Speaking more broadly than simply the ICANN accountability process, I think some expertise is missing at ICANN.  Their response lately has been to hire folks to fill that gap.  I am thinking of the following areas where I do not frankly see great expertise or concentrated focus on deliverables either in the staff or stakeholders:

I think green papers are great, but it is how we get there that counts.  If the board selects a bunch of experts to do a green paper, the same way they selected a bunch of experts to do the Whois replacement (ie. the Experts Working Group on directory services for the new gTLDs, on which I just served) I am not sure we gain much in transparency and participation.  So we need a process whereby the multistakeholder community decides we need help, and either does an open call for potential responders, or reaches agreement in the working group.  This basic accountability and adherence to a multi-stakeholder model appears to be falling apart on various fronts.
On a more cheerful note, it is very heartening that the stakeholder groups are working together more, and not at cross purposes.  I am confident, given the tremendous and varied expertise across the groups, that a cross-community working group could come up with proposals for expert papers on the matters I listed above.  We of course would have to weigh in to make sure the experts were not weighted in one direction or the other, but it could work.  I agree whole heartedly with your conclusion, Seun, the members can do it better.
Cheers
Stephanie Perrin

On 2014-08-27, 11:25, Seun Ojedeji wrote:
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Honestly I am yet to understand why an external "expert" should be required in the first place and there are 2 reasons for this:
- ICANN fix is from inside: The folks who knows ICANN more are the ICANN community itself or rather I should say they are the second set of people (because it's expected that the staff is first but that is  irrelevant since this process is largely checking on them). So if there is going to be a realistic accountability, more of the role should rely on the community.
- Who are the experts: That word can be relative because I don't see how much experience non-icann participating individual will have to make him/her an expert. The accountability process is not audit review where there is a general template/rule that works on different organization. It's rather a process that improves the strength of an organisation and it's the organisation members that can do that better.

Cheers!

sent from Google nexus 4
kindly excuse brevity and typos.

On 27 Aug 2014 15:33, "Sam Lanfranco" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
The Role of Experts in ICANN deliberations:

This issue is churning away in the background of various discussions so here is a contribution to thinking about how to handle it.

There are two areas of concern with regard to the role of experts in ICANN deliberations. The first, of course, is the selection of appropriate experts for the issue/task at hand. As everyone involved in policy and project implementation knows, knowledge and expertise only have meaning in context, and excellent credentials applied to the wrong task produces a double risk. The advice will be out of context, and there is the risk of legitimating the advice based on the credentials of the expert, rather than on the suitability of the advice to the context. In fact, this is always a problem, no matter how the expert selection process is undertaken and by whom.

This leads to the second concern, and one that is present in ICANN deliberations. That is once the expert opinion is tabled it is given undue weight in decision making independent of its actual relevance and strengths. This has happened with some of the content of recently retained ICANN expert panels, in particular the one on enhanced multistakeholder engagement.

There is a long standing tried and true protection against the risks associated with both of these concerns. The British call it the Green Paper process, and it would be simple to incorporate it into ICANN’s use of retained expertise to assist in decision making. It is very much like the terms of reference currently being used for the IANA stewardship coordination group. An agreed upon simple statement could be a mandatory part of the charter, or terms of reference, for any expert group convened within ICANN. Something like:

This expert group will identify issues and options, and may suggest recommendations for policy or implementation, to be used as input into the subsequent multistakeholder dialogue and multistakeholder recommendations for action.

While there will still be differences of opinion as to who should be retained as experts, such a process reduces the critical role of expert selection in the ultimate policy decisions, and allows the stakeholder groups to insure that subsequent use of advice is based on the relevance of the advice to the issues at hand. It focuses on usable outputs and not expert credentials, and minimizes the extent to which decision making can selectively pick elements of the advice based on self-interest.

Sam L.