Barbara Mittleman asks:
> /Does ICANN have a policy for the constituent groups which covers, 
> e.g., ICANN Board of Director's responsibilities for financial 
> oversight and auditing as relates to the subgroups; conflicts of 
> interest, finances and fund raising; autonomy of the SGs with respect 
> to finances; how the groups' finances and fund-raising fit with the 
> not-for-profit status under US/CA law (governing law for ICANN)? /

Response:

Barbara, having only been Treasurer for less than a week, and with no 
prior NCSG Treasurer to call on and no prior documents from the office, 
I can only give a tentative answer to your question, and the short 
answer is "NO!". ICANN's multistakeholder process is not only unique in 
terms of policy making on a global scale, its structures are unique as 
well. There is a potentially deep well of consulting income here for 
lawyers :-\ to get a longer answer to your question but, from what I can 
gather, constituency groups and support groups, while chartered from 
within the ICANN process, are not subject to the oversight and auditing 
one would expect for -as you put it- "subgroups" within an organization. 
In some ways the organizational link between NCSG, IPC, GAC, etc. is 
more like the one where independent groups are accredited to participate 
in the meetings of various UN and multilateral agencies, except that 
within ICANN they also constitute the core of the policy making 
process.  SGs and CGs are not administrative subgroups within ICANN as I 
understand it.

This may well be as it has to be, with accountability resting within the 
subgroups. I cannot imagine ICANN having oversight over how Intellectual 
Property Constituency (IPC), GAC, or other groups within ICANN raise, 
administer and use funds within their respective work. Since many of 
those groups also engage in lobbying in various national settings, the 
one set of  U.S. laws that would likely apply would be those requiring 
ICANN to register as a lobbyist for foreign powers, including some with 
which the U.S. may not have friendly relations. I don't think anybody 
wants to go in that direction. There may be a small piece of "lawyer 
work" for ICANN to clarify that CG's and SG's operate financially 
completely independent of ICANN, just to clear the situation there. The 
various Executive Committees may want to address that question.

I am proceeding as NCSG Treasurer on the assumption that each of NCSG, 
NCUC and NPOC  is internally accountable to itself, and recommending an 
annual report as simply a best practice for accountability to our 
members and sources of funding.

Sam Lanfranco, Treasurer, NCSG