Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile Working Together Through The Last Mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981> , and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316> . All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition. We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements. As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example: * Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws. We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances. Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences. During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September /005160.html> , notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September /005161.html> ), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details. It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
It is neither impressive nor unprecedented and hence rather not unexpected. I am in fact on record with some of my colleagues (reading this) before the start of the deliberations that (something like) this would happen. I however would put any blame squarely on our inept Co-Chairs, who have put the CCWG into a poor negotiation position instead of developing a proposal that has "room". Fortunately it doesn't affect me much as there is nothing in the proposals for ccTLD Managers, and as such I refuse to be bound by any of it anyway, never mind the fundamental question touched on by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Alberta), what it is we are dealing with. greetings, el -- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPad mini
On Sep 5, 2015, at 07:17, Avri Doria <avri@acm.org> wrote:
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote: Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
I agree with Avri completely. And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process. Candidly, I find it challenging to respond to this blog post as it seems to so manifestly confuse ends and means and to treat the question of means as trivial. I am delighted that the Board professes to share our end goal of accountability. But characterizing its disagreement over how to achieve that as merely technical is, with due respect, sophistry. Everyone supports world peace - but there is a world of difference between those who think it may be achieved through military deterrence and those who think it should be accomplished through diplomacy. The difference in proposed means could not be more stark. The CCWG views the Single Member as a way of the community exercising direct control over the Board, with the IRP (and courts in California) as rare, infrequent backups to that relationship and with the community as the entity that has pre-eminence. I support that vision. The Board's proposal sees the IRP and courts as the resolvers of dispute with the Board retaining its preeminent position and the community reduced to an (as yet ill defined) role as complainant. Anyone who has ever done litigation knows that being the supplicant makes you subservient - and that is the position the Board's proposal would put the community in. The difference is not quite as stark as the one between realpolitik and diplomacy, but it is both substantial and transformative. Any effort to paint agreement on the "ends" as "really near complete agreement" on the whole of the transition is misleading. I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must. Paul Paul Rosenzweig paul.rosenzweig@redbranchconsulting.com O: +1 (202) 547-0660 M: +1 (202) 329-9650 VOIP: +1 (202) 738-1739 Skype: paul.rosenzweig1066 -----Original Message----- From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri@acm.org] Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:17 AM To: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-la st-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-throu gh-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005160.html>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
One of the main reasons we got to where we are (had to create a CCWG Accountability at all), is because for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last. It is precisely this kind of "operationalism" that the community seeks to curb in the CCWG report, so for the board to fail to see this, and come at us with the Jones Day wish list for retaining control is rather astonishing. It is time the board wrapped its mind around the fact that times *are* changing at ICANN, and efforts to stop that reform will not help the board achieve the kind of legitimacy to govern that ICANN so desperately needs. Robin On Sep 5, 2015, at 6:46 AM, Paul Rosenzweig wrote:
I agree with Avri completely. And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process. Candidly, I find it challenging to respond to this blog post as it seems to so manifestly confuse ends and means and to treat the question of means as trivial.
I am delighted that the Board professes to share our end goal of accountability. But characterizing its disagreement over how to achieve that as merely technical is, with due respect, sophistry. Everyone supports world peace - but there is a world of difference between those who think it may be achieved through military deterrence and those who think it should be accomplished through diplomacy.
The difference in proposed means could not be more stark. The CCWG views the Single Member as a way of the community exercising direct control over the Board, with the IRP (and courts in California) as rare, infrequent backups to that relationship and with the community as the entity that has pre-eminence. I support that vision.
The Board's proposal sees the IRP and courts as the resolvers of dispute with the Board retaining its preeminent position and the community reduced to an (as yet ill defined) role as complainant. Anyone who has ever done litigation knows that being the supplicant makes you subservient - and that is the position the Board's proposal would put the community in. The difference is not quite as stark as the one between realpolitik and diplomacy, but it is both substantial and transformative. Any effort to paint agreement on the "ends" as "really near complete agreement" on the whole of the transition is misleading.
I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must.
Paul
Paul Rosenzweig paul.rosenzweig@redbranchconsulting.com O: +1 (202) 547-0660 M: +1 (202) 329-9650 VOIP: +1 (202) 738-1739 Skype: paul.rosenzweig1066
-----Original Message----- From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri@acm.org] Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:17 AM To: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-la st-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-throu gh-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005160.html>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
I am delighted that the Board professes to share our end goal of accountability. But characterizing its disagreement over how to achieve that as merely technical is, with due respect, sophistry. <
This quote seems apropos of the present discussion: When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice. Otto von Bismarck Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal Virtualaw LLC 1155 F Street, NW Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20004 202-559-8597/Direct 202-559-8750/Fax 202-255-6172/cell Twitter: @VlawDC "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey -----Original Message----- From: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of Paul Rosenzweig Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2015 9:47 AM To: avri@acm.org; accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile I agree with Avri completely. And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process. Candidly, I find it challenging to respond to this blog post as it seems to so manifestly confuse ends and means and to treat the question of means as trivial. I am delighted that the Board professes to share our end goal of accountability. But characterizing its disagreement over how to achieve that as merely technical is, with due respect, sophistry. Everyone supports world peace - but there is a world of difference between those who think it may be achieved through military deterrence and those who think it should be accomplished through diplomacy. The difference in proposed means could not be more stark. The CCWG views the Single Member as a way of the community exercising direct control over the Board, with the IRP (and courts in California) as rare, infrequent backups to that relationship and with the community as the entity that has pre-eminence. I support that vision. The Board's proposal sees the IRP and courts as the resolvers of dispute with the Board retaining its preeminent position and the community reduced to an (as yet ill defined) role as complainant. Anyone who has ever done litigation knows that being the supplicant makes you subservient - and that is the position the Board's proposal would put the community in. The difference is not quite as stark as the one between realpolitik and diplomacy, but it is both substantial and transformative. Any effort to paint agreement on the "ends" as "really near complete agreement" on the whole of the transition is misleading. I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must. Paul Paul Rosenzweig paul.rosenzweig@redbranchconsulting.com O: +1 (202) 547-0660 M: +1 (202) 329-9650 VOIP: +1 (202) 738-1739 Skype: paul.rosenzweig1066 -----Original Message----- From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri@acm.org] Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:17 AM To: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-la st-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-throu gh-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005160.html>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
@Paul +1 Furthermore, we are locked into a purely vertical approach to the balance of power. It is my view that in absence of the special role of the USG, we have to move on and also take a horizontal approach (Checks and balances) between the public interest and the business realities of the DNS after the new GTLD developments. And it is precisely there where a 2 layered approach to Corporate oversight has been a model well developed in the norther European countries Policy Development & Compliance (Public Interest) Operations (Security, Stability and Internet GROWTH) Community Oversight: Advisory Board (SOs/ACs) Different representation models GNSO Contract Compliance Operations oversight: Executive Board NomCom elected Board members IANA Functions GDD Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez _____________________ email: crg@isoc-cr.org Skype: carlos.raulg +506 8837 7173 (cel) +506 4000 2000 (home) +506 2290 3678 (fax) _____________________ Apartado 1571-1000 San Jose, COSTA RICA
On Sep 5, 2015, at 7:46 AM, Paul Rosenzweig <paul.rosenzweig@redbranchconsulting.com> wrote:
I agree with Avri completely. And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process. Candidly, I find it challenging to respond to this blog post as it seems to so manifestly confuse ends and means and to treat the question of means as trivial.
I am delighted that the Board professes to share our end goal of accountability. But characterizing its disagreement over how to achieve that as merely technical is, with due respect, sophistry. Everyone supports world peace - but there is a world of difference between those who think it may be achieved through military deterrence and those who think it should be accomplished through diplomacy.
The difference in proposed means could not be more stark. The CCWG views the Single Member as a way of the community exercising direct control over the Board, with the IRP (and courts in California) as rare, infrequent backups to that relationship and with the community as the entity that has pre-eminence. I support that vision.
The Board's proposal sees the IRP and courts as the resolvers of dispute with the Board retaining its preeminent position and the community reduced to an (as yet ill defined) role as complainant. Anyone who has ever done litigation knows that being the supplicant makes you subservient - and that is the position the Board's proposal would put the community in. The difference is not quite as stark as the one between realpolitik and diplomacy, but it is both substantial and transformative. Any effort to paint agreement on the "ends" as "really near complete agreement" on the whole of the transition is misleading.
I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must.
Paul
Paul Rosenzweig paul.rosenzweig@redbranchconsulting.com O: +1 (202) 547-0660 M: +1 (202) 329-9650 VOIP: +1 (202) 738-1739 Skype: paul.rosenzweig1066
-----Original Message----- From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri@acm.org] Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:17 AM To: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-la st-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-throu gh-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005160.html>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Thanks all for this thread. I agree with many of the comments made so far. It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction. We can resolve the "detail" complaints pretty easily by starting the bylaws drafting process. Given the discussion we've seen over the past few days and the Board's approach in the meetings last week, it isn't going to be possible in my view to have a drafting process for those details done in any credible way except by our external counsel. That can deal with the detail point. On the broader point, the Board's feedback, if adopted by the CCWG, would substantially weaken the accountability improvements our second draft proposal sets out. It would amount to a fundamental change in direction. Whether that is warranted or not is something it will be hard to judge before we have the public feedback from the end of the comment period. So... I hope that people are encouraging everyone they know to share their views and comments. It isn't the time to stay quiet! cheers Jordan On 6 September 2015 at 04:01, Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez <crg@isoc-cr.org> wrote:
@Paul +1
Furthermore, we are locked into a purely vertical approach to the balance of power.
It is my view that in absence of the special role of the USG, we have to move on and also take a horizontal approach (Checks and balances) between the public interest and the business realities of the DNS after the new GTLD developments. And it is precisely there where a 2 layered approach to Corporate oversight has been a model well developed in the norther European countries
*Policy Development & Compliance*
(Public Interest)
*Operations*
(Security, Stability and Internet GROWTH) Community Oversight: *Advisory Board*
(SOs/ACs) Different representation models
GNSO Contract Compliance
Operations oversight: *Executive Board*
NomCom elected Board members
IANA Functions GDD
Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez _____________________
email: crg@isoc-cr.org Skype: carlos.raulg +506 8837 7173 (cel) +506 4000 2000 (home) +506 2290 3678 (fax) _____________________ Apartado 1571-1000 San Jose, COSTA RICA
On Sep 5, 2015, at 7:46 AM, Paul Rosenzweig < paul.rosenzweig@redbranchconsulting.com> wrote:
I agree with Avri completely. And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process. Candidly, I find it challenging to respond to this blog post as it seems to so manifestly confuse ends and means and to treat the question of means as trivial.
I am delighted that the Board professes to share our end goal of accountability. But characterizing its disagreement over how to achieve that as merely technical is, with due respect, sophistry. Everyone supports world peace - but there is a world of difference between those who think it may be achieved through military deterrence and those who think it should be accomplished through diplomacy.
The difference in proposed means could not be more stark. The CCWG views the Single Member as a way of the community exercising direct control over the Board, with the IRP (and courts in California) as rare, infrequent backups to that relationship and with the community as the entity that has pre-eminence. I support that vision.
The Board's proposal sees the IRP and courts as the resolvers of dispute with the Board retaining its preeminent position and the community reduced to an (as yet ill defined) role as complainant. Anyone who has ever done litigation knows that being the supplicant makes you subservient - and that is the position the Board's proposal would put the community in. The difference is not quite as stark as the one between realpolitik and diplomacy, but it is both substantial and transformative. Any effort to paint agreement on the "ends" as "really near complete agreement" on the whole of the transition is misleading.
I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must.
Paul
Paul Rosenzweig paul.rosenzweig@redbranchconsulting.com O: +1 (202) 547-0660 M: +1 (202) 329-9650 VOIP: +1 (202) 738-1739 Skype: paul.rosenzweig1066
-----Original Message----- From: Avri Doria [mailto:avri@acm.org <avri@acm.org>] Sent: Saturday, September 5, 2015 2:17 AM To: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-la st-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-throu gh-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005160.html>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
-- Jordan Carter Chief Executive *InternetNZ* +64-495-2118 (office) | +64-21-442-649 (mob) Email: jordan@internetnz.net.nz Skype: jordancarter Web: www.internetnz.nz *A better world through a better Internet *
Jordan, all, I do not support Jordan’s assessment as copied below at all. In fact, I consider it to be completely uncalled for, unfounded, offensive and as such far less constructive (or: far more destructive) than any reaction we have received from the board and ICANN staff so far. This is a fine example of the things that truly frustrate me in this process, not the many and seemingly endless calls at unholy hours. And, by the way, I do not like being lectured by “experts" Roelof Meijer From: <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org>> on behalf of Jordan Carter <jordan@internetnz.net.nz<mailto:jordan@internetnz.net.nz>> Date: maandag 7 september 2015 00:51 To: Carlos Gutierrez <crg@isoc-cr.org<mailto:crg@isoc-cr.org>> Cc: "avri@acm.org<mailto:avri@acm.org> (avri@acm.org<mailto:avri@acm.org>)" <avri@acm.org<mailto:avri@acm.org>>, Accountability Cross Community <accountability-cross-community@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org>> Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction.
Where is this vehemence coming from? And I am not trolling here :-)-O el On 2015-09-08 16:51, Roelof Meijer wrote:
Jordan, all,
I do not support Jordan’s assessment as copied below at all. In fact, I consider it to be completely uncalled for, unfounded, offensive and as such far less constructive (or: far more destructive) than any reaction we have received from the board and ICANN staff so far.
This is a fine example of the things that truly frustrate me in this process, not the many and seemingly endless calls at unholy hours.
And, by the way, I do not like being lectured by “experts"
Roelof Meijer
From: <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Jordan Carter <jordan@internetnz.net.nz> Date: maandag 7 september 2015 00:51 To: Carlos Gutierrez <crg@isoc-cr.org <mailto:crg@isoc-cr.org>> Cc: "avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org> (avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>)" <avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>>, Accountability Cross Community <accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org>> Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction. [...]
-- Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse \ / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar) el@lisse.NA / * | Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell) PO Box 8421 \ / Bachbrecht, Namibia ;____/
Hi Avri, it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust? What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: Community empowerment (Agreeement) Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) Operational Plan (Agreement) Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) Enforceability (Agreement) IRP (Agreement) Ombudsman (Agreement) We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision. This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York. The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions. The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. It is not yet ready for adoption. It needs a lot of more work. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos. My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable. My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this WS 3 and ICANN 2020. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps. More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on. And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as Board on Top vs. Community on Top is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. Wolfgang -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
"And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. " (Wolfgang) This is the only part in which I agree with Wofgang, the people inside the ICANN and those outside who are supposed to exercise "community power" (though the boundaries of what is claimed to be ICANN is never clear to me - with all this business of ICANN community and stuff) constitute a single group, as you say all 'sitting in the same boat', with very well-greased revolving doors between them. It is the people outside the boat - with its connotation of floating or sinking together, those standing on the shore who need to have the oversight over ICANN, not the insiders just trying to balance their mutual powers as is happening currently . It is for this reason that the IANA transition fails on the the most important political imperative in the current context whereby key technical functions need to be accountable to the global public. It even fails the key NTIA criterion of transition of oversight to 'global multistakeholder community'. No one has explained to me how is this narrow community coexistent with the global public or global multistakeholder community, and thereby how is the NTIA creteria met. Just Net Coalition has therefore rejected both the outcome and the process of the IANA transition proposals as per below submissions to the public comments process... https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission19.pdf https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission18.pdf parminder On Monday 07 September 2015 01:52 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement) • Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) • Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) • Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) • Enforceability (Agreement) • IRP (Agreement) • Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. It is not yet ready for adoption. It needs a lot of more work. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Hi Parminder, here is a proposal: Please come in. This is not a "revolving door", this is an "open door". Wolfgang -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von parminder Gesendet: Mo 07.09.2015 12:16 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile "And here is a final observation. To put it - like Greg - as a conflict as "Board on Top" vs. "Community on Top" is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. " (Wolfgang) This is the only part in which I agree with Wofgang, the people inside the ICANN and those outside who are supposed to exercise "community power" (though the boundaries of what is claimed to be ICANN is never clear to me - with all this business of ICANN community and stuff) constitute a single group, as you say all 'sitting in the same boat', with very well-greased revolving doors between them. It is the people outside the boat - with its connotation of floating or sinking together, those standing on the shore who need to have the oversight over ICANN, not the insiders just trying to balance their mutual powers as is happening currently . It is for this reason that the IANA transition fails on the the most important political imperative in the current context whereby key technical functions need to be accountable to the global public. It even fails the key NTIA criterion of transition of oversight to 'global multistakeholder community'. No one has explained to me how is this narrow community coexistent with the global public or global multistakeholder community, and thereby how is the NTIA creteria met. Just Net Coalition has therefore rejected both the outcome and the process of the IANA transition proposals as per below submissions to the public comments process... https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission19.pdf https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission18.pdf parminder On Monday 07 September 2015 01:52 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: . Community empowerment (Agreeement) . Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) . Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) . Operational Plan (Agreement) . Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) . Enforceability (Agreement) . IRP (Agreement) . Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. It is not yet ready for adoption. It needs a lot of more work. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this "WS 3" and "ICANN 2020". And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
And here is a final observation. To put it - like Greg - as a conflict as "Board on Top" vs. "Community on Top" is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
On Monday 07 September 2015 05:34 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Parminder,
here is a proposal: Please come in. This is not a "revolving door", this is an "open door".
Dear Wolfgang, If you read our comments, esp thesubmission 19 <https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission19.pdf>below, it explains at length our views on the 'openness' of the process. We regret the kind of violence and disservice that the IANA transition process has done the principles and practice of openness. It has given it such a bad name that, and we do argue why, it actually would qualify to be a very useful case study of how openness can be twisted and subverted to partisan causes. Rather than mean 'equitable participation' 'openness' is employed in the meaning of 'flexibility' whereby everything and anything goes, and everything can be turned or bent to suit what clearly are pre determined outcomes led by clear and rather obvious political objectives, of those who exercise all the power in the current dispensation, which is the US establishment, and the global big business. So, no, the door is not 'open', it is 'flexible' and includes and excludes at will. Great flexibility is not 'openness', it is a device in the hands of the incumbents and the powerful to turn and twist the process at will so that it goes in no other direction than what they want it to go into... To be more concrete, I and Just Net Coalition (JNC) have participated as must as one could in this process - even though one of the major ways of exclusion here is to take decisions behind such complex and time consuming labyrinths that it is finally a race in which only the most resourceful can stay on, and thus when the field is fully thinned out, the real decisions gets taken. But we still participated, although we, like any self respecting group tying to represent the interests of the marginalised, are extremely stretched in terms of resources . We contributed at most if not all stages of the process, even as the process was clearly headed where it seemed always destined to head. Let me be even more specific, and I have said this before on this list with no engagement. All the meetings that I have been to in India held on the IANA transition subject, and these were all held by groups that do regularly engage with ICANN, concluded on two issues as being crucial in the IANA transition, (1) the jurisdiction issue, and (2) external accountability (meaning external wrt to the groups that directly engage inside ICANN system or form a part of it). The only survey held in India on this issue - by a group that would be considered rather mainstream in its views and has engaged with ICANN, also came to the same conclusion, as these two issues being the most key. Now, the question is, when a country with one seventh of the world's population seems to be predominately of the view that IANA transition is about these two issues, and I can bet (and, over discussions and arguments, prove) that it is the same in almost all developing countries which is 4/5th of the world, and also in many developed ones, outside a narrow group of people who over the years have developed close connections with the ICANN systems (again happy to discuss the validity of this claim), how is that the IANA transition process comes up with final proposals, that are supposed to represent the global public will, but which fully bypass these two key issues. This the question that you and other supporters of the process must address. The proof of the 'openness' cake is in its eating, which here is about how the process throws up proposals that do not address what an overwhelming majority of people in the world consider as the most fundamental one with regard to oversight transition. The proposals on the table right now, and the contestations around them, are all about shifts or balances of power within the 'ICANN system', while those outside are hapless bystanders. Nothing can be a better evidence of the closed-ness of the process than this. In fact I only came to know very recently, and after having contributing to the Just Net Coalition submissions, the absolutely horrifying fact that ICANN board still holds a veto on the proposals going forward... And these are supposed to be proposals about oversight over the ICANN board! (Which is of course apart from the final veto of the US gov who currently holds the power that is sought to be replaced.) Which century are we living in with regard to legitimacy and appropriateness of public governance processes! And then, Wolfgang, you speak of open doors and openness. Here we have a process that is fully loaded with ICANN insiders, with strong structural exclusions (our submission has called it a 'process with glass walls, underground tunnels and invisible hands <https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission19.pdf>' ) and at the end of it ICANN and then US government still gets to decide if they will let it pass or not...Even flexibility must have some limits. In any case please do not call 'flexibility' by the good name of 'openness'. regards, parminder
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von parminder Gesendet: Mo 07.09.2015 12:16 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
"And here is a final observation. To put it - like Greg - as a conflict as "Board on Top" vs. "Community on Top" is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. " (Wolfgang)
This is the only part in which I agree with Wofgang, the people inside the ICANN and those outside who are supposed to exercise "community power" (though the boundaries of what is claimed to be ICANN is never clear to me - with all this business of ICANN community and stuff) constitute a single group, as you say all 'sitting in the same boat', with very well-greased revolving doors between them. It is the people outside the boat - with its connotation of floating or sinking together, those standing on the shore who need to have the oversight over ICANN, not the insiders just trying to balance their mutual powers as is happening currently . It is for this reason that the IANA transition fails on the the most important political imperative in the current context whereby key technical functions need to be accountable to the global public. It even fails the key NTIA criterion of transition of oversight to 'global multistakeholder community'. No one has explained to me how is this narrow community coexistent with the global public or global multistakeholder community, and thereby how is the NTIA creteria met.
Just Net Coalition has therefore rejected both the outcome and the process of the IANA transition proposals as per below submissions to the public comments process...
https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission19.pdf
https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission18.pdf
parminder
On Monday 07 September 2015 01:52 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: . Community empowerment (Agreeement) . Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) . Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) . Operational Plan (Agreement) . Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) . Enforceability (Agreement) . IRP (Agreement) . Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. It is not yet ready for adoption. It needs a lot of more work. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this "WS 3" and "ICANN 2020". And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
And here is a final observation. To put it - like Greg - as a conflict as "Board on Top" vs. "Community on Top" is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Parminder, You are part of this "narrow community".... Greg On Mon, Sep 7, 2015 at 6:16 AM, parminder <parminder@itforchange.net> wrote:
"And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. " (Wolfgang)
This is the only part in which I agree with Wofgang, the people inside the ICANN and those outside who are supposed to exercise "community power" (though the boundaries of what is claimed to be ICANN is never clear to me - with all this business of ICANN community and stuff) constitute a single group, as you say all 'sitting in the same boat', with very well-greased revolving doors between them. It is the people outside the boat - with its connotation of floating or sinking together, those standing on the shore who need to have the oversight over ICANN, not the insiders just trying to balance their mutual powers as is happening currently . It is for this reason that the IANA transition fails on the the most important political imperative in the current context whereby key technical functions need to be accountable to the global public. It even fails the key NTIA criterion of transition of oversight to 'global multistakeholder community'. No one has explained to me how is this narrow community coexistent with the global public or global multistakeholder community, and thereby how is the NTIA creteria met.
Just Net Coalition has therefore rejected both the outcome and the process of the IANA transition proposals as per below submissions to the public comments process...
https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission19.pdf
https://comments.ianacg.org/pdf/submission/submission18.pdf
parminder
On Monday 07 September 2015 01:52 PM, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement) • Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) • Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) • Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) • Enforceability (Agreement) • IRP (Agreement) • Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. It is not yet ready for adoption. It needs a lot of more work. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981> <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316> <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...> <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...> <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing listAccountability-Cross-Community@icann.orghttps://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing listAccountability-Cross-Community@icann.orghttps://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing listAccountability-Cross-Community@icann.orghttps://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Wolfgang, Thank you for your detailed message. I shall address it point by point. I apologise in advance for the length of this reply. On 07/09/2015 09:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement) • Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) • Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) • Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) • Enforceability (Agreement) • IRP (Agreement) • Ombudsman (Agreement)
I don't think we do have agreement on all those points. As a particular example, we made specific proposals for how the IRP change. On the Board call we were told that the Board proposes that instead of implementing those proposals "because we understand that the community is not happy with the current situation we would suggest that we roll back the modification of the standard of review to where it was before 2013, and that there is a commitment that the revised standard of review standing panel and procedural improvements will be part of the next phase of work on the IRP enhancements." Reverting to 2013 rules and the promising to come back and look at it later, after transition is not at all what we proposed. So I don't think we do have agreement yet. You say you also support enforceability, which is enormously heartening. But the things the Board has proposed would not deliver that. Perhaps when we use the word "enforceability" we simply mean different things? When I talk about a decision that is enforceable against ICANN, I mean one which ICANN has to comply with. In the final analysis, that would mean the ability to go to court and get an order. In the *final* final analysis, breaking a court order does result in real actual force being applied against you, by officers acting on behalf of the court. Obviously, it would never come to that: ICANN would comply with a court order. For the same reason, we don't imagine that it would ever come to needing to seek a court order to force ICANN to comply with an IRP judgement: the fact that one would be available would mean ICANN would have no choice but to comply. That is what we are seeking to establish, for the class of decisions we have said we wish to be enforceable. That class of decisions is very small. The most used one, in my expectation, is the IRP. That must be available (i.e. ICANN can't say, "we don't think the IRP should apply to this case") and ICANN must abide by the outcome. If ICANN sought to avoid the IRP, well that's when the enforcement aspect (as I have defined it above) comes in. And provided we can enforce, ICANN will have to comply: and so ICANN will in practice comply from the outset, and we won't need to go to court at all, any more than the court needs to send the bailiffs round to your HQ. Similarly, the CCWG proposes that the Community should be able to dismiss an individual director, or all of them, to veto a change to the bylaws, and that any change to a specific subset of bylaws we designate as "fundamental" will only take effect when the Community has positively approved it. Finally, the CCWG also proposes that Community should be able to prevent a new budget or a new strategic plan going into effect. These are the powers that the CCWG wants to create, and it wants them all to be enforceable in the sense I have described. True, not every single participant in the CCWG considers enforceability an absolute, vital requirement, but many do. We are clear on two things: (i) we have managed to achieve a broad consensus within CCWG in support of the proposal we have put forward, pace the dissents that have been published; and (ii) the quest for enforceability is held sufficiently dear by a sufficient broad range of stakeholders that there is no prospect of getting anything like this level of consensus for an alternative proposal that does not offer enforceability. Moreover, the names community's CWG transition proposal is expressly contingent upon success here, so a failure to achieve a credible consensus here also wrecks the ICG transition proposal. Let us set aside for the moment the question of the mechanism by which the Community exercises those powers. The principle of enforceability says that in the final analysis it is the IRP Panel's view, not the Board that must prevail in an IRP case; and the Community's view, not the Board's view, that must prevail when those powers are exercised. Do you really agree that enforceability must be the operative principle in this sense? If you do agree, then we can turn to the question of the model that is used to deliver it. And (having agreed it) we will dismiss from consideration any models that do not offer it. If you do not agree with this fundamental objective, then there is no point in discussing the model: we must resolve this point first. I think some of my colleagues suspect the Board of pretending to an agreement that they do not really hold in the hope of slipping past us proposals that deliver according to a different set of principles. I would not accuse you of that personally Wolfgang, it's not your style, but allow me to address this possibility to "you" in the abstract. I would warn that such a tactic is unwise. There is little prospect that this CCWG, which has examined these issues so closely and at such enormous length, can be misled in such a fashion. If the Board were to attempt it, all it would achieve would be to damage trust further. It might also waste some more of our time while we uncover the reasons why the Board is proposing a model that fails to deliver on their purported objectives; but, frankly, we are now so familiar with this issue that we can see that coming a mile off. But let me hope that you have read this far and are reasonably content that we are in accord about the meaning of we each ascribe to to term "enforceable accountability", and that we share it as a goal. If we are, then we are in the happy state of agreement about objectives, and are genuinely able to collaborate on the best way to achieve them. About our "Sole Member Model" you said:
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
If that is the limit of your problems with the Sole Membership Model, there is scope for dialogue and collaborative working. The Board's counter-proposal has led some people in this CCWG to suppose that your problem with the Sole Member Model is not limited to those concerns. When the Board says "I don't like your Sole Membership Model", what many have heard is that you don't like the entire *model* (and have presumed from that, not without justification, that the aspect the Board dislikes is enforceability). By contrast, I think the points you raise above only address the specifics of how that model is implemented. Let's unpack the term, and consider both "Sole" and "Membership" separately. CCWG considered models that did not have "Membership" at their core. Many of us initially would have preferred to find a model without membership, but on close examination (and with the benefit of legal advice) we discovered that *only* a membership model can deliver enforceability. This wasn't a limitation of our creation. Enforceability as I have described it requires at least the theoretical possibility of going to court and saying "The governing documents require this outcome, but the Board is refusing to abide by them. Please order it to do so." Even though we expect that this will never be required, that expectation rests entirely on the invocation of the power of the court being *possible*. We were told by counsel that, setting aside contractual disputes, only two classes of person have the ability to go to court in this fashion. Those two classes of person are: i) a director of the corporation; and ii) a member of the corporation. Nobody else*. As a matter of law. [*Actually, there is also the Attorney-General for California, but nobody wanted to rely on that as an accountability mechanism; we are looking for accountability mechanisms rooted in the multistakeholder community, not transferring primary oversight responsibility from the Federal to the State level] So if there are no members then nobody can go to court to bind ICANN to its own governing documents, and enforceability of them is unachievable as a matter of law. This is the reason that the "Sole Designator Model" mentioned by Jones Day must be discarded: lacking a member, it lacks the legal possibility of enforceability. Whatever other merits it may have are, sadly, irrelevant: as a distinguished engineer, I know you fully understand that excellent results in some areas cannot rescue a design that critically fails to meet one of the other core requirements. That narrows our search space to membership models. To hammer this point home, any model that does not involve a member of some description is unacceptable, not because we are especially attached to the idea of a membership model, but because we are adamant that we need enforceability of the kind described above, and the legal advice is that only some variety of membership model can deliver it. CCWG looked at several varieties of membership models. Our first draft proposal was to turn SOACs into the Members of ICANN. We also considered having SOACs appoint people to become members of ICANN. A brief mention was also given to a model in which anybody could become a member of ICANN; this was swiftly discarded. Following public comment, we revised our plan to a Sole Member Model, where the "Member" of ICANN would simply be a legal concept, controlled by the collective direction of the existing SOACs. So that's how we got to our "Sole Member Model". The criticisms you set out above are, with respect, not necessarily criticisms of the Sole Member Model per se: that is, not necessarily criticisms of the choice that our Model should have a Member at its heart, nor of the choice that this member should be a theoretical construct controlled by the SOACs, rather than something else. They are instead criticisms of the rules that we propose for how the SOACs control the Sole Member. Perhaps our voting thresholds are wrong. Perhaps our processes for attempting to invoke the Sole Member's powers are wrong. Perhaps the definition of who gets to vote, or the voting weights between them need to be changed. And so forth. If I may say so, if this is where the remaining disagreement between us lies, then I am encouraged. These are implementation details: important ones, certainly; difficult ones too. But we are not fighting against each other in the same way we would be if you reject my definition of enforceability. Item one, however, must be to clear up whether you do indeed share the same understanding. Many members of the CCWG have heard the Board statement as meaning precisely that they seek to avoid enforcability even while claiming to support it. That is not a basis for a productive discussion, only for acrimony. If however, you can now see why we have chosen a model in which there is a Member, and in which there is only a single member, which is a construct controlled by the SOACs, and if you can now support those choices, then I urge you to say so even if you still have serious misgivings about the particular way we have designed it. If you (and your colleagues) are unable to go this far, then personally I fear that by direct implication we may be about to lose consensus support for transition.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
The process may be unstoppable, but is enforceability unstoppable? Some people in CCWG have heard the Board's reply and interpreted it as an attempt to stop it. If you wish them to reconsider, I would advise the Board change tactics: avoid making suggestions for alternative proposals that would plainly not achieve enforceability of IRP decisions or Community powers.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition.
I think we are all agreed on this.
and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
Indeed. And CCWG carefully defined WS1 as only those things that it considers an essential pre-condition for termination and transition.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community.
I respectfully disagree. In many important respects the Board is wholly unaccountable. That is not intended as a personal slight; it is an assessment of the current structure. For example, last year the Board proposed changing the Bylaws as to how GAC advice is treated. There was a major outcry, and the Board listened to the community and decided not to implement that change (at least, not at that time, or since). I applauded that, and thanked you in the Public Forum. But what if you had pressed ahead anyway? What could anybody who is not a Board member have done about it? Well, we could have filed a Reconsideration Request: I believe at least one was filed pre-emptively. But that process would not, could not, force you to reverse that decision if you insisted upon it. All we can hope is that the Board chooses to listen. It usually does, and we thank you for that, but that is the very definition of lack of accountability. That is the current inadequacy we are trying to fix. The CCWG's proposal is very modest. It does not seek to create a means whereby we might routinely impose the community's preferences over those of the Board, or be able reverse the Board at will. It asks for two things: i) that an independent arbitrator will always be available to hold the Board to account specifically for failure to abide by ICANN's own governing documents, and will be able to compel compliance; and ii) that the Community will have the last word in a very narrowly specified set of decisions (removal of directors, changes to bylaws, and approval of a new budget and strategic plan), and would do so only provided the Community first meets an incredibly high threshold for consensus. That is a modest and reasonable request, and the minimum necessary so that we will be able to say that the NTIA has transferred the oversight of ICANN to the global multistakeholder community. Kind Regards, Malcolm. -- Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523 Head of Public Affairs | Read the LINX Public Affairs blog London Internet Exchange | http://publicaffairs.linx.net/ London Internet Exchange Ltd 21-27 St Thomas Street, London SE1 9RY Company Registered in England No. 3137929 Trinity Court, Trinity Street, Peterborough PE1 1DA
Hello Malcolm, "because we understand that the community is not happy with the current situation we would suggest that we roll back the modification of the standard of review to where it was before 2013, and that there is a commitment that the revised standard of review standing panel and procedural improvements will be part of the next phase of work on the IRP enhancements."
Reverting to 2013 rules and the promising to come back and look at it later, after transition is not at all what we proposed. So I don't think we do have agreement yet.
Yes - We are working on a set of comments that addresses each section of the CCWG proposal to make our position clear. There is still quite a wide range of views amongst the Board and staff on some items in the CCWG proposal - so some of the vagueness in replies is because there is not clarity yet within the Board on some items. Hopefully that will emerge in a day or so. Speaking personally - my perspective is most of what is in the CCWG proposal for workstream 1 is fine by me with respect to the IRP. I think the exact rules of procedure need some refinement - so our statement that we can at least roll back the most recent change was simply to gain some time to work on those rules - I am thinking a 3 months for a focussed group not years.
Perhaps when we use the word "enforceability" we simply mean different things?
When I talk about a decision that is enforceable against ICANN, I mean one which ICANN has to comply with. In the final analysis, that would mean the ability to go to court and get an order.
Yes - I think the Board shares that understanding as well. We are advised that there is an alternative to the sole member model - once the details are available the CCWG and Board members can form their own view.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
If that is the limit of your problems with the Sole Membership Model, there is scope for dialogue and collaborative working.
Speaking personally - if the model being proposed by the ICAMNN legal team is not viable - then I also agree that the sole member model could be refined to deal with some of the concerns that have been raised. As has been noted - there is no legal issue with the sole member model, it is a matter of how the balance of power is implemented in the model - particularly between Governments, industry and civil society. .
In many important respects the Board is wholly unaccountable. That is not intended as a personal slight; it is an assessment of the current structure.
I don't think that is true. I agree that you can make it more accountable - but I disagree that it is unaccountable. For example, the community elects/appoints Board members - for fixed three year terms. In any given year - 1/3 of the Board can be changed, and in two years, 2/3 of the Board can be changed. A new Board presumably can change back anything that the community does like. The Board also is legally accountable for managing the organization in accordance with the law. Directors can feel the full force of the law, and have personally legal liability in this regard. Just some examples - I fully accept the need for more accountability - as does the whole board. I am just reacting to blanket statements that I don't believe are correct. I assume the current accountability for SO and AC leaders is much the same. Ie many have fixed appointments and go through some form of election/selection process. So if the Board is so unaccountable - doesn't the same apply to everyone else as well? All the proposals seem to rely on decisions made by SO and ACs that consist of the same sort of people that make up the Board. Regards, Bruce Tonkin
Bruce: Thanks as always for your clear and candid comments. In regard to this -- There is still quite a wide range of views amongst the Board and staff on some items in the CCWG proposal - so some of the vagueness in replies is because there is not clarity yet within the Board on some items. Hopefully that will emerge in a day or so. -- it would probably be best for guiding the CCWG and informing the community if the final Board comments indicated the degree of consensus and, it is lacking on any matter, permit the posting of minority views. As for this-- Speaking personally - my perspective is most of what is in the CCWG proposal for workstream 1 is fine by me with respect to the IRP. I think the exact rules of procedure need some refinement - so our statement that we can at least roll back the most recent change was simply to gain some time to work on those rules - I am thinking a 3 months for a focussed group not years. --Your supportive view that the general IRP proposal is acceptable is welcome, and your observation that a small group can probably work out final procedures in a few months seems reasonable. My additional observation is that this reinforces the viewpoint that a large meeting in LA later this month may be both premature and counterproductive; that what would be most constructive and efficient would be quiet discussions on critical issues for the purpose of identifying common ground and building upon it to reach a final agreement that all can feel comfortable with sometime between Dublin and Marrakech. This merely recognizes that all parties may be hesitant to agree to a final blueprint in Dublin when critical details have yet to be sketched in. Very best, Philip Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal Virtualaw LLC 1155 F Street, NW Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20004 202-559-8597/Direct 202-559-8750/Fax 202-255-6172/cell Twitter: @VlawDC "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey -----Original Message----- From: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of Bruce Tonkin Sent: Monday, September 07, 2015 6:48 PM To: Accountability Cross Community Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hello Malcolm, "because we understand that the community is not happy with the current situation we would suggest that we roll back the modification of the standard of review to where it was before 2013, and that there is a commitment that the revised standard of review standing panel and procedural improvements will be part of the next phase of work on the IRP enhancements."
Reverting to 2013 rules and the promising to come back and look at it later, after transition is not at all what we proposed. So I don't think we do have agreement yet.
Yes - We are working on a set of comments that addresses each section of the CCWG proposal to make our position clear. There is still quite a wide range of views amongst the Board and staff on some items in the CCWG proposal - so some of the vagueness in replies is because there is not clarity yet within the Board on some items. Hopefully that will emerge in a day or so. Speaking personally - my perspective is most of what is in the CCWG proposal for workstream 1 is fine by me with respect to the IRP. I think the exact rules of procedure need some refinement - so our statement that we can at least roll back the most recent change was simply to gain some time to work on those rules - I am thinking a 3 months for a focussed group not years.
Perhaps when we use the word "enforceability" we simply mean different things?
When I talk about a decision that is enforceable against ICANN, I mean one which ICANN has to comply with. In the final analysis, that would mean the ability to go to court and get an order.
Yes - I think the Board shares that understanding as well. We are advised that there is an alternative to the sole member model - once the details are available the CCWG and Board members can form their own view.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
If that is the limit of your problems with the Sole Membership Model, there is scope for dialogue and collaborative working.
Speaking personally - if the model being proposed by the ICAMNN legal team is not viable - then I also agree that the sole member model could be refined to deal with some of the concerns that have been raised. As has been noted - there is no legal issue with the sole member model, it is a matter of how the balance of power is implemented in the model - particularly between Governments, industry and civil society. .
In many important respects the Board is wholly unaccountable. That is not intended as a personal slight; it is an assessment of the current structure.
I don't think that is true. I agree that you can make it more accountable - but I disagree that it is unaccountable. For example, the community elects/appoints Board members - for fixed three year terms. In any given year - 1/3 of the Board can be changed, and in two years, 2/3 of the Board can be changed. A new Board presumably can change back anything that the community does like. The Board also is legally accountable for managing the organization in accordance with the law. Directors can feel the full force of the law, and have personally legal liability in this regard. Just some examples - I fully accept the need for more accountability - as does the whole board. I am just reacting to blanket statements that I don't believe are correct. I assume the current accountability for SO and AC leaders is much the same. Ie many have fixed appointments and go through some form of election/selection process. So if the Board is so unaccountable - doesn't the same apply to everyone else as well? All the proposals seem to rely on decisions made by SO and ACs that consist of the same sort of people that make up the Board. Regards, Bruce Tonkin _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2015.0.6081 / Virus Database: 4401/10465 - Release Date: 08/19/15 Internal Virus Database is out of date.
Great response Bruce, thanks for the open mindedness in all your engagement with this group. Speaking as a participant of this working group, who did not commit as much working hours like others, I can imagine how painful it can be to be hearing something quite contrary to membership route at this stage. However, it is my hope that the WG will have an open mind towards this as well, just as Bruce said, the board legal seem to have found a way around this so let's hear it and weigh the options. There is no doubt in me that even the strong supporters of the sole member model knows there are a number of loose end that is yet to be tightened in that model, while some critical ones may never get a fitting bolt at this pace. Hopefully board is expediting it's process in producing more details on its proposal in a timely fashion. I like the last paragraph of Bruce response; we need to recognise that one way or the other a group of people ultimately makes the decision(including within the SO/AC). There is existing community vs board mindset, as fun as it could be, I fear that is not helping much in this process. Regards Sent from my Asus Zenfone2 Kindly excuse brevity and typos. On 7 Sep 2015 23:48, "Bruce Tonkin" <Bruce.Tonkin@melbourneit.com.au> wrote:
Hello Malcolm,
"because we understand that the community is not happy with the current situation we would suggest that we roll back the modification of the standard of review to where it was before 2013, and that there is a commitment that the revised standard of review standing panel and procedural improvements will be part of the next phase of work on the IRP enhancements."
Reverting to 2013 rules and the promising to come back and look at it later, after transition is not at all what we proposed. So I don't think we do have agreement yet.
Yes - We are working on a set of comments that addresses each section of the CCWG proposal to make our position clear. There is still quite a wide range of views amongst the Board and staff on some items in the CCWG proposal - so some of the vagueness in replies is because there is not clarity yet within the Board on some items. Hopefully that will emerge in a day or so.
Speaking personally - my perspective is most of what is in the CCWG proposal for workstream 1 is fine by me with respect to the IRP. I think the exact rules of procedure need some refinement - so our statement that we can at least roll back the most recent change was simply to gain some time to work on those rules - I am thinking a 3 months for a focussed group not years.
Perhaps when we use the word "enforceability" we simply mean different things?
When I talk about a decision that is enforceable against ICANN, I mean one which ICANN has to comply with. In the final analysis, that would mean the ability to go to court and get an order.
Yes - I think the Board shares that understanding as well. We are advised that there is an alternative to the sole member model - once the details are available the CCWG and Board members can form their own view.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
If that is the limit of your problems with the Sole Membership Model, there is scope for dialogue and collaborative working.
Speaking personally - if the model being proposed by the ICAMNN legal team is not viable - then I also agree that the sole member model could be refined to deal with some of the concerns that have been raised. As has been noted - there is no legal issue with the sole member model, it is a matter of how the balance of power is implemented in the model - particularly between Governments, industry and civil society. .
In many important respects the Board is wholly unaccountable. That is not intended as a personal slight; it is an assessment of the current structure.
I don't think that is true. I agree that you can make it more accountable - but I disagree that it is unaccountable.
For example, the community elects/appoints Board members - for fixed three year terms. In any given year - 1/3 of the Board can be changed, and in two years, 2/3 of the Board can be changed. A new Board presumably can change back anything that the community does like.
The Board also is legally accountable for managing the organization in accordance with the law. Directors can feel the full force of the law, and have personally legal liability in this regard.
Just some examples - I fully accept the need for more accountability - as does the whole board. I am just reacting to blanket statements that I don't believe are correct.
I assume the current accountability for SO and AC leaders is much the same. Ie many have fixed appointments and go through some form of election/selection process. So if the Board is so unaccountable - doesn't the same apply to everyone else as well? All the proposals seem to rely on decisions made by SO and ACs that consist of the same sort of people that make up the Board.
Regards, Bruce Tonkin
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Wolfgang: With all respect, you say, " For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement... We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model". But that seriously overstates the present degree of agreement, especially at the granular level. Because when I read Chairman Crocker's "Last Mile" blog I read, " We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal... We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way... Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized." So it is clear from those words that at present there is not just remaining disagreement on the Sole Membership Model but operational gaps on all eight key concepts listed in the blog post, with details yet to be provided on the Board's ideas on bridging the gap. And the devil will be in those details. Going further, while the Board has yet to articulate which of the critiques and counterproposals contained in the Jones Day analysis it agrees with, those 42 pages add up to a broad prescription of "dilute and defer" on almost every point contained in the CCWG proposal. Of course we all await the Board's detailed suggestions, as well its reasons for believing that "the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable", and that key elements of the CCWG proposal will lead to instability and capture. The CCWG will undoubtedly evaluate them in objective good faith, just as it will weight all the other input that the community will be submitting between now and September 12th. While the Board's input must be given serious consideration, the question arises as to whether its views should be accorded more or less weight than that of other stakeholders. Some may say that it is entitled to more because these are the people selected to oversee ICANN the corporation and charged with its best interests; and that as a political reality the US is unlikely to accept a proposal from which the Board broadly dissents. Others might reply that it is entitled to less weight because the accountability plan is all about making ICANN the corporation, including its Board, more accountable to the community -- and the Board's response, to the extent we can presently discern, is based upon the same general critique that Jones Day has supplied with regularity for a decade and a half. Given all the Board's concern about "untested" proposals, we must keep in mind that the present model has been tested since ICANN's inception and has been found in need of significant revamping by a majority of the community acting within the CCWG, and that there is broad agreement that key elements of this revamping must be agreed upon and implemented before the IANA stewardship transition can be allowed to proceed. Let's also not forget that it is the multistakeholder community that has produced the accountability plan, and this entire transition exercise is in supposed defense and perpetuation of that the much vaunted MSM. Whatever weight the CCWG accords to the Board's detailed input once it is received, the remaining issue is whether to accept the Board's suggestion of a late September F2F in LA. You assert that " the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members". I would submit that any such intensification should await careful analysis of all the comments filed on the CCWG proposal, not only that submitted by the Board. It is doubtful that such input can be fully assimilated and a constructive meeting blueprint can be assembled between September 12th and the final week of September -- and any further postponement would bring the F2F dialogue so close to Dublin that it would be best to have it there, especially considering the time and travel burden on CCWG members already stretched thin. Further, I have yet to see an answer on how an LA F2F meeting could be successfully integrated into the normal process for a WG's consideration of all comments, especially when the comments on the CCWG proposal can be expected to be voluminous in both number and content. There is substantial danger that an ad hoc LA meeting will be perceived as, if not become, a bilateral negotiation between the CCWG and Board. Bruce Tonkin has suggested, in response to my original airing of these concerns, that other ICANN internal entities can present as well, but this may be a distinction without a difference as all those entities are already actively participating within the CCWG. Indeed, the very proposal that the Board is critiquing represents the consensus among those groups after taking under advisement all comments received on the original proposal, as well as the expert and independent legal advice of the Sidley and Adler law firms. I do not see any way that a F2F meeting in the near term could do anything but elevate the Board's feedback over that of all other parties submitting comments on the proposal. There is also a danger that an LA F2F will be perceived as a "Summit" meeting, and that it will be a Summit set up for failure. In the world of diplomacy Summits that seek to hammer out agreements are nearly always failures, whereas the successful Summits are those that are held to ratify agreements already reached in quiet back rooms over substantial time. It is extremely doubtful that the foundation for a successful Summit -- one that agrees at least on clear principles for resolving a narrow remaining list of issues, if not on a final agreement itself -- can be laid in the two weeks between the comment period close and any meeting in LA. We all saw on Wednesday evening how a lack of adequate preparation can lead to undesirable and counterproductive confusion and discord. The results of a premature F2F in LA could be substantially worse if it results in a sharpening rather than a narrowing of differences between the Board and CCWG, and that is likely to happen if the basis for resolving remaining differences has not been achieved in advance. Driving the process forward based upon self-imposed and artificial deadlines could result in a train wreck. Thus, my own view is that it would be best to shelve the idea of an LA F2F and use the time between September 12th and Dublin for careful analysis and quiet, constructive dialogue. So let us all be honest that the areas of disagreement between the Board and CCWG are multiple and that no further progress can be made until the Board better articulates both its reasons for concern and its proposed operational details -- and that once that occurs its views must be measured within the context of the input submitted by all other stakeholder groups. Thanks to all who have read this far, and with best regards, Philip Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal Virtualaw LLC 1155 F Street, NW Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20004 202-559-8597/Direct 202-559-8750/Fax 202-255-6172/cell Twitter: @VlawDC "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey -----Original Message----- From: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" Sent: Monday, September 07, 2015 4:22 AM To: avri@acm.org; accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi Avri, it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust? What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: . Community empowerment (Agreeement) . Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) . Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) . Operational Plan (Agreement) . Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) . Enforceability (Agreement) . IRP (Agreement) . Ombudsman (Agreement) We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision. This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York. The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions. The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. It is not yet ready for adoption. It needs a lot of more work. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos. My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable. My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this "WS 3" and "ICANN 2020". And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps. More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on. And here is a final observation. To put it - like Greg - as a conflict as "Board on Top" vs. "Community on Top" is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. Wolfgang -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-la st-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-throu gh-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005160.html>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
+1 David W. Maher Senior Vice President Law & Policy Public Interest Registry 312 375 4849 On 9/7/15 11:20 AM, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Phil Corwin" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of psc@vlaw-dc.com> wrote:
Wolfgang:
With all respect, you say, " For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement... We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model". But that seriously overstates the present degree of agreement, especially at the granular level.
Because when I read Chairman Crocker's "Last Mile" blog I read, " We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal... We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way... Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized."
So it is clear from those words that at present there is not just remaining disagreement on the Sole Membership Model but operational gaps on all eight key concepts listed in the blog post, with details yet to be provided on the Board's ideas on bridging the gap. And the devil will be in those details.
Going further, while the Board has yet to articulate which of the critiques and counterproposals contained in the Jones Day analysis it agrees with, those 42 pages add up to a broad prescription of "dilute and defer" on almost every point contained in the CCWG proposal.
Of course we all await the Board's detailed suggestions, as well its reasons for believing that "the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable", and that key elements of the CCWG proposal will lead to instability and capture. The CCWG will undoubtedly evaluate them in objective good faith, just as it will weight all the other input that the community will be submitting between now and September 12th.
While the Board's input must be given serious consideration, the question arises as to whether its views should be accorded more or less weight than that of other stakeholders. Some may say that it is entitled to more because these are the people selected to oversee ICANN the corporation and charged with its best interests; and that as a political reality the US is unlikely to accept a proposal from which the Board broadly dissents. Others might reply that it is entitled to less weight because the accountability plan is all about making ICANN the corporation, including its Board, more accountable to the community -- and the Board's response, to the extent we can presently discern, is based upon the same general critique that Jones Day has supplied with regularity for a decade and a half. Given all the Board's concern about "untested" proposals, we must keep in mind that the present model has been tested since ICANN's inception and has been found in need of significant revamping by a majority of the community acting within the CCWG, and that there is broad agreement that key elements of this revamping must be agreed upon and implemented before the IANA stewardship transition can be allowed to proceed. Let's also not forget that it is the multistakeholder community that has produced the accountability plan, and this entire transition exercise is in supposed defense and perpetuation of that the much vaunted MSM.
Whatever weight the CCWG accords to the Board's detailed input once it is received, the remaining issue is whether to accept the Board's suggestion of a late September F2F in LA. You assert that " the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members". I would submit that any such intensification should await careful analysis of all the comments filed on the CCWG proposal, not only that submitted by the Board. It is doubtful that such input can be fully assimilated and a constructive meeting blueprint can be assembled between September 12th and the final week of September -- and any further postponement would bring the F2F dialogue so close to Dublin that it would be best to have it there, especially considering the time and travel burden on CCWG members already stretched thin.
Further, I have yet to see an answer on how an LA F2F meeting could be successfully integrated into the normal process for a WG's consideration of all comments, especially when the comments on the CCWG proposal can be expected to be voluminous in both number and content. There is substantial danger that an ad hoc LA meeting will be perceived as, if not become, a bilateral negotiation between the CCWG and Board. Bruce Tonkin has suggested, in response to my original airing of these concerns, that other ICANN internal entities can present as well, but this may be a distinction without a difference as all those entities are already actively participating within the CCWG. Indeed, the very proposal that the Board is critiquing represents the consensus among those groups after taking under advisement all comments received on the original proposal, as well as the expert and independent legal advice of the Sidley and Adler law firms. I do not see any way that a F2F meeting in the near term could do anything but elevate the Board's feedback over that of all other parties submitting comments on the proposal.
There is also a danger that an LA F2F will be perceived as a "Summit" meeting, and that it will be a Summit set up for failure. In the world of diplomacy Summits that seek to hammer out agreements are nearly always failures, whereas the successful Summits are those that are held to ratify agreements already reached in quiet back rooms over substantial time. It is extremely doubtful that the foundation for a successful Summit -- one that agrees at least on clear principles for resolving a narrow remaining list of issues, if not on a final agreement itself -- can be laid in the two weeks between the comment period close and any meeting in LA. We all saw on Wednesday evening how a lack of adequate preparation can lead to undesirable and counterproductive confusion and discord. The results of a premature F2F in LA could be substantially worse if it results in a sharpening rather than a narrowing of differences between the Board and CCWG, and that is likely to happen if the basis for resolving remaining differences has not been achieved in advance. Driving the process forward based upon self-imposed and artificial deadlines could result in a train wreck.
Thus, my own view is that it would be best to shelve the idea of an LA F2F and use the time between September 12th and Dublin for careful analysis and quiet, constructive dialogue.
So let us all be honest that the areas of disagreement between the Board and CCWG are multiple and that no further progress can be made until the Board better articulates both its reasons for concern and its proposed operational details -- and that once that occurs its views must be measured within the context of the input submitted by all other stakeholder groups.
Thanks to all who have read this far, and with best regards, Philip
Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal Virtualaw LLC 1155 F Street, NW Suite 1050 Washington, DC 20004 202-559-8597/Direct 202-559-8750/Fax 202-255-6172/cell
Twitter: @VlawDC
"Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey
-----Original Message----- From: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" Sent: Monday, September 07, 2015 4:22 AM To: avri@acm.org; accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: . Community empowerment (Agreeement) . Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) . Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) . Operational Plan (Agreement) . Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) . Enforceability (Agreement) . IRP (Agreement) . Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. It is not yet ready for adoption. It needs a lot of more work. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this "WS 3" and "ICANN 2020". And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
And here is a final observation. To put it - like Greg - as a conflict as "Board on Top" vs. "Community on Top" is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-la st-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-throu gh-the-last-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005160.html>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tember/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Hi, First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet. My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree. While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal. I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse. Some inset comments below. On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
• Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
• Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
• Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
• Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
• IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
• Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that. (*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting." You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together. As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking. I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase. As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer. But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game. Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power. The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight. avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Avri has expressed my thoughts more clearly than I could after a number of attempted drafts, so I will express my +1 to everything Avri has said. -James On 7 Sep 2015, at 19:14, Avri Doria <avri@acm.org<mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote: Hi, First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet. My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree. While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal. I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse. Some inset comments below. On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote: Hi Avri, it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust? What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement) I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term.. • Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so? • Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals. • Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements. • Enforceability (Agreement) I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances. • IRP (Agreement) Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement. • Ombudsman (Agreement) We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision. The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase. This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York. If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that. (*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better) The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting." You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions. In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans. The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail. It is not yet ready for adoption. We disagree on this. It needs a lot of more work. We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos. I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that. My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable. Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together. As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN. My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps. Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking. I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3... More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on. I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase. As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer. But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready. And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game. Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power. The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight. avri Wolfgang -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement: where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote: Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile Working Together Through The Last Mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition. */We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./* As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example: * Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws. We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances. Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences. During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details. It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition. _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Extremely well said, Avri. Thank-you. On 7 Sep 2015, at 19:14, Avri Doria <avri@acm.org<mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote: Hi, First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet. My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree. While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal. I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse. Some inset comments below. On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote: Hi Avri, it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust? What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement) I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term.. • Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so? • Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals. • Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements. • Enforceability (Agreement) I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances. • IRP (Agreement) Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement. • Ombudsman (Agreement) We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision. The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase. This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York. If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that. (*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better) The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting." You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions. In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans. The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail. It is not yet ready for adoption. We disagree on this. It needs a lot of more work. We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos. I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that. My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable. Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together. As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN. My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps. Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking. I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3... More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on. I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase. As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer. But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready. And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game. Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power. The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight. avri Wolfgang -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement: where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote: Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile Working Together Through The Last Mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition. */We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./* As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example: * Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws. We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances. Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences. During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details. It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition. _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
+1 David W. Maher Senior Vice President Law & Policy Public Interest Registry 312 375 4849 On 9/7/15 1:14 PM, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of avri@acm.org> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: € Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€ Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€ Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€ Operational Plan (Agreement) € Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€ Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€ IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€ Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile #><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last- mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-l ast-mile#>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septe mber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septe mber/005161.html>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Excellent post, Avri, and I find myself nodding in agreement as I read it. Thank you, J. ____________ James Bladel GoDaddy
On Sep 7, 2015, at 13:16, Avri Doria <avri@acm.org> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote: Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
• Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
• Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
• Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
• Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
• IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
• Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote: Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
All, Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a “yes, perfect, let’s implement this straight away”? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven’s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers? The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board. In my opinion, there’s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions. When Steve Crocker writes: "We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.” he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let’s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in “while you say, …. I see…”, “when you say, … you mean.." "While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal." "I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check" "It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction." "for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" "When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice." "And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process." "I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must." "The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive." "not surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again" Let’s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselves… Cheers, Roelof Meijer SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl<mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl<http://www.sidn.nl/> On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org<mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote: Hi, First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet. My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree. While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal. I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse. Some inset comments below. On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote: Hi Avri, it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust? What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement) I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term.. • Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications) Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so? • Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement) Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals. • Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions) How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements. • Enforceability (Agreement) I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances. • IRP (Agreement) Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement. • Ombudsman (Agreement) We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model. Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work. For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision. The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase. This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York. If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that. (*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better) The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects. Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting." You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires. I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions. In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans. The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing. I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail. It is not yet ready for adoption. We disagree on this. It needs a lot of more work. We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be. There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos. I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that. My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable. Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together. As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN. My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps. Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking. I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3... More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on. I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase. As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer. But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready. And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system. The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game. Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power. The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight. avri Wolfgang -----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org<mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi, The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive. I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely. Additionally, I do not understand this statement: where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail. I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward. We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully. avri On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote: Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile Working Together Through The Last Mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition. */We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./* As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example: * Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws. We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances. Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences. During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details. It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition. _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus _______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org<mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Roelof You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities. But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust. Because back then, it wasn't. And some of us remember. On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a “yes, perfect, let’s implement this straight away”? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven’s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there’s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.”/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let’s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in “while you say, …. I see…”, “when you say, … you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let’s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselves…
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: •Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
•Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
•Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
•Operational Plan (Agreement) •Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
•Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
•IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
•Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile# <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...> <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet. Thanks‹ J. On 9/8/15, 11:59 , "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Exactly On 9/8/15, 1:31 PM, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of James M. Bladel" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of jbladel@godaddy.com> wrote:
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet.
Thanks‹
J.
On 9/8/15, 11:59 , "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Hi, And I think it has more to do with establishing checks and balances that take into account the loss of the NTIA backstop/oversight. avri On 08-Sep-15 13:48, Jonathan Zuck wrote:
Exactly
On 9/8/15, 1:31 PM, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of James M. Bladel" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of jbladel@godaddy.com> wrote:
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet.
Thanks‹
J.
On 9/8/15, 11:59 , "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading.
Wolfgang, You have misstated, and thus significantly mischaracterized, my point. Though I am sure it was inadvertent, it nonetheless obscures the point I was making. I did not say there was a "conflict" between "Board on Top" and "Community on Top." What I said was: "Board on Top" survives, and "Member on Top" (as membership organizations
are constituted under US nonprofit law) is eliminated.
These characterizations are rooted in the basic difference, under US non-profit corporations law, between a membership non-profit corporation and a non-profit corporation without members. This is a generic distinction -- not specific to ICANN. It is not a "conflict" -- but it is a fundamental difference between a "membership model" and a "non-membership model." In a membership corporation, the membership (whether a single member or many members) outranks the Board in certain limited but significant ways. In a non-membership corporation, the Board has ultimate authority. While somewhat simplified, it is neither "wrong" nor "misleading" to characterize the distinction between these two models as "Board on Top" and "Member on Top." Indeed, it's really quite accurate. One thing I was NOT saying was that there was a dichotomy between the Board and the Community. It's quite fascinating that you would have chosen to re-cast it in that fashion. While I'm a lawyer, I'm no psychiatrist (though my father was, and my wife, sister and brother-in-law are all psychologists), so I'll leave it to others to analyze that. Greg Greg On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 2:17 PM, Avri Doria <avri@acm.org> wrote:
Hi,
And I think it has more to do with establishing checks and balances that take into account the loss of the NTIA backstop/oversight.
avri
On 08-Sep-15 13:48, Jonathan Zuck wrote:
Exactly
On 9/8/15, 1:31 PM, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of James M. Bladel" < accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of jbladel@godaddy.com> wrote:
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet.
Thanks‹
J.
On 9/8/15, 11:59 , "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" < accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>
< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
< http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
< http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
< http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Having belatedly fought my way through this entire thread, I want to thank Jordan, Avri, Phil and Malcolm for so ably, eloquently and comprehensively expressing so many concerns and reactions that I share. Greg On Wed, Sep 9, 2015 at 12:01 AM, Greg Shatan <gregshatanipc@gmail.com> wrote:
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as
“Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading.
Wolfgang,
You have misstated, and thus significantly mischaracterized, my point. Though I am sure it was inadvertent, it nonetheless obscures the point I was making.
I did not say there was a "conflict" between "Board on Top" and "Community on Top." What I said was:
"Board on Top" survives, and "Member on Top" (as membership organizations
are constituted under US nonprofit law) is eliminated.
These characterizations are rooted in the basic difference, under US non-profit corporations law, between a membership non-profit corporation and a non-profit corporation without members. This is a generic distinction -- not specific to ICANN. It is not a "conflict" -- but it is a fundamental difference between a "membership model" and a "non-membership model."
In a membership corporation, the membership (whether a single member or many members) outranks the Board in certain limited but significant ways. In a non-membership corporation, the Board has ultimate authority. While somewhat simplified, it is neither "wrong" nor "misleading" to characterize the distinction between these two models as "Board on Top" and "Member on Top." Indeed, it's really quite accurate.
One thing I was NOT saying was that there was a dichotomy between the Board and the Community. It's quite fascinating that you would have chosen to re-cast it in that fashion. While I'm a lawyer, I'm no psychiatrist (though my father was, and my wife, sister and brother-in-law are all psychologists), so I'll leave it to others to analyze that.
Greg
Greg
On Tue, Sep 8, 2015 at 2:17 PM, Avri Doria <avri@acm.org> wrote:
Hi,
And I think it has more to do with establishing checks and balances that take into account the loss of the NTIA backstop/oversight.
avri
On 08-Sep-15 13:48, Jonathan Zuck wrote:
Exactly
On 9/8/15, 1:31 PM, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of James M. Bladel" < accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of jbladel@godaddy.com> wrote:
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet.
Thanks‹
J.
On 9/8/15, 11:59 , "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" < accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>
< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> < https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps:// www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
< http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
< http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
< http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
To quote myself: On 2015-09-03 15:00 , Dr Eberhard W Lisse wrote:
Should we not perhaps await the outcome of the engagement first? [...]
But some say past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. I am, myself, a firm believer that past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior. And some of us have been burned, while some of us have had to watch others being burned. Never mind that there is nothing in any or the transition related proposals that helps to prevent this from happening again, I doubt that we are achieving future-proofness. el On 2015-09-08 19:31 , James M. Bladel wrote:
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet.
Thanks‹
J.
On 9/8/15, 11:59 , "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember. [...]
Oh that too. 100%. We are not in disagreement - that's the main reason I'm here. But I was simply setting out why some of us (Mr Deerhake called me as being a dinosaur, but I prefer the term 'revenant') whilst totally trusting individuals comprising the Board of ICANN find it hard to trust the Board or corporate organisation collectively. Those of us who were part of the IFWP, as I was, would commend the wise words of George Santanyana: 'Those who cannot remember <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Remember> the past <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Past> are condemned to repeat it.' So on that basis perhaps I should be expecting NTIA and ICANN to go off in a huddle in a week or two and do a bilateral deal which has much of the appearance but little of the substance of the stated goal??? Now, that would be just too cynical of me, wouldn't it? On 08/09/15 18:31, James M. Bladel wrote:
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet.
Thanks‹
J.
On 9/8/15, 11:59 , "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
I would put it in a short sentence: Listen to experienced ccTLD Managers. And,it's not only ancient history. The recent .ML fiasco is still biting... el On 2015-09-09 09:37, Nigel Roberts wrote:
Oh that too. 100%.
We are not in disagreement - that's the main reason I'm here.
But I was simply setting out why some of us (Mr Deerhake called me as being a dinosaur, but I prefer the term 'revenant') whilst totally trusting individuals comprising the Board of ICANN find it hard to trust the Board or corporate organisation collectively.
Those of us who were part of the IFWP, as I was, would commend the wise words of George Santanyana: 'Those who cannot remember <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Remember> the past <https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Past> are condemned to repeat it.'
So on that basis perhaps I should be expecting NTIA and ICANN to go off in a huddle in a week or two and do a bilateral deal which has much of the appearance but little of the substance of the stated goal??? Now, that would be just too cynical of me, wouldn't it?
On 08/09/15 18:31, James M. Bladel wrote:
Disagree, Nigel. It¹s not about the past, but rather an effort to future-proof the organization against individuals & groups we haven¹t event met yet.
Thanks‹
J. [...]
-- Dr. Eberhard W. Lisse \ / Obstetrician & Gynaecologist (Saar) el@lisse.NA / * | Telephone: +264 81 124 6733 (cell) PO Box 8421 \ / Bachbrecht, Namibia ;____/
Sent from my Asus Zenfone2 Kindly excuse brevity and typos. On 8 Sep 2015 18:00, "Nigel Roberts" <nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its
beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
SO: Holding on to the "collective" word used seem to be an indication that the entire entity does needs to prove its worthiness. I definitely agree to that and deep down, I hope we can put the question to ourselves asking whether the current CCWG proposal meets that requirement OR whether it just an attempt to transfer power from one side to the other.
Because back then, it wasn't.
SO: Does this mean it is now?
And some of us remember.
SO: Perhaps this is one of the reason we are where we are at the moment. Someone once joked that it was a good thing that Fadi did not have enough time to transition from his predecessor. I guess the other side of that is happening here where too much history seem to be affecting the judgement of the present/future. Everytime I hear people(including myself) complain about ICANN board, it's said that they acted in the interest of the cooperation. None has however said they acted in their personal individual interest which IMO is still a predictable stand. Do I want the board to be unaccountable, absolutely not (and I don't think the board is asking for that as well) neither do I want to community to be unaccountable. This WG have taken time to attempt "fixing" board loop holes, it is just rational for the board to help in suggesting fixes for ours as well. There is a saying that spectators in a football match seem to know about a match more than the players, but wait until such spectator wears the Jessy Regards
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a “yes, perfect, let’s implement this straight away”? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven’s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there’s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability
contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.”/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let’s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in “while you say, …. I see…”, “when you say, … you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does
not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the
priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let’s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselves…
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of
avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board
and I
trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior
motive of
personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my
trust
of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help
him
get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from
the
Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from
the
Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from
the
Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all
the
bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: •Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe
it is
a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a
lower
extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by
other,
you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on
some
fundamental issues the community requires decision making
empowerment.
The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
•Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
•Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a
direct
say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
•Operational Plan (Agreement) •Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually
based on
fundamental disagreements.
•Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume
that
we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing
could
be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make
going to
court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not
be
necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG
plan
balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new
participant
in the checks and balances.
•IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
•Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was
that
ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG
process.
Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would
be
able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a
century*
or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations
sometimes
get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the
rainbow. As
people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is
the
current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance
of
the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate
oversight
somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free
from
government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the
community,
one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the
SMCM
in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a
transition
to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in
the
ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major
opportunity
for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope
and
functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an
implementation
detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact
of an
SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the
weaknesses
of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will
help
us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in
this
system construction. Removing it requires going back to the
beginning
as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in
it is
redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this
proposal. I
have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed.
but
we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time,
and
leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and
then to
WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is
preferable,
but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond
the
stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.'
For
others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of
the
community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by
the
Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored
by a
pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to
capture
and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the
Board
another part of the community while not representing the community.
For
a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can
check
and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as
the
best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im
Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org>
Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to
share my
power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete
control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>< https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#%3E%3...
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the
CCWG
briefing to the ICANN Board <
https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>,
and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <
https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>.
All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's
accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of
the
proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized.
With
regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable
way, as
increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for
the
transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening
remarks
<
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/... ,
notes around 10 points <
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...
<
http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/005161.html%3E ),
and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus
software.
https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
On 08-Sep-15 13:47, Seun Ojedeji wrote:
This WG have taken time to attempt "fixing" board loop holes, it is just rational for the board to help in suggesting fixes for ours as well.
This is indeed a hole that several have brought up in one way or another. It may make sense for the SMCM to also be subject to IRP review. avri --- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
Yeah, I know. The last bit, I mean. But things change, and have changed. The organization has developed and this is a completely different board (and CEO) from the one(s) from those days. Remembering is useful, but observing and keeping an open mind is crucial. Otherwise, we¹ll just be stuck in the past. Which seems to be in conflict with this innovative thingy called the internet or something (Apologies if this comes across as a lecture or being smart-ass) Cheers, Roelof On 08-09-15 18:59, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
The enforceability mechanism is supposed to work regardless of past or present or future membership on the Board. Who is on the Board at any given point in time should be completely irrelevant. From what I can see, the Community Mechanism is a neutral mechanism. This is not personal. Anne E. Aikman-Scalese Of Counsel Lewis Roca Rothgerber LLP | One South Church Avenue Suite 700 Tucson, Arizona 85701-1611 (T) 520.629.4428 | (F) 520.879.4725 AAikman@LRRLaw.com | www.LRRLaw.com -----Original Message----- From: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org] On Behalf Of Roelof Meijer Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2015 1:25 PM To: Nigel Roberts; accountability-cross-community@icann.org Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Yeah, I know. The last bit, I mean. But things change, and have changed. The organization has developed and this is a completely different board (and CEO) from the one(s) from those days. Remembering is useful, but observing and keeping an open mind is crucial. Otherwise, we¹ll just be stuck in the past. Which seems to be in conflict with this innovative thingy called the internet or something (Apologies if this comes across as a lecture or being smart-ass) Cheers, Roelof On 08-09-15 18:59, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mil e#% 3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last -mi le#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the- las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through- the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thro ugh -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together- thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tem ber/005161.html>
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Sep tem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community ________________________________ This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which they are addressed. If the reader of this message or an attachment is not the intended recipient or the employee or agent responsible for delivering the message or attachment to the intended recipient you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message or any attachment is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by replying to the sender. The information transmitted in this message and any attachments may be privileged, is intended only for the personal and confidential use of the intended recipients, and is covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 U.S.C. §2510-2521.
No smart-ass needs to apologise for that. Trust me, I know ;-)
(Apologies if this comes across as a lecture or being smart-ass)
Cheers,
Roelof
On 08-09-15 18:59, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of Nigel Roberts" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org on behalf of nigel@channelisles.net> wrote:
Roelof
You are a smart guy. You are open and ready to trust. These are admirable qualities.
But ICANN, as a collective entity, to those of us who were there at its beginnings needs to continually prove it is worthy of trust.
Because back then, it wasn't.
And some of us remember.
On 08/09/15 17:53, Roelof Meijer wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a ³yes, perfect, let¹s implement this straight away²? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven¹s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there¹s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
/"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.²/
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let¹s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in ³while you say, Š. I seeв, ³when you say, Š you mean.."
/"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I //see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the //keystone of the CCWG proposal."/
//
/"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the //bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"/
//
/"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."/
//
/"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" /
//
/"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."/
//
/"And I, for one, do not want the transition //badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely //distort the proposed process."/
//
/"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely //why it must."/
//
/"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just //operationalization is impressive."/
//
/"not surrender and let the Board have complete control //without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"/
Let¹s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselvesŠ
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: €Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
€Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
€Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
€Operational Plan (Agreement) €Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
€Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
€IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
€Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this ³WS 3² and ³ICANN 2020². And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it like Greg as a conflict as ³Board on Top² vs. ³Community on Top² is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#> <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#% 3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mi le#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-las t-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the -last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through -the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-thr ough-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue
<https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005160.html>, notes around 10 points
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html>
<http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-Septem ber/005161.html%3E>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org>
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
I wil try to touch base with you around 1030 Wednesday your time if you’re around. Cheers, Chris
On 9 Sep 2015, at 02:53 , Roelof Meijer <Roelof.Meijer@sidn.nl> wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a “yes, perfect, let’s implement this straight away”? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven’s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there’s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.”
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let’s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in “while you say, …. I see…”, “when you say, … you mean.."
"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal."
"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"
"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."
"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last"
"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."
"And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process."
"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must."
"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive."
"not surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"
Let’s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselves…
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
• Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
• Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
• Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
• Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
• IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
• Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile>
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile# <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981 <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316 <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/... <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/005160.html>>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...> <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
All, I think Roelof makes some good points but then I would wouldn’t I. I have been speaking to a number of CCWG folks to try to at least bridge the gap between the perceptions of the Board and the perceptions of the CCWG. If anyone has any ideas how we can do more of that I think it would be most helpful. I note for example Greg’s email on response to Roelof about participation. I’m clear that the Board is participating and not intervening. What would help to delver that message to the CCWG? Cheers, Chris
On 9 Sep 2015, at 02:53 , Roelof Meijer <Roelof.Meijer@sidn.nl> wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a “yes, perfect, let’s implement this straight away”? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven’s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there’s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.”
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let’s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in “while you say, …. I see…”, “when you say, … you mean.."
"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal."
"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"
"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."
"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last"
"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."
"And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process."
"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must."
"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive."
"not surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"
Let’s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselves…
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <mailto:roelof.meijer@sidn.nl> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of avri@acm.org <mailto:avri@acm.org>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
• Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
• Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
• Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
• Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
• IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
• Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <mailto:accountability-cross-community@icann.org> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile>
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile# <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981 <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316 <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/... <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/005160.html>>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...> <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
Would the smaller group chats on specific topics help, as suggested on the call today? J On Wednesday, 9 September 2015, Chris Disspain <ceo@auda.org.au> wrote:
All,
I think Roelof makes some good points but then I would wouldn’t I. I have been speaking to a number of CCWG folks to try to at least bridge the gap between the perceptions of the Board and the perceptions of the CCWG. If anyone has any ideas how we can do more of that I think it would be most helpful.
I note for example Greg’s email on response to Roelof about participation. I’m clear that the Board is participating and not intervening. What would help to delver that message to the CCWG?
Cheers,
Chris
On 9 Sep 2015, at 02:53 , Roelof Meijer <Roelof.Meijer@sidn.nl <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Roelof.Meijer@sidn.nl');>> wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a “yes, perfect, let’s implement this straight away”? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven’s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there’s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
*"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.”*
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let’s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in “while you say, …. I see…”, “when you say, … you mean.."
*"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I **see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the **keystone of the CCWG proposal."*
*"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the **bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"*
*"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."*
*"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last" *
*"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."*
*"And I, for one, do not want the transition **badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely **distort the proposed process."*
*"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely **why it must."*
*"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just **operationalization is impressive."*
*"not surrender and let the Board have complete control **without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"*
Let’s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselves…
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','roelof.meijer@sidn.nl');> | www.sidn.nl
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org');> on behalf of Avri Doria" < accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org');> on behalf of avri@acm.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','avri@acm.org');>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
• Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
• Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
• Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
• Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
• IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
• Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org');> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community@icann.org');> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable
While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile
Working Together Through The Last Mile
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks < http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>, notes around 10 points < http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...> ), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
-- Jordan Carter Chief Executive, InternetNZ +64-21-442-649 | jordan@internetnz.net.nz Sent on the run, apologies for brevity
I think so Jordan. But I think the Board need to finalise its input to the CCWG first. We are working on that now. We have numerous call scheduled before the deadline. Cheers, Chris
On 9 Sep 2015, at 07:49 , Jordan Carter <jordan@internetnz.net.nz> wrote:
Would the smaller group chats on specific topics help, as suggested on the call today?
J
On Wednesday, 9 September 2015, Chris Disspain <ceo@auda.org.au <mailto:ceo@auda.org.au>> wrote: All,
I think Roelof makes some good points but then I would wouldn’t I. I have been speaking to a number of CCWG folks to try to at least bridge the gap between the perceptions of the Board and the perceptions of the CCWG. If anyone has any ideas how we can do more of that I think it would be most helpful.
I note for example Greg’s email on response to Roelof about participation. I’m clear that the Board is participating and not intervening. What would help to delver that message to the CCWG?
Cheers,
Chris
On 9 Sep 2015, at 02:53 , Roelof Meijer <Roelof.Meijer@sidn.nl <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Roelof.Meijer@sidn.nl');>> wrote:
All,
Below I pasted some quotes from this thread. And I cannot but wonder. What are we getting so wound up about? Did we really expected a “yes, perfect, let’s implement this straight away”? But what makes me wonder most is why, for heaven’s sake, do we see the board as a unity of ill-doers?
The board members that have participated in our work are individuals that I hold in high esteem. Quite a few of them tutored me when I entered this miraculous world of ICANN quite a few years ago. They gave me different angles and insights, pointed out different possible views and were open to discussion, disagreement and new ideas. And were tirelessly working to improve the way we work for the benefit of the global internet community. And most of them did not change a bit after they decided to help us all forward even more, make a personal sacrifice and join ICANN's board.
In my opinion, there’s no collective single opinion in any wrong direction in this board. There is however, a collective intellect and a level of individual integrity and selfishness that one does not easily find in executive structures. They deserve our respect. Which, no, does not mean that we cannot have different opinions.
When Steve Crocker writes:
"We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements.”
he in my opinion sends a very clear message that we should happily receive, as he commits the board. Let’s await the promised details of their ideas and keep engaged. Why should we want to send messages like the following, what do we hope to achieve? Frustrate the process to a halt? Read the quotes below, and note the interpretations of what was read or heard: as in “while you say, …. I see…”, “when you say, … you mean.."
"While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal."
"I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check"
"It should not come as a surprise that ICANN's current structure does not want changes. Nothing is more natural in a change process than for those who see some loss of control or authority to oppose it. It is a very natural human reaction."
"for too long ICANN the corporation has operated according to the priorities of the legal dept, and especially Jones Day, with the board-staff simply taking direction from its lawyers (in-house and out-house), putting the corporation first and the community last"
"When you say you agree to a thing in principle you mean that you have not the slightest intention of carrying it out in practice."
"And I, for one, do not want the transition badly enough that I would capitulate to the Board's effort to completely distort the proposed process."
"I understand why the Board does not want to yield power. That is precisely why it must."
"The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive."
"not surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again"
Let’s all sit back a bit and reflect. On ourselves…
Cheers,
Roelof Meijer
SIDN | Meander 501 | 6825 MD | P.O. Box 5022 | 6802 EA | ARNHEM | THE NETHERLANDS T +31 (0)26 352 55 00 | M +31 (0)6 11 395 775 | F +31 (0)26 352 55 05 roelof.meijer@sidn.nl <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','roelof.meijer@sidn.nl');> | www.sidn.nl <http://www.sidn.nl/>
On 07-09-15 20:14, "accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org');> on behalf of Avri Doria" <accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org');> on behalf of avri@acm.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','avri@acm.org');>> wrote:
Hi,
First, my perceptions are not colored by Trust. I trust the Board and I trust that you are all well intentioned people who are doing the best you can for ICANN. I believe that none of you has an ulterior motive of personal advantage for the positions you take. I go so far in my trust of the Board members as being among those who do not believe that a Board member would ever take a position just because it would help him get elected and in the future would never believe that a Board member would change her position due to a concern with being removed from the Board. I am sure that each and every Board member would resign from the Board if they believed their effect were deleterious on ICANN and the Internet.
My issue has to with with different perspectives. Perspective from the Board that holds all the power, and from the community that wishes to become empowered, at leas to a degree.
While you say the the Single member is just a implementation issue, I see you attacking one of the fundamental principles, in fact the keystone of the CCWG proposal.
I see in the Board's response a fear of the community and of the all the bad things we might do if we were not kept tightly in check. I think this is problematic and may be a barrier to finding a solution to the current impasse.
Some inset comments below.
On 07-Sep-15 04:22, "Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" wrote:
Hi Avri,
it is not easy for me to disagree with you. In most of the areas where we work together we have consensus or rough consensus. But here we have one of this seldom cases of disagreement. I recognize your statement but I am asking myself whether it is grounded on facts or on mistrust?
What are the facts? For nearly all CCWG building blocks we have an agreement: • Community empowerment (Agreeement)
I do not see the Board as agreeing with the basic proposal. Maybe it is a matter of degree. The Board wishes to empower the community to a lower extent than the community considers empowerment. As explained by other, you want to give the community more appeal mechanisms, whereas on some fundamental issues the community requires decision making empowerment. The concepts are so far apart, it cannot be called 'agreement' in any straightforward definition of the term..
• Removal of the Board (Agreement with some minor specifications)
Sort of ok. I think there is a bit of very unflattering conjecture on the Board's part of a capricious and vengeful community. Why do you fear us so?
• Fundamental Bylaws (Agreement)
Not really, the CCWG proposal required that the Community have a direct say on changes to fundamental bylaws and articles of incorporation. Raising the Board's threshold and consultations do not match the requirements at all. The are qualitatively different proposals.
• Operational Plan (Agreement) • Budget (Agreement with some minor clarifictions)
How minor are those clarifications? My impression in the meeting was that they, like many of the other 'minor' issues where actually based on fundamental disagreements.
• Enforceability (Agreement)
I think you make a mistake about this. The Board seems to assume that we want to run off to court every time we are thwarted. Nothing could be further from the truth. The CCWG plan was designed to make going to court the end of a very long chain of other options that should not be necessary. The Board seems to offer a fast path to court. The CCWG plan balances the empowerment of the community with the empowerment of the Board nd strengthened redress mechanisms. It creates a new participant in the checks and balances.
• IRP (Agreement)
Without allowing for binding decisions, it can't be called agreement.
• Ombudsman (Agreement)
We have a disagreement with regard to the Sole Membership Model.
Which is the keystone of the proposal and the reason that the other parts of the solution would work.
For me the remaining open issues can be solved by further intensification of the dialogue within the community including CCWG and Board members. We have enough legal advice from different perspectives. If needed, we could get a third legal advice. But at the end it is the community which has to make the decision.
The community makes the decision? I thought the situation here was that ultimately the Board would make the decision. Had the community been making the decision, this process would have been like the CWG process. Once we would have finished the last comment period we would have submitted out proposal and then we could have moded on to the implementation phase.
This is the last mile. It is very natural that in such a complicated transition in the final stage there are some remaining controversies. In my eyes, there are not 20 miles to go (as Becky has proposed). The main work is done. And it is good work, also thanks to the CCWG, to its co-chairs, to its members and to the input from the broader community. The whole process is a very encouraging example which shows how the multistakeholder approach works in practice. This is an important signal also towards the WSIS 10+ Review process in New York.
If the Board were closer to agreeing with the CCWG proposal, I would be able to agree. But given the explanations we have had of the MEM and the Board's other possible solutions, I just do not see this. To me, this looks like the morning of a multiday bike bike tour when a century* or two are left to the finish. But maybe it is more like a climb of Everest at the last stage - stage 4, but i have never tried that.
(*century as in 100 km or miles - lets go with km, that is a little better)
The reason why I have problems with the sole membership model is simple: I am in favor of a new mechanism to strengthen the checks and balances in the ICANN system to keep the board (and the other ICANN bodies) accountable to the community. But in my eyes the proposed Sole Membership Model is untested, has a number of risks and is open for unintended side-effects.
Whereas I see this as a fundamental check and balance element that compensates for the removal of ICANN's only external oversight. An organization that removes formal external oversight needs a stronger notion of community oversight mechanisms. The AOC reviews are a good start, but we have seen that not only do the recommendations sometimes get perverted in implementation (for example bylaws changes that made the IRP less useful rather than more so, as had been recommended by ATRT1) or rather lackadaisically as we have seen with ATRT2 recommendations that are green lighted for someday over the rainbow. As people pointed out to me frequently when I spoke of ATRT2 recommendations, I mostly had to add: "but we are still waiting."
You speak of untested models. The only model that has been tested is the current model without any changes. And we have seen that this is a model that does nothing to curb the creative and spending exuberance of the Board. It is a model that will not work without ultimate oversight somewhere. This we can see strong evidence for. As we become free from government's ultimate control, we have to make sure that the community, one that is ever outreaching, has adequate oversight. We need the SMCM in order to replace NTIA's ultimate responsibility. This cannot be a transition of the absence of oversight, but rather must be a transition to community oversight. It is this that I don't think the Board has accepted, and that is the crux of the matter. I think it is something that the CWG proposal requires.
I am not convinced that the proposed voting mechanism is save enough against capture. I did not get a satisfying rationale why Advisory Committees are treated so differently in the proposed mechanism. I have my doubts how governments can be included in an appropriate way into this new mechanism without touching the well designed balance between governments and the non-governmental stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. And there are other detailed questions.
In one respect, I agree with you. I want all ACSO to have equal footing in the SMCM, but am in the minority on that one as I want its structure to resemble essence of the matrix balance that exists in the ICANN system architecture. Nonetheless, I do not see major opportunity for capture in the reference model as the initiation mechanisms for action and the vote thresholds are so high they do not facilitate capture. And the simpler we are allowed to implement, the less chance there will be for capture and other shenanigans.
The Sole Membership Model, as it is proposed now, is still too vague, too unbalanced, too confusing.
I disagree. It is fairly direct and limited. It has defined scope and functions. The only fuzzy part is the voting thresholds and the modalities by which it worst internally, but that is an implementation detail.
It is not yet ready for adoption.
We disagree on this.
It needs a lot of more work.
We agree on this, but those are implementation details. That fact of an SMCM is not a mere operationalization detail as the Board seems to claim, but its implementation modalities may be.
There are too many weak points. Go back to the table which was presented by Sidley in Paris where they showed us the plus and minus of the three models. It is true that the Sole Membership Model was the best of the three with more plus and less minus than the other two. But in total, all the three models were far away to meet the NTIA criteria, to be save enough against capture and to enhance ICANNs operational stability and security. More innovation, more creativity and more careful analysis are needed. I raised my doubts in BA. I repeated this in Paris. And I raised my voice in the various telcos.
I think you will find if you investigate it that many of the weaknesses of the model have been dealt with. perhaps Sidley and Adler will help us with that.
My first proposal was to dislink the discussion of the sole membership model from WS 1 and to have more time to go into the details of such a needed new mechanism in WS 2. This is obviously impossible. We have to propose something here and now within WS 1. I know that some CCWG members have mistrust into a long-term process and speculate that if they do not get it now they will get it never. I think this is wrong. The process is unstoppable.
Again you miss the point about the SMCM being the the keystone in this system construction. Removing it requires going back to the beginning as it holds everything together.
As soon as WS1 in complete, the process will be stoppable unless the community model has been implemented. As long as the Board remains unchecked, and only accessible by appeal, a system that has failed at ICANN since its beginnings, there will be no way fro redress Board actiions. If there is one thing ICANN has nearly always failed in it is redress mechanisms. After all these years of failure in redress mechanism why should anyone be convinced on ICANN's future redress mechanisms. Here we have proof of what doesn't work. New RR, IRP, ombudsman roles roles &c, are the experimental part of this proposal. I have faith that with a SMCM we can insure that there are genuine improvements to the redress mechanisms, but in today's Board configuration, it is impossible to believe in redress at ICANN.
My impression is that the majority in the community sees this indeed as an ongoing process of ICANNs improvement which will not stop with the IANA transition. In BA I argued that after the IANA transition (WS 1) and an enhanced accountability (WS 2) we will need to discuss a restructuring of ICANN to adjust its various SOs and ACs and CCWGs to the new challenges of a changing environment. I did call this “WS 3” and “ICANN 2020”. And I also argued that small steps are better than big jumps.
Yes any organization that does not continually improve is doomed. but we should get to a point of sufficient accountability in good time, and leave the future to necessary tweaking.
I find the invention of WS3 to be the first step in the process of taking decisions out of WS2 and see it as the tip of the spear for thwarting future change. Anything hard, lets push it to WS2, and then to WS3...
More or less we are witnessing now what Bill Clinton told us in San Francisco that getting Internet Governance right is like stumbling forward. As longs as it goes forward, it is ok. And what we are doing now is to prepare the next (small) stumbling step forward. With other words, we have to be patient and to do now what can be done now and what is needed under WS 1 to allow the termination of the IANA contract. But this will not be the end of the story. It will go on.
I am not quite the Bill Clinton fan you are. And find that too much stumbling, as we often see among the Clintons, is not really the best example. Yes, if we are about to fall, stumbling forward is preferable, but I would prefer to see us get our multistakeholder model beyond the stumbling phase.
As for being patient, sorry, been too long coming. We have been patient. My experience is of at least of decade of 'soon come.' For others it is much longer.
But if patient I must be, I am ready to be patient now and wait for transition until we are ready.
And here is a final observation. To put it – like Greg – as a conflict as “Board on Top” vs. “Community on Top” is misleading. Both the members of the Board and the members of the CCWG are selected by the community. Both are accountable to the community. As I said in the chat during the recent telco we all are sitting in one boat (or in one car) and want to have a better, stable, secure, efficient and accountable ICANN with more (and stress-tested) checks and balances in the system.
The politics of Tops and Bottoms is always tough unless there is real mutual trust of each party by the other. You claim that the community does not trust the Board, that may be the case among some parts of the community. I claim that a far greater lack of trust is displayed by the Board for the community. I think many of your comments are colored by a pervasive distrust of the community and its purported drive to capture and game.
Once a community member becomes a Board member she adopts a new perspective and set of responsibilities. This is what makes the Board another part of the community while not representing the community. For a the Board to become a genuine member of the community, it needs to give up its role as benevolent despot and accept the need for the community to balance its power. ICANN needs a community that can check and balance the Board's unilateral power.
The CCWG model defines a degree of power sharing between the two as the best solution for replacing NTIA oversight.
avri
Wolfgang
-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht----- Von: accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community-bounces@icann.org');> im Auftrag von Avri Doria Gesendet: Sa 05.09.2015 08:17 An: accountability-cross-community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','accountability-cross-community@icann.org');> Betreff: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Blog: Working Together Through The Last Mile
Hi,
The effort to spin the replacement recommendation as just operationalization is impressive.
I do not understand the references to capture unless they mean capture by the community from the Board. I suppose that from their perspective the CMSM would appear to be capture in and of itself, as it gives the community a share of the power they now hold for themselves. I think any discussion of capture that goes beyond FUD, needs an analysis who who has captured the current ICANN model. Capture is always an interesting topic because it often means: "who is trying to share my power now?" I am all for opening up the discussion to the power anlaysi, current, potential and likely.
Additionally, I do not understand this statement:
where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable While it is true that is needs a bit more detail, though perhaps much less that is being claimed - until it is time for implementaton, it is not as bad as all of that. What do they mean that an adequate level of detail is not achievable? Though I have learned that if someone does not wish to accept a proposal, it can never have enough detail.
I think we are facing a critical moment in this transition where we, as a community, will have to decide whether we want the transition so badly that we are willing to surrender and let the Board have complete control without any possibility of ever being subject to oversight ever again. The transition is the time to switch from NTIA oversight to community oversight. If this is not possible, then perhaps the transition should not go forward.
We need to consider this turn of affairs quite carefully.
avri
On 04-Sep-15 15:53, Grace Abuhamad wrote:
Original link: https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile>
Working Together Through The Last Mile
<https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#><https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile# <https://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile#%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile%23%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile%23%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile%23%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile%23%3E%3Chttps://www.icann.org/news/blog/working-together-through-the-last-mile%23>>
I'd like to thank everyone who has participated in both the CCWG briefing to the ICANN Board <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981 <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56132981>>, and the CCWG and ICANN board dialogue <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316 <https://community.icann.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=56133316>>. All of our dialogues over the past months have been illuminating, challenging and in my opinion, an important and true testament to the multistakeholder model as we work toward the IANA Stewardship Transition.
*/We support the important improvements for ICANN's accountability contained in the CCWG-Accountability's 2nd Draft Proposal. We endorse the goal of enforceability of these accountability mechanisms, and we believe that it is possible to implement the key elements of the proposal. We want to work together to achieve the elements of the proposal within the community's timeline while meeting the NTIA requirements./*
As we enter the final days of the Public Comment period, the Board wants to be completely clear on our position. We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG's proposal, for example:
* Fundamental bylaws. * Specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process. * IRP enhancements. * Board and director removal. * ICANN's mission and core values. * Strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process. * The incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments Reviews intoICANN bylaws. * Community ability to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws.
We have suggestions on how these could be operationalized. With regards to the mechanisms for community enforceability, where the current proposal still warrants much detail that may not be achievable we have a suggestion on how to deliver on it in a stable way, as increased enforceability must not open up questions of, for example, capture or diminishing of checks and balances.
Let's work together on operationalizing the above principles on which we agree. Once again, we are committed to providing more detail on how these ideas can be operationalized in a way that they can be implemented within the community identified time frame for the transition, as well as have sufficient tested grounds to not result in unintended consequences.
During last night's discussion we shared this feedback. It was a lot of information to digest in a call (notes around opening remarks <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/... <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/005160.html>>, notes around 10 points <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...> <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/2015-September/...>), and we appreciate everyone giving our advice consideration. We are committed to submitting our comments into the Public Comment process in the next few days, and we look forward to the working with the community on further details.
It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability forICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANAStewardship Transition.
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
--- This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus <https://www.avast.com/antivirus>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org');> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
-- Jordan Carter Chief Executive, InternetNZ +64-21-442-649 | jordan@internetnz.net.nz <mailto:jordan@internetnz.net.nz> Sent on the run, apologies for brevity
Chris, Though I am hardly speaking for the CCWG, I personally would find the below helpful: Deliver a well thought-out, well structured paper with small, digestable chunks that the CCWG can easily work of off top to bottom well prior to the F2F, as in, like, yesterday... Have the meeting itself chaired by the CCWG and the agenda agreed upon well in advance. Scribe the meeting in real-time locally and remotely and make the transcripts public as a matter of urgency. Have real-time audio and video streams running. Accept whatever the CCWG comes up with (even if I don't :-)-O) And as a personal favor, whether I myself make it there or not, keep that Chehade waffler out of the building. greetings, el -- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPhone 6 On Sep 8, 2015, 23:45 +0200, Chris Disspain<ceo@auda.org.au>, wrote:
All,
I think Roelof makes some good points but then I would wouldn’t I.I have been speaking to a number of CCWG folks to try to at least bridge the gap between the perceptions of the Board and the perceptions of the CCWG. If anyone has any ideas how we can do more of thatI think it would be most helpful.
I note for example Greg’s email on response to Roelof about participation.I’m clear that theBoard is participating and not intervening. What would help to delver that message to the CCWG?
Cheers,
Chris
[...]
:-) Thanks El.
Deliver a well thought-out, well structured paper with small, digestable chunks that the CCWG can easily work of off top to bottom well prior to the F2F, as in, like, yesterday…
That is what the Board is currently working on.
Have the meeting itself chaired by the CCWG and the agenda agreed upon well in advance.
There does seem to be a fair amount of misunderstanding about this. All the Board has done is to suggest that the CCWG hold a face to face before Dublin. It was not intended to be some sort of special meeting with the Board where there would be negotiation. If the CCWG agrees to have the meeting then a) a venue is available on the dates suggested in LA and b) having it at that time in LA would mean that the majority of there board would be able to be there because our retreat is on the 26th, 27th and 28th September. So were such a meeting to take place it would be chaired and run by the CCWG with its own agenda etc. Cheers, Chris
On 9 Sep 2015, at 08:40 , Dr Eberhard W Lisse <epilisse@gmail.com> wrote:
Chris,
Though I am hardly speaking for the CCWG, I personally would find the below helpful:
Deliver a well thought-out, well structured paper with small, digestable chunks that the CCWG can easily work of off top to bottom well prior to the F2F, as in, like, yesterday...
Have the meeting itself chaired by the CCWG and the agenda agreed upon well in advance.
Scribe the meeting in real-time locally and remotely and make the transcripts public as a matter of urgency.
Have real-time audio and video streams running.
Accept whatever the CCWG comes up with (even if I don't :-)-O)
And as a personal favor, whether I myself make it there or not, keep that Chehade waffler out of the building.
greetings, el
-- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPhone 6
On Sep 8, 2015, 23:45 +0200, Chris Disspain <ceo@auda.org.au <mailto:ceo@auda.org.au>>, wrote:
All,
I think Roelof makes some good points but then I would wouldn’t I. I have been speaking to a number of CCWG folks to try to at least bridge the gap between the perceptions of the Board and the perceptions of the CCWG. If anyone has any ideas how we can do more of that I think it would be most helpful.
I note for example Greg’s email on response to Roelof about participation. I’m clear that the Board is participating and not intervening. What would help to delver that message to the CCWG?
Cheers,
Chris [...]
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org <mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org> https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community <https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community>
Chris, as you know I trust the Board as far as I can throw Mike Silber :-)-O, but if you read the mailing list(s) and the media reports, and then did exactly the opposite this might actually go somewhere :-)-O But then I am ever the optimist... el -- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPhone 6 On Sep 9, 2015, 00:51 +0200, Chris Disspain<ceo@auda.org.au>, wrote:
:-)
Thanks El.
Deliver a well thought-out, well structured paper with small, digestable chunks that the CCWG can easily work of off top to bottom well prior to the F2F, as in, like, yesterday…
That is what the Board is currently working on.
Have the meeting itself chaired by the CCWG and the agenda agreed upon well in advance.
There does seem to be a fair amount of misunderstanding about this. All theBoard has done is to suggest that the CCWG hold a face to face before Dublin. It was not intended to be some sort of special meeting with theBoard where there would be negotiation.
If the CCWG agrees to have the meeting then a) a venue is available on the dates suggested in LA and b) having it at that time in LA would mean that the majority of there board would be able to be there because our retreat is on the 26th, 27th and 28th September.
So were such a meeting to take place it would be chaired and run by the CCWG with its own agenda etc.
Cheers,
Chris
On 9 Sep 2015, at 08:40 , Dr Eberhard W Lisse<epilisse@gmail.com(mailto:epilisse@gmail.com)>wrote: Chris,
Though I am hardly speaking for the CCWG, I personally would find the below helpful:
Deliver a well thought-out, well structured paper with small, digestable chunks that the CCWG can easily work of off top to bottom well prior to the F2F, as in, like, yesterday...
Have the meeting itself chaired by the CCWG and the agenda agreed upon well in advance.
Scribe the meeting in real-time locally and remotely and make the transcripts public as a matter of urgency.
Have real-time audio and video streams running.
Accept whatever the CCWG comes up with (even if I don't :-)-O)
And as a personal favor, whether I myself make it there or not, keep that Chehade waffler out of the building.
greetings, el
-- Sent from Dr Lisse's iPhone 6
On Sep 8, 2015, 23:45 +0200, Chris Disspain<ceo@auda.org.au(mailto:ceo@auda.org.au)>, wrote:
All,
I think Roelof makes some good points but then I would wouldn’t I.I have been speaking to a number of CCWG folks to try to at least bridge the gap between the perceptions of the Board and the perceptions of the CCWG. If anyone has any ideas how we can do more of thatI think it would be most helpful.
I note for example Greg’s email on response to Roelof about participation.I’m clear that theBoard is participating and not intervening. What would help to delver that message to the CCWG?
Cheers,
Chris [...]
_______________________________________________ Accountability-Cross-Community mailing list Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org(mailto:Accountability-Cross-Community@icann.org) https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/accountability-cross-community
Chris I consulted 'Ruling The Root' (Mueller) to remind myself of how the IFWP ended. (Milton, my doing that just earned you another royalty fee from a Kindle Edition purchase) Chapter 8 is fascinating. In my view, it documents exactly how the intention of the IFWP was subverted into the ICANN we have today despite the concessions made to the multistakeholder community at the time (though, admittedly, it took Stuart Lynn's regime several years later to excise the troublesome inconvenience of global membership and direct elections). The quote ". . . (and the tight time line they imposed) made it difficult to rectify the situation" (8.2.5) is one of particular note, I feel. There's an old saying in Tennessee apparently . . . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKgPY1adc0A On 08/09/15 23:51, Chris Disspain wrote:
. It was not intended to be some sort of special meeting with the Board where there would be negotiation.
participants (24)
-
"Kleinwächter, Wolfgang" -
Aikman-Scalese, Anne -
Avri Doria -
Bruce Tonkin -
Carlos Raúl Gutiérrez -
Chris Disspain -
David W. Maher -
Dr Eberhard W Lisse -
Dr Eberhard W Lisse -
Grace Abuhamad -
Greg Shatan -
James Gannon -
James M. Bladel -
Jonathan Zuck -
Jordan Carter -
Malcolm Hutty -
Nigel Roberts -
parminder -
Paul Rosenzweig -
Phil Corwin -
Robin Gross -
Roelof Meijer -
Seun Ojedeji -
Steve DelBianco