Hi everyone, and Happy 2015!
Just wanted to lend my support to Steve's post, below. The IANA transition is the context, but not necessarily the yardstick, for the work on new accountability mechanisms.
My only concern is that two separate review teams (ATRT1 and ATRT2) also went down this path, and with arguably more time & resources to complete their work. For this CWG to be successful, I strongly believe we need to stand on their shoulders and reference prior work wherever possible and applicable.
Thanks,
J.____________James BladelGoDaddyAlan Greenberg has questioned the accountability measures we were placing into Work Stream 1, saying,
"I am somewhat troubled by all of the items in WS1 where I do not see the direct link to the IANA transition. Note I am not saying that they might not be perfectly valid and desirable accountability mechanism, just that I do not see the direct link, and thus perhaps greatly increasing our work to be done to allow transition.”
In responding to Alan, several of us said that a direct link to IANA transition is neither required nor desirable. Instead, the IANA transition is the community’s last bit of leverage to force accountability measures on ICANN’s board. The leverage is directly held by NTIA, who has said they would not transition IANA unless there was consensus about holding ICANN accountable to the community once the IANA contract is gone. And the internet community has indirect leverage, though pressure being brought on the US Administration and on Congress.
So I would hope that Alan and others can gain confidence and comfort with the leverage our CCWG holds in this process. With that leverage comes the responsibility to create accountability mechanisms that will guide DNS policy making for decades to come. And we must also get our work done without causing undue delay to the IANA transition process.
Alan’s group is the ALAC, which has often felt the lack of leverage over ICANN’s board and and management. As a recent example, ALAC called on ICANN to stop delegating new gTLDs serving highly regulated sectors but lacking enforceable public interest commitments (link). ICANN’s board and management might continue signing contracts despite concerns of the ALAC and others, perhaps fearing lawsuits by gTLD applicants. The fear of lawsuits may also have led the board to ignore community concerns over delegating both singular and plural forms of the same gTLDs. After all, the ICANN board’s duty is to the interests of the ICANN corporation — not to the community. (see Bylaws Article 6, Section 7).
What would be the source of leverage to hold the board accountable to the community for this decision? We have seen the futility of Reconsideration requests and Independent Reviews that lack leverage to reverse a board decision.
This IANA transition is our last chance to create mechanisms that could hold ICANN’s board accountable to the community it was designed to serve. Let's embrace that challenge and use all the leverage we have.
—Steve DelBiancoExecutive DirectorNetChoice+1.202.420.7482
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