[NCUC-EC] [PC-NCSG] Board Risk Committee Request for Feedback on Top 5 ICANN Enterprise Risks

[Sam Lanfranco]

All,

This is slightly off the target but I would like to put it on the table, 
not so much for action, but as just food for thought.

One of my complaints about ICANN as a corporation is that it acts too 
much like a "walled city" and pays too little attention to what is going 
on with regard to its perceived remit, but taking place outside it 
walls. Much of its "outreach" involved recruiting engagement within the 
walls, as opposed to joint awareness raising, and its engagements 
frequently involve turf defense. As an example, ICANN is probably the 
best example of a multistakeholder process attached to governance. 
However, given the number and scope of stakeholder constituencies within 
the Internet ecosystem, some of the actual constituency structures 
within ICANN are very anemic and stand on a very thin constituency base.

Given this state of affairs ICANN, again as a corporation, seems 
oblivious of what is going on in the multistakeholder area outside its 
walls. For example, there is universal skepticism around how the World 
Economic Forum approaches its own narrow notion of multistakeholderism 
within the WEF, and how it uses "expertise". ICANN ignored those 
concerns when it teamed up with WEF. There is a grave risk there. There 
are political and business players out there who go so far as to argue 
that some form of multistakeholder process is a replacement for 
democratic processes. That is most evident at the moment in the pending 
trade agreements where much of policy (including intellectual property 
and probably Internet governance issues) takes place in a 
non-transparent black box outside democratic political processes. I see 
an enterprise risk here, where ICANN is put in a box because of its 
association with (and silence about) collaborators who have very 
different takes on what they mean by multistakeholderism, how they use 
expertise in policy and implementation processes, and -in some cases- 
how they view democracy.

In some quarters this leaves ICANN with a label identifying it as a 
self-serving elite and also leaves the non-contract stakeholder groups 
at risk, no matter how hard they work or dedicated they are, as been 
seen as part of a self-serving elite. However ICANN as a corporation 
responds to these corporate risks, the non-contract stakeholder groups 
need to respond not out of anger, but with renewed collaborative 
outreach. For one, making sure that there is not a wedge between 
multistakeholder processes and democratic processes.

Sam L.