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