Willie Currie wrote:
> - 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).

Oh the irony. A meeting between a review committee to make recommendations on 
transparency and accountability, and their meeting with staff is confidential!

ICANN is showing its roots in the secret services (remember many of the 
original board were drawn from the US secret services) here, I think. The 
whole organisational culture they have is an assumption that information is 
secret unless there's a strong positive argument for it being made open. This 
is contrary to the spirit of Internet organisation, and to the freedom of 
information principles that the US and a number of other democratic 
governments have introduced. FoI was introduced precisely to get public 
servants out of this "assumption of secrecy" mode and into an "assumption of 
openness" mode. As a public interest body, ICANN's operations should always 
by default be open and the occasions on which information is kept secret 
should be vanishingly small. ICANN right from the start had a public 
perception problem that it was autocratic, secretive and illegitimate. The 
continuing attitude against accountability and transparency in both the board 
and staff serve only to perpetuate the reality and actuality of this 
impression. In particular meta-level discussions such as this in particular 
have absolutely no justification for being kept private.




-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams       [log in to unmask]
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan