[ncdnhc-discuss] Board retreats and fully transparent process for ICANN

[Jonathan Weinberg]

On Tue, 28 May 2002, Hendrik Rood wrote:
> At 23:13 27-5-02 -0400, Jonathan Weinberg wrote:
> >         Like other U.S. federal multimember agencies, the U.S. Federal
> >Communications Commission is forbidden closed meetings except in very
> >limited circumstances: where the relevant portion of the meeting would
> >disclose confidential trade secrets, involve accusing a person of a crime,
> >disclose personal information constituting a clearly unwarranted invasion
> >of personal privacy, etc.  The agency can't evade that rule by renaming
> >the meeting a "retreat" and postphoning any formal votes until later.
> > [snip]

> Do you really mean that the 5-person Commission never helds closed meetings 
> with FCC-staff? That is then a major difference with all European National 
> Regulatory Agencies. I am not familiar with any more or less equivalent 
> European Quango (Quasi Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisation) regulating 
> telecommunications (Oftel, RegTP, OPTA, Telestryrelsen, ART etc.) that is 
> as open in its commission-meetings as you claim.

	Actually, that's exactly what I mean.  The Commissioners meet
individually with staff (and with industry members), but three
Commissioners may not meet to discuss agency business except in a public
meeting.  Whether this is a Good Thing is open to debate; the efficacy of
open-meeting rules turns out to depend a lot on particular institutional
context.  In the case of the FCC, the rule means that the locus of
decision-making shifts, in important degree, from meetings among
Commissioners to meetings among Commissioners' staffers; it's hardly
obvious that that's an improvement.  So open-meetings laws are hardly a
panacea, even in the U.S. where they are more common.  But when it comes
to ICANN's "retreats," my own view, as a policy matter, is that the need
for transparency stemming from ICANN's legitimacy deficit far outweighs
the disadvantages.

Jon


Jonathan Weinberg
weinberg at msen.com