 All right. The next session has to do with the rights of the people who will be participating in your groups. You've probably all been to lots of meetings, maybe even other standards bodies. The ITUT as a standardization body has some similarities to most other standards bodies. It also has some differences. First being it's part of the United Nations. It's an intergovernmental organization governed by an international treaty. And just as most participants have not read Resolution 1 or Recommendation A1, probably very few of any of you have read the Constitution and Convention. And that's okay. You don't need to go buy a copy and read that. There are some sections in those higher level documents which do apply and we'll talk about that. It's called the general rules for meetings of the ITU. But we are somewhat different because we have member states. It's also different from other intergovernmental organizations because within ITU we also have private sector and other organizations which also enjoy rights to participate in the work and many cases it's not possible or desirable to differentiate the rights and the participation from the different people who will show up in your meetings. But you do have to understand when it comes to certain decision processes that there are going to be differences. Let me take them one by one. The member states they have the right to participate in all activities of the ITU including your study groups and rapid tour groups, workshops, any activity of ITU. The member states have the right to participate. And they can make contributions to all the meetings. And should there be the need to vote on something the member states have the right to vote. In your groups you will never vote. Probably even up to the study group level you will not see voting. There was one case recently where a study group went through something that was a vote that generated lots of problems and not clear that it really helped progress the work and it was very unusual. I used to be able to say in more than 25 years I had never seen a vote. We don't work by voting. The sector members they have the right to participate in all meetings of ITUT. They can share groups, they can be rapid tours. They take part in progressing the work. They take part in most of the agreements based on consensus. They take part in nearly every phase of the approval procedures. The only part that they cannot take part in if you have to get that far is the final decision making step of the AAP, the alternative approval process. But I can tell you from our experience only about one percent, maybe two percent of recommendations ever get that far, they're all approved before you get to the stage where you have to consult only the member states. Therefore, for most of the work you're going to be engaged in, the member states and sector members will be participating very much the same way. We also have associates. This is not a category of membership. Associates are not associate members, they're just called associates. They pay a smaller level of dues and they can participate in one study group and the groups under that study group. They can take part in the process of submitting contributions, discussing them, and the first part of AAP, which is taking comments on the draft, but they cannot take part in decision making. We have carefully looked at the steps of the AAP and we have written rules, what associates can do and what they cannot do. The one restriction you have to be careful of, associates cannot take part in liaison activities. We know people are clever, they'll think, let me join this one group and then get a pointed liaison repertoire to the other group and then I can go there also. So we said, no, no, you participate in the one group you joined so you cannot be appointed into a liaison role. But other than that, associates can fully participate within the one study group. There's a new group. This was authorized by the Plenty Potentiary Conference about a year and a half ago. This is academia. They can join, again, for a very low amount of dues and they can participate across ITUT, all the study groups, which is interesting because that's a broader right of participation than the associates have. They cannot take part in decision making, but we have not gotten enough experience yet to write down any specific rules, what that means. So there are some guidelines that have been generated by the TSB, but we still need to do some work. Probably this will progress through TSAG until we have some written rules on how to deal with academia. In your work as rapporteurs, I'd say you should welcome them to participate and encourage their contributions. Here's an interesting graphic showing the number of members over the past several years. You can see the top line, the number of sector members has decreased somewhat, but the number of associates and now academia has been increasing. Now there are 500 to 600 sector members. We don't see a five or 600 participants in your meeting. Depending on which group you're in, what your subject is, you may have more or less, hopefully you're getting the right set of experts. Many we think join to have access to the information and they don't actively attend and participate in meetings. Since we have more and more remote participation and electronic working methods, my hope is we'll see more of these sector members participating through electronic and remote means. Yes, question? Who are the associates? If they were member states, they're already members so they don't need to join again. These would probably be a company whose business relates to a particular product or a particular service that is addressed in one study group. Maybe you make optical fiber. You're probably most interested in study group 15. Why join the whole sector if I'm only going to study group 15? Why pay 30,000 Swiss francs a year to join the whole sector? We found that it would be advantageous to us, instead of losing members, to create this category at about one third the level of dues for about 10,000 francs. They can join the one study group that they actually will participate in. So that's who the associates are. I guess if I worked for a company that's in some way an NGO, a non-governmental organization, there are procedures for joining. You would go through your member state, submit your application to the ITU. And within the ITU process, they will judge if you meet the criteria to become either a sector member or an associate. That's probably a legal question and I don't know what criteria are used to accept or reject certain companies. I'm aware of companies that wanted to join and they were all able to join. Yes, question? Thank you. I'm from the University of the Basque Country, which is one of the 19 academia members. And I'm not, you said right now that the academia members cannot be reporters. But I'm not sure if they can be editors of recommendation. Is that already written? Okay, yeah, thanks. Yeah, for academia participants, in the Plunipat resolution that I referred to, it talks about academia participants, not academia members. So it's again, like associates, not a category of membership. But it's a way to participate in the meetings. I would have to check, I will check with TSB. Whether academia participants can be rapporteurs and editors, I think the answer would be yes, but I'll check. So as I mentioned, our goal is to bring in the right set of experts and have everybody working together. Under the rules as they stood, there was a sequence of events to approve a recommendation. It was that the study group adopted the draft. Then there was a formal consultation of the member states to approve the recommendation. That goes back many, many years. We found that after the study group experts had agreed on the text, there was never a case when the formal consultation of the member states changed the decision of the study group. And that took somewhere around six months. In those days, it was a paper-based process of mailing papers around the world. It did not serve any useful purpose. What we did is we took that formal consultation of member states. And we moved it in front of the study group meeting to ask, given the draft text that we point you to, do you give authority to the study group to make the decision for that recommendation? This is now what we call the traditional approval process. The study group agrees on the draft. There's formal consultation of the member states to assign responsibility to the next meeting of the study group. The study group meets and they decide whether it's agreed, whether it's approved or not. In the Plunipot in 1998, one sentence was added to the ITU's convention. And it said that when there are questions, study questions and recommendations, which don't have policy or regulatory implications, then it does not need the formal consultation of the member states. What that meant was, once we had the agreement from the study group, we no longer had to do the formal consultation of member states. That saved a lot of time in the process. That applies to topics where there is no policy or regulatory implication. You'll hear this phrase many times. That became the basis for the alternative approval process. What that meant was once the study group agreed on the text, it was approved. We didn't have to have that additional step. And in reaching that agreement, in general, the member states and sector members are working together and we don't reach the point of having to ask the member states only if they have any objection. So it was a great step forward and it took the approval procedures which went on for more than a year under the traditional process and on average brought that down to about nine weeks. It was incredible. In the first year we did a quick calculation and besides saving a lot of time, we found or we estimated the ITU saved several million francs of not having to mail papers that we don't do that anymore. But at the time we didn't have to mail the draft recommendations to the member states to have them say nothing because they had no further objection and no further comment. So we saved a lot of time and we saved a lot of money and now about 95% of the recommendations are under the AAP. So a couple of things to again remind in any formal voting situations which you will not see at the rapid tour level, only member states have the right to vote in ITU. Only the membership, that's the sector members and the member states and associates and academia have the right to submit contributions. Everything else coming into the study group will be in the form of temporary documents. Just call them TDs and a very handy right that you will have as the chairman of your meeting. If you're chairing a rapid tour group or you're chairing an editing group, you have the right to invite an outside expert who is not a member. We know that we don't do everything and sometimes you need someone to help and then not a member. You have the right and the reference is here in Resolution 1 in 2.3.1. As the chairman of any meeting, you can invite a nonmember. So keep that in mind. It's very, very useful. So quick overview on the rights of the different categories of the participants. Another question? Yeah, about inviting some experts to the meeting. That's because we had similar problems in our one of the last meetings. Those that are invited, they can come, they can produce some presentation in case. But those presentation to be, let's say, usable, they must be presented by one of the sector members or one of the official members. So this invited person cannot present contribution on its own. Contribution only can come from sector members and similar. Associate. Yeah, see here's where now we have multiple rules and you have to understand all of them so you can move the work ahead. You are correct. You can invite a nonmember. And you're also correct that only the membership can submit contributions. So what do you do? You're inviting them because you want their intellectual contribution. What I would do as the chairman is to submit that as a temporary document, a TD. Perhaps as the chairman of the meeting, I submit a TD saying here is a paper from the invited expert and then I would have that person introduce it. So we follow all the rules and contributions come from member states, sector members, associates, and academia. And this other input comes in as a TD. Other questions? Yeah, please. Sorry maybe to come back very basic. Again, about TD and contribution because we have seen editor and a reporter should be neutral completely. So inside a document, we have to make a work, we have to make, we can use contribution as well as TD or there is a difference. I mean, using the content of course. Yeah, OK. The question is there any difference in how you use documents whether it's a contribution or a TD? No, a TD could be the report of someone else's meeting which has a wonderful content and draft recommendation or results that they have contributed could be an incoming liaison statement with vital information that you need to progress your work. So whether it's a TD or a contribution, judge the document on the content, not what we call it. We had a lot of confusion years ago with documents coming from different sources and not being clear who was submitting it. And that's why we made the rule that only the membership submits contributions. That meant if I see something in the C, the contribution series, I don't have to ask, did this come from another standard's body or my friend? I know that it had to come from the membership. Other questions? Yeah, please. Thanks. I just want to continue on the point raised by DD and Flavio. Let's suppose that I wanted to invite an external expert having a bright idea. If I am the chair of the session of the meeting, if I produce a TD, the editor can tell me that is not a contribution. I cannot include that in the recommendation. Is it not better to say, my company produced a contribution based on the expert contribution, expert presentation, and like that we have not this problem? That is a contribution included. That could be included in the recommendation. Is it not better that saying it is a TD? OK, thank you. Consuming being on the microphone, everyone is hearing that, text ideas that go into recommendations do not come only from contributions. They could come from an incoming liaison statement, which is a TD. It could come from the report of another repertoire group, which is a TD. So it's not the case that only contributions can be discussed or wind up in a recommendation. If your company wants to put its own name on that, that's a decision of your company. That's not an ITU issue. And to put your own company's name on another expert's input would have to go through your own internal review and approval process. My guess is that most companies would not put their name on somebody else's contribution in the general case, unless they happened to agree with it. What I would do in that case, taking off my chairman's hat, I'd say, if I let the expert submit it and it comes in as a TD, then I can support it from the floor. That gives me two votes. If I have someone else introduce my idea, then I can support it. And it looks like there's more support. Another trick of standards participants. Yes, please. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I try to also provide an additional comment that might be useful. I didn't hear so far the difference between deadlines for contribution and TDs. This might solve some of the problems, because the contribution have 12 days deadline and can never be submitted during a meeting. So you have no choice during a meeting. You cannot submit a contribution. You can submit only TD. What for the TDs? Let's go ahead. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. TSB is pointing out, the secretariat keeps us honest. There are rules for submitting contributions and TDs. I'll talk about that in the session called Inputs.