Bret Fausett, who is a member of the Names Policy Development Process Advisory Group, has posted some comments on that group's current work.

The comments certainly contain a number of good to excellent ideas on how to improve the {D,G}NSO's policy-making.

However, with all due respect for the advisory group's members, I don't think that the process used by that group itself is setting a good precedent. To begin with, it would be great if the group could just make available its drafts, so the public wouldn't have to rely on snippets from telephone conferences and comments from individual members of the advisory group. What's happening currently is certainly not the way to go if you want informed comments from the public.

Note: Reading Bret's response in his blog, I notice that there may have been a misunderstanding. This note should certainly not be misread as criticism against the publication of the things which have been said in public, and I'm also not asking anyone to "leak" any documents without the agreement of all those involved. However, I do believe that even a fast-paced, closed drafting group can work more transparently than what we are currently seeing.