Hi,
While certainly willing to defer to those, like Avri, with more
experience as to what actually is possible within the ICANN universe, I do
feel compelled to note that the revised accountability plan, to use a highly
technical term, stinks. As in stinks big time. Despite slight modifications,
it is still a process dominated by the same staff and Board that to date
have repeatedly resisted all attempts at true accountability and
transparency.
To wit:
1. Despite community objection, we still have an ICANN staff member as
a full participating member of the Coordination Group. The precedent this
sets is untenable. Once staff begins participating in the
decision-making process they cease to be neutral facilitators of the
process. Not only does this turn bottom up multi-stakeholderism on its head,
it presents practical problems in terms of trust: if staff are involved in
debating and making decisions, how can they be relied upon to neutrally
manage the process?
2. The role of experts is essentially unchanged, despite widespread
community opposition. They are not merely advisory; they are full
participants in the process.
ICANN notes, “Some stakeholders called for stakeholder selection
of the advisors, and suggested that ICANN involvement in this process is not
appropriate. Others called for coordination between ICANN and
stakeholders in the selection of advisors”. ICANN responds by
doing neither.
Instead it creates a Public Experts Group (PEG), selected by staff,
which will then select the expert members of the Coordination Group. How
this is seen as being responsive to community concerns baffles me. Staff
selects the experts who select the experts who participate as full members
of the Coordination Group. There is no mechanism for ANY community
involvement whatsoever in the selection of experts. We’re not entitled
to even make a mere suggestion.
Staff justifies the inclusion of experts as participants, rather than
advisors, by saying ICANN is responding to outside concern. The world is
watching and external advice is needed to meet these concerns.
Yet the Thune/ Rubio letter Mr. Chehade often refers to when citing
outside pressure specifically calls for “additional oversight
tools” to be given to the “multistakeholder community”.
Perhaps if we say “pretty please” the experts selected by
experts selected by staff in collaboration with staff selected by staff and
a Board member selected by the Board will give the “multistakeholder
community” “additional oversight tools” to monitor the
Board and staff. Perhaps the moon is made of blue cheese. Anything is
possible, I suppose. Real oversight, as opposed to a facade of oversight, is
presumably not in the immediate self interest of staff or Board.
An additional concern is the limitation in scope of the qualifications
of the Public Experts Group. The PEG members are required to have
“strong backgrounds in academia, governmental relations, global
insight, and the AoC”. Two areas of concern:
1. ICANN is a corporation. It is not a government, it is not (yet, at
least) an international organization, it is a California public benefits
corporation. We are trying to create accountability and transparency
mechanisms for a private corporation, yet staff omits corporate
governance as a vital area in which expert advice is needed. By controlling
the scope of competence of the experts, staff is dictating the scope of
inquiry of the entire project. We need to be conscious of this and react
accordingly as the process moves on.
2. It appears that rather than set criteria and then find the experts
for the PEG, ICANN has already selected the experts to be included in the
group. Four background areas (is there any such thing as an expert on the
AoC?), four expert slots. If this is the situation, and it may very well not
be although I suspect it is, the process certainly does not comply with any
sort of best practices for governance that I know of.
Suggested Action Plan
1. While agreeing with Avri that we need to begin sorting how we are
going to work within the proposed structure, I also believe we need to issue
a strong statement in opposition to the plan as currently proposed. Staff
modifications to the initial model are simply not sufficient to bless this
proposal with our approval.
Although such a statement might not create any change in the process
going forward, should the outcome be as bad as we may fear I’d like to
be able to point to our ongoing opposition to the rigged structure when
criticizing the outcome. Complete silence to the modified model at this
point might be construed as approval. We could then, at a later stage, be
accused of buying into the structure at the start and only criticizing the
modified model later when we didn’t like the policy outputs. I’d
like to avoid that.
2. Although staff has not tasked our SG with recommending expert
members of the Coordination Group I’d suggest we do so any way. The
NCSG is the most diverse community within ICANN; our networks are vast.
Let’s plug into them and be proactive. Once we have a list of a few
names of folks we’d like to see involved on the Coordination Group we
can use it as follows:
a. We can send the list to the selected members of the PEG and
ask that the individuals listed be given full consideration by the PEG for
inclusion in the Coordination Group;
b. There is a provision in the modified plan by where “the Cross
Community Group may provide suggestions on external experts they feel would
be helpful to the accountability effort”. By having already considered
the situation we'll be prepared to offer names of experts when
required.
In the hope of stimulating further recommendations, I’ll start by
suggesting that Dr. Deirdre Ahern of Trinity College Dublin would be an
excellent selection for the Coordination Group. In addition to be an
acknowledged expert in board governance, one of the many areas of expertise
identified by ICANN as being needed on the Coordination Group, Dr. Ahern
also has a subspecialty in Internet Law and, in fact, teaches the I-Law
course at Trinity, Ireland’s most prestigious university. You can read
more about Dr. Ahern here:
https://www.tcd.ie/Law/deirdreahern/index.php. I hope you agree with me
that she’d be a qualified exceptional choice for the Coordination
Group. Equally, I hope others have people in mind that they would like to
suggest for either the Coordination Group or for other as yet defined
consultative processes.
3. Please note: “All stakeholders that wish to participate in the
Cross Community Group may indicate their involvement by submitting their
names to
[log in to unmask].” It would be great to get as
many members as we can on the Group. The sign on process has begun.
Thanks,
Ed