Summary

  • On 24 September the ICANN Board Chair reported areas of alignment and unresolved differences between the RSS GWG's proposed Functional Model and RSSAC success criteria and advice.
  • The Board discussed how it might support stakeholders in resolving the outstanding matters should it accept the recommendations. The report does not list the differences or announce acceptance.
  • RSSAC058 makes the comparison consequential: transition conditions, consent to constitutional documents and decision rules are distinct from agreement on a conceptual structure.

The most revealing sentence in the Board Chair's September workshop recap is conditional. After an update on alignment and unresolved differences, directors discussed how they could support root-server stakeholders in resolving outstanding matters should they accept the Governance Working Group's recommendations. The Board did not say which differences remain, nor that the Functional Model has been adopted. That is a narrow but important news fact: a proposal now has an acknowledged comparison problem at the point where public readers would look for a decision.

The comparison was not improvised after the meeting. The Chair's 2 September preview said the Board would consider the GWG model against RSSAC publications, specifically the earlier RSSAC037 model and RSSAC058 success criteria. The 24 September recap reports the outcome only at category level—alignment and unresolved differences. The published resolutions from the 6 September Board meeting cover other matters and contain no adoption of this model. Taken together, these records support a status of continued consideration, not approval, rejection or a timetable.

The GWG's February 2026 final Functional Model offers an Initiation Phase, an Establishment Phase and a later Governance Phase. Its own description says the initial phase is limited to organizing, consultation and preparation rather than exercising full governance powers. A proposed chartering process calls for commitment from stakeholder communities asked to join. None of these sentences puts a new council in command today. Nor can a Board blog silently complete the proposed phases.

RSSAC058 shows why an itemized comparison matters. Its transition criteria say the parties to be governed must agree to settled constitutional documents before a new structure takes effect, and the transition must protect root service. Its clear-statement criteria ask which decisions belong to operators alone, which are shared, which thresholds and vetoes apply, and how the structure relates to RSSAC. These are the questions a future disposition should answer. They are not a list of the Board's undisclosed disagreements. Calling any one of them a confirmed Board objection would turn an editorial reading into a fictitious minute.

Nor should earlier support be overstated. In RSSAC063, issued during the 2025 consultation, RSSAC supported that draft and its recommendations as a first step and necessary milestone. The Board had previously directed GWG to incorporate RSSAC058 into its work. Support for starting and an instruction to use criteria are not certificates that every criterion is satisfied in the final February text. Conversely, the Chair's phrase “unresolved differences” does not erase areas of alignment or establish that the model is unworkable.

The missing public object is a criteria-disposition record. For each material RSSAC test it could identify the corresponding model provision, the question still open, the parties empowered to settle it, and whether the answer belongs in the model, the constitutional documents or a later phase. A row marked agreed should stay agreed; a lawful deferral should name its boundary and next decision. That is Daniel Kade's proposed accountability device, not an ICANN rule or an allegation of hidden misconduct.

It would make a future Board decision legible without pretending that the workshop recap itself settled the root system's constitution.

Sources