Folks (Staff, SO and AC chairs, and
Board),
I want to follow up on the announcement that we're
wrapping up the ICANN meeting on Thursday evening. We got a lot of
feedback expressing concern, some of which will be allayed with more
information. Below is a draft of a blog entry I'd like to post as soon
as it's been properly coordinated. Please take a look and let me know if
there are flaws or missing pieces. (And if you know of someone I should
have included in this coordination cycle, pass this on and also let me
know.)
If I can get the relevant information re the SO and AC
reports, I'll add it in.
Also, please let me know if there are indeed major
resolutions in the works that deserve to be dealt with in a public Board
meeting. If so, we will need to schedule a public Board meeting and I'll
need to adjust the wording of this blog posting.
Thanks,
Steve
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On April 30 I announced we will wrap up the ICANN
meeting on Thursday evening and not use Friday. (Some groups may choose
to use Friday for their own meetings; that's fine.) We have received
multiple inputs asking for clarification or suggesting this change has some
adverse consequences. The announcement was a bit light on details.
I wanted to get the decision out so everyone could adjust their travel
plans. Now I want to say a bit more about the changes.
In the past, we had three parts to the program on
Friday morning -- reports from the Board committees, reports from the chairs
of the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, and a formal Board
meeting. Attendance during all parts of the morning have been very
light. There really has not been much actual utility for the community.
Also every day of meeting time is expensive, not just to ICANN but also
to the community. Like many people, I had been noticing that Friday
mornings were not well attended, and it was clear it was time to make a
change. Let me now go into a few details, and I will close with a
promise that if the changes we're making for Prague are not in the best
interests of everyone, we will continue to evolve the
schedule.
With respect to our Board meetings, the large majority
of the resolutions we approve are the regular pieces of business that are
known well in advance. The Board approves these resolutions without
fanfare. The substantive work is done via the Supporting Organizations
or via staff work, and the work is posted. Once in
while there are Board actions that have some
controversy or drama. The XXX decision
in San Francisco and the decision in Singapore
to move forward with the gTLD program are the
two recent examples that come to mind.
For matters of this import, we will hold a public
Board meeting. In Singapore, we did this at
the beginning of the week. This was a big
improvement and really helped set a positive tone for
the entire week. I think this is a good
pattern, and I'm inclined to follow this when it's
needed. I don't know how often we'll have to
do this; I suspect it will be less than half the time.
A closely related aspect of this change is we will no
longer be rushing through resolutions based on committee work or inputs during
the week. We need to take some time to develop the
proper documentation. So, instead of trying to cap
the week off with resolutions passed on the basis
of the week's work, we will report on what's
come up during the week, what happened between
the last ICANN meeting and this one, and what
we plan to do following this ICANN meeting. This is
in accordance with the recommendations of the Accountability and Transparency
Review Team, and is consistent with the changes we made some time ago to
provide more thorough documentation in the form of a rationale for each
resolution. These changes will have the benefit of providing time for
careful and considered work on each resolution and better documentation for
transparency and accountability.
Our vice chair, Bruce Tonkin, observes:
An example of this approach was on the topic of
Conflicts of Interest in Dakar in October 2011. The Board listened to
the community during the week, and then in the public session on conflicts
Board members gave some feedback to the community on specific measures that
would be taken with respect to new gTLDs. After careful review by the
legal team and review by Board members, the Board held a meeting on 8 Dec
2011 and passed a resolution on management conflicts for new gTLDs.
The Board also passed other resolutions that resulted from the
discussion in Dakar.
We have made some related changes in the coordination
of Board resolutions and the scheduling of Board meetings. I will report
on these changes in a separate posting.
We recognize the community wants to see the Board in
action and have the opportunity to interact with the Board. Toward this
end, we are making two additional changes. In the opening session on
Monday morning, I will include a summary of what has taken place since the
last meeting, and on Thursday afternoon the Board will report on what it has
heard during the week. The Board will continue to engage eagerly in the
public sessions, listening closely to the comments from the community and
responding to questions.
At the beginning of this blog I mentioned the reports
from the SO and AC chairs and the reports from the Board committees. We
are still working out the arrangements for these and I will report separately
on the details. The SOs and ACs are the lifeblood of ICANN, and we want
to make sure they have greater, not lesser visibility.
Finally, as I noted above, we are working hard to be
both more effective and more efficient. If we need to continue to evolve
this process, we will.
Thank you.
Steve Crocker
Chair, ICANN Board of Directors