On 2015-07-15 18:14, Kieren McCarthy wrote:

I agree re: IRP, especially given the timely nature of the recent
.Africa decision.

As you are probably aware, significant portions of the final
"independent" report were redacted.

I got hold of the unredacted version and it shows that ICANN staff
systematically removed all mentions of the fact that it drafted a
letter for the AUC that it then accepted as evidence of sufficient
support to sign a contract with AUC's chosen applicant.

I've generally supported Jonathan's view that we should concentrate on improving ICANN's accountability for its own sake,
and not unnecessarily rake over old coals.

However reading the .Africa ruling, I must say I was troubled. Some of
the panel's findings seriously call into question the belief advanced by
some of the "voluntarists" here that legally enforceability of accountability
measures is unnecessary as ICANN can be trusted to honour our accountability
proposals always in good faith.

Kieren writes in his article:

"The report contains no less than 39 redactions, many pulling out entire paragraphs of text. The Register has seen a non-redacted version of
the report, and we can say that most of those redactions concern the fact that ICANN's head of operations, Dai-Trang Nguyen, drafted a
letter that was then used by ICANN to advance a competing .africa bid.

That's a serious allegation. Since we have Board members on this list, perhaps they could explain

i) is this true?
ii) if it is true, why did ICANN consider it appropriate to redact such information from the report of the IRP panel?


In the meantime, I would note that this raises yet another issue with the IRP we have not yet considered,
namely should we provide explicitly that the IRP is to publish its findings itself, and should it publish in full,
entirely at its own discretion, or should we establish principles for the limits of transparency?

Again (I believe) we have failed to consider this because we have concentrated excessively on the community
measures to the exclusion of IRP issues.


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