On Aug 29, 2016, at 5:52 PM, Steve DelBianco <sdelbianco@netchoice.org> wrote:
For Tuesday’s CCWG plenary call, CCWG Co-chairs asked Work Stream 2 rapporteurs to give update/inquiry that would be of interest to the full CCWG.
Your rapporteurs volunteered to present the framing of our SOAC group and the present question we are considering:
Should we (SO/AC group) seek to increase accountability of each SO/AC to global community beyond its membership?
Steve - A very interesting question. I will note that the DNS root zone is an IANA registry, much like the IP number registries and the various protocol parameter registries. The IAB has a fairly concise set of principles which they encourage for the IANA registries; these principles underscore the successful functioning of the registries, and provide a foundation for trust in same. These principles may be found in RFC 7500 (“Principles for Operation of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Registries”, <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7500 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7500>>), and this includes the following principle with regard to accountability - "Accountable: Registry policy development and registry operations need to be accountable to the affected community.” In the RIR and IETF communities, this principle is instantiated via the completely open policy development processes: any one who feels that they are affected may participate at any time and their contribution are considered based on their own merit – there is no requirement to channel ones input through a particularly constituency (e.g. we could unknowingly have dogs and/or alien cultures contributing these efforts, so long as they’re on the Internet and able to use email - i.e. their contributions would be discussed on the appropriate mailing lists just as any other input, and with same potential affect on the outcome.) How a party that is a member of the greater Internet and is affected by the DNS’s community's policy development processes knows that its input is considered in an accountable manner is a very interesting question, and may be somewhat challenging in the DNS space given ICANN’s unique constituency-based structure. /John p.s. my views alone, as CCWG individual contributor. See SOI here - <https://community.icann.org/display/gnsosoi/John+Curran+SOI <https://community.icann.org/display/gnsosoi/John+Curran+SOI>> p.p.s. The concept of filing an SOI would suggest that merits and disadvantages of a contribution cannot be objectively made independent of its source – if true, this raises whether meaningful accountability of the DNS policy community (to those affected in the greater Internet community) is even possible, as such accountability would need to be provided via mechanisms other than formal representation and/or agnostic technical merit consideration.