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.