may want to communicate
these time frames with the related Community Leaders in advance, especially if the
topic is originating from a volunteer Working Group.
A Public Comments Planning Date Calculator has been developed to assist Staff
members in determining when to announce a topic. This Excel spreadsheet tool was
designed specifically to help in those instances when a Board or Council decision is
intended to be taken based upon community responses to the Public Comments
solicitation. Instructions are included within the spreadsheet.
f) Forward the completed template to public-comment@ICANN.org. Each Public
Comments-Open template will be reviewed by the ICANN Public Comments Staff for
accuracy, completeness, general readability, and compliance with these guidelines
before being sent to Web-Admin for processing and publication. When planning your
solicitation opening date, please allow three working days for this review to take
place including any alterations that may be indicated.
g) When you know or can anticipate a specific Public Comments start date, it is good
practice to alert the Public Comments Staff in advance so that they can be prepared
for your submission. Solicitations mandated by contractual provisions will be given
first review priority.
II. Managing Public Comments
1) While a solicitation is open, the initiating Staff member should monitor the submitted
comments periodically for community inquiries (e.g., extension requests), monitor for
spam comments (request deletion by Web-Admin with a copy to Public Comments Staff),
and otherwise act as a responsible administrator of the solicitation.
2) Although 40 days should be sufficient for the majority of Public Comments solicitations,
there may be extenuating circumstances justifying extending the comment period, e.g.,
specific request by a Supporting Organization or Advisory Committee. If such a
circumstance arises:
a) Send an email to public-comment@icann.org with the appropriate information.
b) The Public Comments Staff will ensure that a notice is posted in the Public Comment
Forum that the close date has been extended.
III. Closing a Public Comment
1) The Web-Admin team will close each Forum to new submissions when the published Close
Date (or any extension) has been reached.
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2) Use the Staff Summary Report-Template to summarize the submissions received during
the Comment period.
An optional “Public Comments-Issue Tracking Checklist” has been developed for use in
recording issues, concerns, recommendations, and ideas generated in a Public Comments
solicitation and tracking them to final disposition. This template is available in the ICANN
Community Wiki Public Comments Documents and Forms area.
For accountability and timeliness reasons, it is important that the Staff Summary Report be
published as soon as possible, but no later than two weeks after the close date except
under extenuating circumstances such as when there are numerous community
submissions or in situations when a Working Group is involved with its preparation. Please
be sure to communicate to the Public Comments Staff, in advance, any extenuating
circumstances that may cause the report to be delayed beyond two weeks. In the absence
of such notification and an authorized extension, any late reports will be escalated to senior
management.
The ICANN web page for each solicitation features a prominent time line that notes specific
deadlines including the close date and publication date of the Staff Summary Report.
3) Forward the completed and approved Staff Summary Report-Template to publiccomment@ICANN.org.
4) The ICANN website Public Comments page contains a Recently Closed section, which
indicates whether or not the Report is available. A link will be published once the Report
has been reviewed by the Public Comments Staff and subsequently posted by the WebAdmin team. The formula used to determine how long a topic will remain on the Recently
Closed page, before moving it to Archived is: Recently Closed = current month + previous
month; however, any topic, regardless of age, will remain on the Recently Closed page until
a Staff Summary Report has been published.
IV. Community Inquiry Protocol
Based upon an ATRT2 recommendation, a process has been established to permit an
individual or organization to register a formal request that a particular Staff Summary Report
be amended or annotated based upon the rationale and support provided. Procedural rules
associated with this process include:
a) Any email inquiry must be submitted to public-comment@icann.org within 30 days of
the publication of the Staff Summary Report;
b) The initiator is asked to add “Staff Summary Report Inquiry” to the email Subject line
which will flag the email as referencing this protocol;
c) All inquiries received will be published on ICANN.org Public Comments;
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d) Staff is obliged to respond to the submitting party within 7 business days from receipt
of the inquiry including its decision and supporting rationale;
e) Formal Staff responses will be published on ICANN.org Public Comments; and
f) No appeal process will be formalized; however, the ICANN Ombudsman may be utilized
if the requesting party is dissatisfied with the outcome of any inquiry.
Please contact public-comment@icann.org if you have any questions about these guidelines.
(*) To open a topic for less than 40 days requires the approval of two ICANN Staff Global leaders.
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