As many of you are aware, a new activity is being chartered to make recommendations on how to improve ICANN Accountability and Governance. The purpose is two-fold: 1. the effort will recommend changes which are believed to be necessary in order to allow the IANA Stewardship Transition to take place - the US Department of Commerce National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has explicitly included ICANN Accountability as a necessary pre-requisite for the transition; 2. as a 2nd track, the effort will address general ICANN Accountability and Governance needs over and above those needed for the IANA transition. The process to be followed has evolved over recent months. It started with an ICANN staff devised methodology proposed in August which was modified significantly based on community feedback. Based on further community input which included a unified statement to senior ICANN management from volunteer leaders in all ACs and SOs in September, the entire process was replaced with a volunteer-led Cross Community Working Group (CCWG). A proposed Charter has now been drafted by a small team which included Tijani Ben Jemaa and León Sánchez from the ALAC. This Charter can be found at https://community.icann.org/x/JjDxAg. It must now be ratified by all ACs and SOs that want to participate (presumably all of them). Both Tijani and León believe that this Charter addresses all of the concerns that have been previously raised by At-Large and are recommending that the Charter be approved by the ALAC. Please review the Charter and if you have comments or questions, please post them on the Wiki (https://community.icann.org/x/JjDxAg), and Tijani and León will address them. We will accept comments until 12 November 2014 at 23:59 UTC. A 5-day vote of the ALAC to ratify the Charter will begin on 13 November 2014 at 23:59. Alan