To whom it may concern, please accept this comment as Public Comment on the Operating Standards for ICANN's Specific Reviews The process by which members of Review Teams and similar working groups and parties should be modified to allow the inclusion of volunteers recommended by the Board of Directors and other possible relevant instances outside the present process closed by the SO and AC leadership, in order to enable the introduction of opinions which may dissent from those in the SO and AC leadership. The process approved after the IANA transition has become too closed, as part of a trend to deprive the Board of some opportunities to take part in the activities of ICANN. As a result, the selection of reviewers has now become more political instead of less, and more liable instead of less to lead to a choice of "comfortable" reviewers at the expense of those who may find flaws and recommend changes in parts of ICANN other than the operational and managerial staff. To further aggravate the consequences of this change, the SO and AC leadership is not subject to the kind of stringent scrutiny the Board and staff are in terms of accountability, transparency, and conflicts of interest. The opportunities for situations commonly described as "circling the wagons", "you pat my back, I'll pat your back" and other irregularites are too high to leave untouched. ICANN will be affected by this paradoxal aspect of its institutional design as it will be described by others - some frankly inimical - as an organization which is too closed on itself; and may already be suffering the consequences of this design in the difficulties the SSR2 Review is finding. Additional disclosure, I have personally observed this in the SSR2 process, whereas the reviews including the first SSR which I had the honor to chair, based on ICANN's previous instiutional design were able to introduce strong critics of all involved ICANN parties and produce results whose beneficial consequences have been adopted over rather long periods. I would be most grateful if you included this note formally as submitted to the comment process, in time before the deadline, and if you could acknowledge receipt of this communication. Unfortunately I have not been able to submit it through the link provided on the website due to some configuration mismatches which will take some time and careful decisions on privacy to resolve. Yours, Alejandro Pisanty -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dr. Alejandro Pisanty Facultad de Química UNAM Av. Universidad 3000, 04510 Mexico DF Mexico +52-1-5541444475 FROM ABROAD +525541444475 DESDE MÉXICO SMS +525541444475 Blog: http://pisanty.blogspot.com LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/pisanty Unete al grupo UNAM en LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/e/gis/22285/4A106C0C8614 Twitter: http://twitter.com/apisanty ---->> Unete a ISOC Mexico, http://www.isoc.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .