NCSG Responses to Accountability & Transparency Review Team Questions

[Rafik Dammak]

Thanks Avri, but the idea was that people comment each question in the wiki
and then making it easy for tacking responses and reading other
contributions. I thought that you wanted to encourage people to use wiki (:

so every NCSG member who want to answer the question can login to the link
sent by Bill, he/she will find the 11 questions which redirect to specific
page. then he/she can comment there and see other answers.


Rafik

2010/6/14 Avri Doria <avri at ltu.se>

> hi,
>
> As promised during the Open policy review phone call.  My initial answers
> to the questions.
>
> On 12 Jun 2010, at 05:10, William Drake wrote:
>
> > Hello again,
> >
> > After playing with different options, Rafik and I decided to put the ATRT
> questions on the Social Text site.  He's posted them at
> https://st.icann.org/ncsg-ec/index.cgi?atrt_questionaire.   Any and all
> member responses to whichever questions you feel like addressing would be
> very helpful.
> >
>
> 1.  The ICANN Policy 'Support' Staff has operated in a very non accountable
> way in all of its dealing with the Board on "behalf' of the rest of the
> volunteer community.  Instead of serving as a reliable broker, it has a well
> established practice of send secret reports to the Board on policy and on SO
> and AC affairs.  On a few occasions when those reports have become known,
> they proved to contain falsehoods.  It is impossible to know whether the
> falsehoods are due to errors or strategy, but they were nevertheless false.
>  And whether the false statements were accidental or intentional, the
> community never has a chance to review what is written or to respond.
>
> The community has frequently asked for these secret reports to made public
> - especially those that pertain to the activities and decision making of the
> SOs and ACs, with the understanding that there are occasionally issues that
> need to be private, but the Policy 'Support' Staff has mostly not responded
> to the requests let alone opened itself up to scrutiny and accountability.
>  It is impossible to know how many board decisions were based on faulty
> information and all private memos from the last year's must to be made
> public and open to public scrutiny if ICANN is ever to be considered an
> accountable and transparent institution.
>
> 2.  The Ombudsman is not a viable option.  Perhaps in theory it is, but an
> Ombudsman is supposed to be someone who is outside the organization and who
> is guaranteed neutral.  We have an Ombudsman who has been involved in the
> organization longer than many of the volunteers and is an integral part of
> the staff and pals around with them and the Board.  This is not, in any way,
> a viable accountability mechanism.  In order to become a viable
> accountability mechanism, it would be necessary to replace an Ombudsman
> every 2 or 3 years, and would be necessary for the person picked to remain
> separate from the Staff and the volunteers.
>
> 3. For the most part, the decision making that goes on in the SOs seems
> transparent - certainly more so than most other organizations.  However, due
> to the black hole that exits between SO recommendations, secret staff
> reports and recommendations, and secret Board deliberations, most of the
> transparency is lost.  Staff reports should be publicly vetted and Board
> deliberations should be audiocast and recorded - in the same way laudable
> way that the A&T RT is doing.
>
> 4.  ICANN's primary focus is still primarily focused on supporting those
> who can make money on GTLDs and on assuaging the anger of a few governments
> and not on the global Public Interest.    For example, there is still a
> great imbalance 3:1 in the GNSO between those who represent business and
> those who represent the Non commercial interests.
>
> In terms of an event, I believe that the preference that the ICANN staff
> clearly gave to getting out IDN ccTLDs over IDN gTLDs, including reports
> (again always difficult to report without revealing sources from with the
> ICANN blanket of secrecy) that there was a guarantee that the IDN ccTLDs
> would be in the root 6 months before any new gTLD were allowed in the root.
>  The clear way in which the staff hustled to overcome the IDN ccTLD issue
> while languishing through the creation of the so-called Overriding Issues to
> slow down the new gTLD process was a way to meet international pressure from
> governments at the cost of competition and freedom in the creation of IDN
> gTLD by the same populations who are not receiving the IDN ccTLDs.
>
> I hope that the Review Team has the ability to dig into any and all email
> archives and to question staff members (past and present) under guarantees
> of personnel immunity on events that occurred over the past years in
> managing to push the fasttrack , which started long after the new gTLD
> policy, at least 6 months ahead of new gTLDs
>
> Because they are allowed to act secretly in these as well as other
> respects, it is impossible to know exactly what they are doing.  In addition
> to eliminating the ability of the Staff to work in secret, there should be
> whistle blower programs and protections to encourage those staff members who
> see problems to report them publicly without fear or retribution.
>
> 5.  I believe it is really remiss that the Board is responsible for
> evaluating its own performance as opposed to having a committee that
> includes members of the SO and ACs do the evaluation.
>
> An appeals mechanism is most definitely necessary, and various
> recommendations for such an appeals mechanisms were made the during the
> review before the MOU was replaced by the AOC.  While the AOC Review
> mechanisms are a start they are not sufficient.
>
> 6. The GAC is only one of two ACs in a position to review the performance
> of the public interest.  The ALAC should have equal consideration in that
> effort.   I believe the by-laws requirement that the GAC give non-binding
> advice and that there be a policy for responding and deliberating that
> advice is a good rule that should be extended to the ALAC.  I also believe
> that this needs to be done in an open and transparent way.  I believe that
> some of the tendency these day to regard GAC principles as addenda to the
> by-laws is misplaced and a serious error.  The role of the GAC and ALAC is
> not oversight, but advice of the full scope of ICANN issues.
>
> 7.  The reviews of GAC and ALAC issues need to be deliberate and specific,
> with the discussions open to the community and the results clearly and
> adequately published for reference.  The most important improvement that
> need to be made is to give ALAC the same non binding consideration that the
> GAC has in terms of advice that is listened to, understood, deliberated, and
> responded to.
>
> 8.  While comment response is improving, it is not good enough yet.  All
> comments should be reviewed and responded to in writing.  Not all comments
> require or merit a change in the process, policy or document under review,
> but all need to be reviewed and understood with the responses clearly
> documented.  In some cases this has started happening and that is good.  In
> other cases this has not happened either because the staff was said to not
> have the resources or because the volunteers did not feel the comments
> merited a response.  This is an area where further improvement is required.
>
> 9. The current rush to create a central a DNS Cert authority with
> invitation only meetings and staff declarations that this is an operational
>  issue and not a policy issue is the latest event of that nature.   By and
> large most ICANN 'operational' decisions are never fully explained and never
> opened to review and response by the ICANN volunteer community unless the
> community raises a fuss.  This is an area where great improvement is
> required.
>
> 10. I believe the recent ICANN staff decision to reserve Geographical names
> in way contrary to the policy recommendation of the GNSO that had been
> approved by the Board is one such instance where the decision was neither
> embraced, supported or accepted.
>
> 11. I think the policy development process is improving in this regard with
> more diverse working groups and earlier discussion of issues.  The secrecy
> at the top, however, where the policy recommendations can be obviated though
> various means (including secret misinformation) remains a serious problem,
> and a way in which the improvements can be negated.
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