Hi all

I'm writing to give you all an update on the progress of the 
Accountability & Transparency Review Team (ATRT).

So far there have been two conference calls and a face-to-face meeting, 
which was held on 5-6 May at Marina del Rey. Records of the conference 
calls and the meeting can be found at 
http://www.icann.org/en/reviews/affirmation/activities-1-en.htm

The key documents to look at are the preliminary report of the meeting 
which lays out the work process and decisions of the ATRT and the set of 
questions to the community.
http://www.icann.org/en/reviews/affirmation/prelim-report-atrt-f2f-meeting-5-6may10-en.pdf
http://www.icann.org/en/reviews/affirmation/community-questions-18may10-en.pdf

One of the decisions of the ATRT is that 'the RT agrees that Members 
have discretion to report back to their SOs and ACs as they deem fit.' 
So it would be good to get a sense from the NCSG as to what sort of 
feedback would be useful and perhaps from our GNSO councillors what kind 
of feedback would be useful for the GNSO.

The meeting at Marina del Rey had a number of dimensions:

- to elect the ATRT chair and vice-chair
- to meet with the ICANN staff and get their perspective on the review 
as well as  raise a few questions (part of this engagement with staff 
was confidential).
- to develop a work programme for the ATRT which involved inputs from 
team members on conceptual frameworks, review methodology and an 
approach to performance indicators as well as a number of process and 
timetable points.

I worked with Olivier Muron to introduce a discussion on conceptual 
frameworks for accountability. Part of the purpose of this was to start 
to build a common language on accountability and you can see the working 
definition we adopted in the  preliminary report. We understand 
accountability as both a retrospective and prospective activity. We also 
looked at a number of different frameworks for understanding or 
assessing accountability as an element of the governance of 
institutions. And we generated a short history of recent 
accountablity-related activities in ICANN. What was significant here was 
learning that ICANN had undertaken an assessment of accountability by 
the One World Trust in 2007 using their Global Accountability Framework. 
This led to some thought about whether this would be useful as a 
baseline to assess ICANN's progress on accountability since then and the 
team decided to explore the OWT model further. It was also agreed that 
we should look further at Elinor Ostrom's Institutional Analysis and 
Development Framework for Common Pool Resource Institutions. See 
attached paper on conceptual frameworks.

I also worked on developing the questions for the community which were 
published last week. It will be really important for NCSG to respond to 
these questions with as many concrete examples as possible as the 
answers will help the RT identify areas that will need to be explored in 
more depth. The RT is working on an RFP for a consultant to undertake a 
management review of ICANN's decision-making processes to identify 
whether ICANN's processes and procedures are designed and executed in a 
manner that ensures accountability and transparency and reflects the 
interstes of global internet users.

The RT decided to hold another face to face meeting at the ICANN meeting 
in Brussels and to use that as an occasion to feed back to the community 
on the process. This will take the form of an open meeting as well as 
meetings with each constituency. I tried to suggest a more formal 
process of public hearings but that was not successful, maybe I didn't 
argue the case for it clearly enough.

The dynamic on the RT is open, cooperative and committed to getting the 
job done successfully in a short timetable. Brian Cute and Manal Ismail 
are doing a good job as Chair and Vice-Chair. The ICANN staff are 
co-operating in the process but are not in a position to exert undue 
influence on the RT.

That's all for now

Best
Willie