Should have sent the draft text along also:
DRAFT
Proposed NCSG Statement on ICANN Staff’s Accountabillity Plan v.01
The NCSG appreciates this opportunity to provide feedback regarding the ICANN staff’s proposed plan for “Enhancing Accountability” at ICANN.
NCSG notes its disappointment, however, with the staff skipping the step of providing a synthesis of the community feedback received from the ICANN public comments forum and the London accountability discussions, as staff had stated it was working on during GNSO Council and SO/AC leadership calls since the London meeting. NCSG reiterates its request to see that synthesis of public input upon which staff relied in the formulation of its accountability proposal. It is impossible to know where the components of staff’s proposal come from and on what basis they are called for without being privy to staff’s assessment of the public input on the subject. At a time when the world is indeed watching ICANN to discern if it can be trusted with no oversight of its global govern functions, and particularly on the issue of formulating a proposal for resolving ICANN’s accountability crisis, to skip the step of providing the intellectual justification for staff’s proposal seems imprudent at best. From its inception, the community should have been engaged in the formulation of the proposal on the table, not pressured into signing-off on a staff created proposal at the 11th hour. This is an example of top-down policymaking which engenders mistrust. A number of public comments and discussion in London were around the inherent conflict of interest behind staff developing its own accountability mechanisms so it was disappointing to see that input hadn’t been taken into account by staff in the development of this proposal.
Regarding the substance of the staff proposal, the NCSG does not support it as currently drafted. Of particular concern is the proposed Community Coordination Group, which would prioritize issues identified by the community and build solutions for those issues. As proposed by staff, this group is too heavily controlled by the ICANN board and staff and so it does not remove the problem of ICANN’s accountability structures being circular and lacking independence. Given the overwhelming number of public comments submitted supporting the need for an independent accountability mechanism, it is unclear on what basis ICANN staff proposed a solution in which the ICANN board and staff would fill a large number of the seats on the CCG. It is also unclear on what basis staff thinks board-picked advisors should have an equal vote as representatives of community members. Outside experts are welcome and can provide valuable input, but they should be selected by and report to the community, not the board or staff for independent accountability to be achieved. And advisors role must be clarified as an informational role, rather than a voting role that representatives of stakeholders would hold in a bottom-up process. It is also necessary that the role of any ICANN Board or Staff on this CCG serve in a non-voting support or liaison function. For the CCG to have legitimacy as a representational form of democracy, its voting members must consist of representatives of the stakeholders that ICANN seeks to govern, not the ICANN board and staff. The make-up and roles of the members of the proposed CCG must be reformulated in a more bottom-up fashion by the community for this proposal to be acceptable.