[LAC-Discuss] Problems with Country Listing on the PRO Working Group online questionnaire

[Nick Ashton-Hart]

Dear Deidre:

We have been forwarded your comments on the issues you, and others in  
the Caribbean region, have had in responding to the questionnaire on  
the Protection of the Rights of Others and I wanted to respond  
personally to ensure you understood the situation and the steps we  
have taken after being notified of the issues you have raised.

Firstly, it may be of interest for you to know that this was the  
first wide-scale use of online polling technology with this provider;  
we are still learning how to use it and unfortunately, the list of  
countries which was chosen for respondents to use was not a complete,  
ISO-compliant list. This was not due to any software fault; there is  
more than one pre-provided list of countries to choose from and the  
one chosen was unfortunately the abbreviated version.

Secondly, while it was possible to reply via filling in a Word  
document-version of the poll, that option was not made available  
until after one had chosen a country from the list, so unfortunately,  
those who didn't find their country listed may well have given up in  
frustration and never seen the option.

We are very sorry that this combination of factors made the poll much  
less useful in certain respects than it could have been.

However, in the wider context, it may be useful to know that this  
good faith effort by the working group to ensure that anyone in the  
ICANN community could respond to the issues being considered by the  
working group was a groundbreaking one - I believe this is the first  
time that a polling system has been used to capture the views of the  
community in a programmatic fashion which the software platform makes  
possible. What you have experienced is clearly not what was intended  
but we will learn from these problems and ensure that they don't recur.

I do hope that you and your colleagues in the Caribbean region will  
make your feelings known on future polls - and we will ensure that  
there is always a link on the polls to report a problem such as  
you've discovered so that these can be fixed before the poll response  
'window' closes. We believe that wide-scale, open-to-the-public  
polling using electronic tools will allow everyone in the community  
the ability to provide all of us in the greater ICANN 'fold' much  
more information on what people really think is important, and why.  
We hope that you will balance this against the unfortunate experience  
you have had.

I hope that you or Jacqueline will be so kind as to forward this  
response to the Caribbean CIVIC mailing list so that your colleagues  
may know we are sorry for what has happened.  Do feel free to reply,  
or have any colleagues reply, with any other concerns or queries you  
may have.

-- 
Regards,

Nick Ashton-Hart
Director, At-Large
ICANN
PO Box 32160
London N4 2XY
United Kingdom
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