This reminds me. In Buenos Aries, Larry Strickling observed,

 

“As I listen to the discussions of membership models, separability, budget reviews and the like, I am struck by the fact that this community goes through cycle after cycle of putting its own people on the board and then stops trusting them to act in the interest of the multistakeholder model. I am puzzled by the fact that the discussion to date has not asked why it is that community leaders go from prophet to pariah simply by joining the ICANN board.  And I am worried that until the community solves this issue, all the other accountability tools will fall short of delivering the outcomes the community wants.”

 

As I remember, this aside got a lot of applause from the Board. Unfortunately, the actions of the Board over the past week provide a strong illustration as to why this distrust exists and  perseveres.

 

We may not be able resolve the trust issue as Larry recommended we do, but we can make sure that the Board is accountable. We should not take steps to weaken the checks on the Board in the current proposal.

 

 

Yes, Paul

This is the most disturbing thing about the latest board intervention. Clearly, the board is still laboring under the mentality of the pre-reform ICANN, in which the board had completely unchecked power (other than by the NTIA exercising a nuclear option) to dictate outcomes regardless of the bottom up process. The board apparently has learned nothing about why these accountability reforms were necessary and has not internalized the attitudinal changes required to insstitutionalize a more accountable and balanced environment.

 

If the board’s attitude about this has not changed, and they are still assuming that _in this process_  they can unilaterally dictate change, then it is not clear whether the reforms will work. It looks like the board forces us to constantly battle them in a highly conflict-prone process – and then wonders why people don’t trust them.