On Feb 22, 2015, at 2:54 PM, "Jonathan Robinson" <jrobinson@afilias.info> wrote:

Suzanne,

 

Thanks for this.

 

The points you make below are interesting to me because they happen to align with my current understanding on the issue (of IANA accountability AOT ICANN accountability).

 

Moreover, it seems to me that dealing with an intransigent IANA here (i.e. a contractor that does  not do things they *are* supposed to do, or does things they are *not* supposed to do) is the point where an Independent Appeals Process may be relevant. And this (the conditions for when an IAP may be relevant) represents to me a good example of the type of focused issue of what I had envisaged a design team might be able to work on.

From experience of outsourcing various services, it seems to me that it's important to understand where those risks lie-- an incompetent contractor, not following orders it's been given; or a policy body that's behaving incompetently or improperly by giving inappropriate direction for implementation. (An imperfect but easy analogy from the commercial world is in outsourcing certain administrative services, then discovering costs aren't going down and management overhead is going up because the Accounting department doesn't know how to generate proper direction for its outsourced A/R staff any more than it did for its employee A/R staff.) 

Much of the discussion we've been having may be placing some of the accountability in the wrong place, by assuming that firing the policy implementation body would fix issues that are really the result of inappropriate directions from the policy-making body.

In any case I agree it's a reasonable discussion to have in the context of what we're really trying to accomplish in the CWG, and would benefit from some focus.

Suzanne

 

From: Suzanne Woolf [mailto:suzworldwide@gmail.com] 
Sent: 22 February 2015 18:48
To: Andrew Sullivan
Cc: cwg-stewardship@icann.org
Subject: Re: [CWG-Stewardship] Update on the Integrated model.

 

 

On Feb 22, 2015, at 1:22 PM, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@anvilwalrusden.com> wrote:

The IANA function is really extremely small.  It's a critical but
basically boring book-keeping function.  As near as I can tell, there
have been practically no cases where there was any accusation that
IANA did not do exactly what it was supposed to do.  There were
historically some complaints that IANA didn't act expeditiously, and
there were _lots_ of historic complaints that an IANA function was
being used by ICANN to try to impose ICANN policies.  The former is an
SLA issue; the latter is actually a policy matter with enforcement
attempts in the policy side of the organization, and is not actually
an issue with IANA at all.  So in my opinion, accountability _for
IANA_ would help with the SLA stuff (and also with the case that IANA
"goes rogue") but would not help with the policy issues.

Does that match the accountability concerns others have?

 

Possibly as a help in thinking about this question….

 

There's a question here of what people are being held accountable *for*.

In addition to separability as a final backstop, the other feature of the model the IETF has, and the RIRs are seeking, is that their contractor for the IANA functions that affect them is held accountable for two things: 
            1. Doing what they're told, in a timely and correct fashion
            2. Not doing anything else

If the contractor doesn't do things they *are* supposed to do, or does things they are *not* supposed to do, they're accountable for their poor performance-- but the directions come from the policy body, as implementation of its policies, and the contractor's accountability is to the policy body. In ICANN's case, this is where the Board's accountability touches IANA as an operational function, and is separate from any role of the Board or accountability of the Board regarding ICANN as a policy body.

The contractor is not accountable for following improper directions from the policy body, as long as the agreed-upon processes between the policy body and the contractor are followed. It doesn't matter whether those directions are improper because process wasn't followed internally to the policy body, or because properly-executed policy nonetheless leads to unacceptable outcomes. In both of those cases, there's no wrongdoing by the contractor, and the only accountability that matters is that of the policy body to its users. 

In the IETF model, accountability for making bad decisions about what to tell IANA to do is maintained in a number of ways, but they're outside of the IANA SLAs and I don't see any of them changing in the event that a new contractor is selected for the protocol parameters registries. 

Bluntly, isn't the major accountability concern for root zone management that ICANN will give inappropriate directions to IANA staff in the course of implementing policy? If so, in the case we're concerned about, what's broken is the policy body. Changing the status of IANA staff from employees to outside contractors, or changing contractors, wouldn't help at all; the problem is internal to the policy body, and any IANA contractor (internal or external) would be obligated just the same to follow its directions.  The place to prevent or stop or fix the results of bad directions to IANA is in ICANN, not IANA.

 

I think this argues that the group needs to refine the definition of what kind of accountability belongs in the IANA transition discussion. It also argues for some care in applying the IETF/RIRs' model for names, or expecting them to participate in a model that may fit names better than protocol parameters or addresses.

 

 

Suzanne

 

_______________________________________________
CWG-Stewardship mailing list
CWG-Stewardship@icann.org
https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/cwg-stewardship