The ICANN board of directors is wondering whether the next new gTLD application round should kick off sooner than expected.

Chair Steve Crocker reached out to the Generic Names Supporting Organization this week to ask whether the next round could start before all GNSO policy work has been completed.

Or, he asked, are there any “critical issues” that need to be resolved before ICANN starts accepting more applications.

Akram Atallah, head of ICANN’s Global Domains Division, said in May that 2020 is the earliest the next round could feasibly begin, but Crocker’s letter this week (pdf) suggests that that date could be brought forward.

Crocker asked “whether a future application process could proceed while policy work continues”.

There are a number of reviews that ICANN has committed to carry about before the next round starts.

There’s a consumer choice, competition and trust survey to be completed, for example, and a review of trademark protection mechanisms.

Atallah said in may that these would likely be complete by the end of 2017.

But the GNSO is also conducting policy work designed to highlight flaws and inefficiencies in the current 2012 and recommend changes and improvements.

It’s this so-called GNSO Policy Development Process (PDP) Working Group on New gTLD Subsequent Procedures (or NewgTLD-WG) that Crocker is interested in. He wrote:

assuming all other review activities are completed, it would be helpful to understand whether the GNSO believes that the entirety of the current Subsequent Procedures PDP must be completed prior to advancing a new application process under the current policy recommendations. The Board is cognizant that it may be difficult to provide a firm answer at this stage of the process as the reviews are still underway and the PDP is in its initial stages of work, but if any consideration has been given in relation to whether a future application process could proceed while policy work continues and be iteratively applied to the process for allocating new gTLDs, or that a set of critical issues could be identified to be addressed prior to a new application process, the Board would welcome that input.

The current plan for the NewgTLD-WG is to wrap up two years from now, in the third quarter of 2018 (though this may be optimistic).

Members of the group seem to think that we’re looking at a post-2020 next round with 10,000 to 15,000 applications.

It’s difficult to imagine a second round (or fourth, if you’re a pedant) beginning a whole lot earlier than 2020, given the snail’s pace ICANN and its community moves at.

The WG was chartered over half a year ago and the conversations going on are still at a depressingly high level.

Perhaps Crocker’s letter is an early indication that board will not be the significant drag factor on the process.