Update on ATRT

[Andrew A. Adams]

Willie Currie wrote:
> - to meet with the ICANN staff and get their perspective on the review
> as well as  raise a few questions (part of this engagement with staff
> was confidential).

Oh the irony. A meeting between a review committee to make recommendations on
transparency and accountability, and their meeting with staff is confidential!

ICANN is showing its roots in the secret services (remember many of the
original board were drawn from the US secret services) here, I think. The
whole organisational culture they have is an assumption that information is
secret unless there's a strong positive argument for it being made open. This
is contrary to the spirit of Internet organisation, and to the freedom of
information principles that the US and a number of other democratic
governments have introduced. FoI was introduced precisely to get public
servants out of this "assumption of secrecy" mode and into an "assumption of
openness" mode. As a public interest body, ICANN's operations should always
by default be open and the occasions on which information is kept secret
should be vanishingly small. ICANN right from the start had a public
perception problem that it was autocratic, secretive and illegitimate. The
continuing attitude against accountability and transparency in both the board
and staff serve only to perpetuate the reality and actuality of this
impression. In particular meta-level discussions such as this in particular
have absolutely no justification for being kept private.




--
Professor Andrew A Adams       aaa at meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and
Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan