9.3. Review Ombudsman Role (p13, 58)

c. A role in fair treatment of ICANN Anonymous Hotline users and other
whistleblowers, and the protection of employees who decide there is a
need to raise an issue that might be problematic for their continued
employment.

9.5. The Board should arrange an audit to determine the viability of the ICANN
Anonymous Hotline as a whistleblowing mechanism and implement any
necessary improvements.

The professional external audit should be based on the Section 7.1 and
Appendix 5 - Whistleblower Policy of the One World Trust Independent
Review of 20076 recommendations to establish a viable whistleblower
program, including protections for employees who use such a program, and
any recent developments in areas of support and protection for the
whistleblower. The professional audit should be done on a recurring basis,
with the period (annual or bi-annual, for example) determined upon
recommendation by the professional audit.
The processes for ICANN employee transparency and whistleblowing should
be made public.

ATRT1 Recommendation 26
...
ATRT2, under the terms of its mandate, also determined that the following issues78
should be addressed in this analysis of accountability and transparency in policy
development and implementation processes:
a. Publication of yearly statistical reports on transparency.
b. Enhancement of the employee Hotline that allows relevant information to
become transparent (Whistleblower Policy).Which had been derivative

In 2007, One World Trust concluded94 that:
ICANN should consider implementing processes that act as deterrents
to abuses of power and misconduct which would protect staff who
might want to raise such instances. Specifically, ICANN should
consider developing a whistleblower policy that enables staff to raise
concerns in a confidential manner and without fear of retaliation; and
developing appropriate systems to foster compliance.95

94 See http://www.icann.org/en/about/transparency/owt-report-final-2007-en.pdf
95 In fact, One World Trust made many recommendations, including:
To ensure compliance with any organizational policy, it is important that there is high level oversight
and leadership. Without this, implementation will only ever be piecemeal. To ensure implementation of
the information disclosure within ICANN therefore, responsibility for overseeing the policy should be
assigned to a senior manager.
Supporting this, a set of indicators should be developed to monitor the implementation of the policy,
and an annual review should be undertaken which identifies how ICANN is complying with the policy,
where there are problems, and the steps that are to going be taken to address these (see
recommendation 5.1 in section 8).
While ICANN has three mechanisms for investigating complaints from members of the ICANN
community, the organization does not have a policy or system in place that provides staff with channels
through which they can raise complaints in confidentiality and without fear of retaliation. Having such
a policy (often referred to as a whistleblower policy) is good practice among global organizations. A
whistleblower policy that provides such protections serves as an important means of ensuring
accountability to staff as well as preventing fraudulent behavior, misconduct and corruption within an
organization.
While the Ombudsman, Reconsideration Committee and the Independent Review Panel provide
complaints-based approaches to compliance, to generate greater trust among stakeholders, ICANN
needs to take a more proactive approach.
To address this issue, ICANN should consider a regular independent audit of their compliance with
accountability and transparency commitments. Alternatively, it could develop a permanent compliance
function to emphasize prevention by identifying shortcomings as they emerge and before they become
systemic problems. In either case, a regular report on compliance should be produced and publicly
disseminated.

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