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CCWG-Accountability - Draft Proposal on Work Stream 1 Recommendations

ADOPTED 14Y, 0N, 0AAlan Greenberg  13:00 UTC

ALAC Monthly Teleconference - 2015.12.22

 

 

ALAC Monthly Teleconference - 2015.12.22

 
CCWG-Accountability Staff Support
acct-staff@icann.org
AL-ALAC-ST-1215-04-00-EN

For information about this Public Comment, please click here 

NOTE: The Draft Proposal is also available section by section on the CCWG-Accountability's wiki workspace at https://community.icann.org/x/eLRYAw. Translations will be posted on the wiki workspace as available for each section.

 

Brief Overview

Purpose: The CCWG-Accountability requests community feedback on its Draft Proposal of proposed enhancements to ICANN's accountability framework that have been identified as essential to happen or be committed to before the IANA Stewardship Transition takes place.

The six Chartering Organizations for the CCWG-Accountability are asked to indicate their support for the recommendations in this proposal. At the same time, public participants not involved with a Chartering Organization are invited to comment on the proposal. The CCWG-Accountability will attempt to reconcile reactions from Chartering Organizations and public comment prior to submission to the ICANN Board of Directors (currently anticipated for late January 2016).

Current Status: The CCWG-Accountability seeks community feedback on its Draft Proposal. You are invited to indicate your support for recommendations using the survey the CCWG-Accountability put together to facilitate submission of your comments. The questions align with each recommendation contained in the Draft Proposal on Work Stream 1 Recommendations. Each proposal contains one question designed to determine whether the broad community supports the recommended enhancements as well as a comment box to capture feedback for each proposed change. In addition, a box for any additional input, including on broader topics e.g. Stress Tests, compliance with NTIA criteria and CWG-Stewardship requirements - can be found in the survey.

Next Steps: Each of the Chartering Organizations shall, in accordance with their own rules and procedures, review and discuss the Draft Proposal(s) and decide whether to adopt the recommendations contained in it. The Chairs of the Chartering Organizations shall notify the Co-Chairs of the WG of the result of the deliberations as soon as feasible.

After synthesis of the comments received, and assuming no major changes, the group currently projects submission of Work Stream 1 Recommendations to the ICANN Board in late January 2016.

Section I: Description, Explanation, and Purpose

Over the last year, the CCWG-Accountability has been developing a set of proposed enhancements to ICANN's accountability to the global Internet community. The accountability improvements set out in the 'Draft Proposal on Work Stream 1 Recommendations' are not designed to change ICANN's multistakeholder model, the bottom-up nature of policy development or ICANN's day-to-day operations.

Together with ICANN's existing structures and groups, these accountability enhancements will ensure ICANN remains accountable to the global Internet community and have been designed to provide a framework of enhancing trust. These enhancements propose limits on what ICANNis and is not permitted to do and they further ensure that ICANN adheres to the bottom-up, community-driven multistakeholder approach currently in place.

For each of the recommendations listed below, the CCWG-Accountability requests that you designate whether the proposed enhancement is acceptable to you. You may share any thoughts, comments or concerns with the proposed recommendation.

Recommendation #1: Establishing an Empowered Community for Enforcing Community Powers
Recommendation #2: Empowering the community through consensus: engage, escalate, enforce
Recommendation #3: Redefining ICANN's Bylaws as 'Standard Bylaws' and 'Fundamental Bylaws'
Recommendation #4: Ensuring community involvement in ICANN decision-making: seven new Community Powers
Recommendation #5: Changing aspects of ICANN's Mission, Commitments and Core Values
Recommendation #6: Reaffirming ICANN's Commitment to respect internationally recognized Human Rights as it carries out its mission
Recommendation #7: Strengthening ICANN's Independent Review Process
Recommendation #8: Fortifying ICANN's Request for Reconsideration Process
Recommendation #9: Incorporation of the Affirmation of Commitments
Recommendation #10: Enhancing the accountability of Supporting Organizations andAdvisory Committees
Recommendation #11: Board obligations with regards to Governmental Advisory Committee Advice (Stress Test 18)
Recommendation #12: Committing to further accountability work in Work Stream 2

Section II: Background

On 14 March 2014, the U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced its intent to transition its stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions [PDF, 3.49 MB] to the global multistakeholder community. NTIA asked ICANNto convene an inclusive, global discussion to determine a process for transitioning the stewardship of these functions to the Internet community.

During initial discussions on how to proceed with the transition process, the ICANNmultistakeholder community, recognizing the safety net that the NTIA provides as part of its stewardship role of the IANA functions, raised concerns about the impact of the transition onICANN's accountability.

To address these concerns, the ICANN community requested that ICANN's existing accountability mechanisms be reviewed and enhanced as a key part of the transition process. As a result, the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) convened. The CCWG-Accountability's work consists of two tracks:

  • Work Stream 1: Focused on mechanisms to enhance ICANN accountability that must be in place or committed to within the time frame of the IANA Stewardship Transition.
  • Work Stream 2: Focused on addressing accountability topics for which a timeline for developing solutions and full implementation may extend beyond the IANA Stewardship Transition.

Any other consensus items that are not required to be in place within the IANA Stewardship Transition timeframe can be addressed in Work Stream 2. There are mechanisms in Work Stream 1 to adequately enforce implementation of Work Stream 2 items, even if they were to encounter resistance from ICANN management or if it were against the interest of ICANN as a corporate entity.

Additionally, the Cross Community Working Group that developed the IANA Stewardship Transition proposal for the Domain Names community (CWG-Stewardship) stated that its proposal is significantly dependent and expressly conditioned on the implementation of ICANN-level accountability mechanisms proposed by the CCWG-Accountability.

As such, the CCWG-Accountability committed to address the dependencies identified by the CWG-Stewardship, namely:

  • ICANN Budget: Community rights regarding the development and consideration of theICANN Budget
  • ICANN Board: Community rights regarding the ability to appoint/remove Directors of theICANN Board, and recall the entire Board
  • ICANN Bylaws: Incorporation of the following into ICANN's Bylaws: IANA Function Review, Customer Standing Committee and the Separation Process
  • Fundamental Bylaws: All of the foregoing mechanisms are to be provided for in theICANN Bylaws as Fundamental Bylaws
  • Independent Review Panel: Should be made applicable to IANA Functions and accessible by managers of top-level domains

To guide this global discussion, NTIA provided ICANN with a clear framework and criteria for the transition proposal. The CCWG-Accountability has articulated its Work Stream 1 Recommendations to meet these requirements.

Section III: Relevant Resources

The Draft Proposal is also available section by section on the CCWG-Accountability's wiki workspace at https://community.icann.org/x/eLRYAw. Translations are posted on the wiki workspace.

In order to brief the community on the contents of their Draft proposal, the CCWG-Accountability will host two identical briefing webinars on Wednesday, 2 December at different times to facilitate participation across time zones. The webinars will take place on:

  • 2 December from 11:00 – 12:30 UTC (time zone converter here)
  • 2 December from 20:00 – 21:30 UTC (time zone converter here)

The webinars will be run in an Adobe Connect room. If you are interested in attending the webinar and would like to receive dial-in details, please send an email to acct-staff@icann.organd indicate your language request (if needed). The webinars will be recorded and transcribed. Live interpretation will be made available in English, Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Portuguese.

Section IV: Additional Information

 

Section V: Reports

Staff Contact

CCWG-Accountability Staff Support
acct-staff@icann.org

 

FINAL VERSION TO BE SUBMITTED IF RATIFIED

Click here to download the PDF document below. 


FINAL DRAFT VERSION TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ALAC

Final Formatted Version - December 21, 2015

FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED

  File Modified
PDF File AL-ALAC-ST-1215-04-00-EN.pdf Dec 28, 2015 by Ariel Liang
PDF File Final Formatted Version - December 21, 2015.pdf Dec 22, 2015 by Ariel Liang
PDF File Draft Version 3 - December 19, 2015.pdf Dec 21, 2015 by Ariel Liang
PDF File Draft Version 2 - December 15, 2015.pdf Dec 21, 2015 by Ariel Liang
PDF File Draft Version 1 - December 13, 2015.pdf Dec 21, 2015 by Ariel Liang

 

 

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3 Comments

  1. Ariel Liang

    Comment from Tijani Ben Jemaa, 14 Dec 8:39 UTC 

    ==

    Alan,

     

    I support your draft, and would like to add more about the Human Rights issue.

     

    As you said the international law and conventions are only binding for governments who signed them. That’s why any other body that wants to comply to them should include them in its bylaw as ICANN do by including in its bylaws as core value of the incorporation that it must carry out its activities in accordance with applicable law and international law and conventions. What is the need of repeating in the bylaws the commitment to respect internationally recognized human rights? Are they not part of the applicable international law and conventions?

     

    Also, the CCWG legal advice told that upon termination of the NTIA Contract, there would be no significant impact on ICANN’s Human Rights obligations. So why this is needed?

     

    It is even more strange that despite the legal advice and the provision in the core values that ICANN must carry out its activities in accordance with applicable law and international law and conventions that include human rights, the proposal suggest to add an interim bylaw about human rights, knowing that the final language about the human rights issue will be worked out in work stream 2.

     

    My strong fear is that they want to regulate the content though this heavy insistence in putting more and more to intimidate us; you may see in the futur delegation of TLDs prevented because the applicant "doesn’t respect human rights" in the content carried by the TLD……. 

  2. Ariel Liang

    Comments on the 1st Draft published on the ALAC@atlarge-lists.icann.org: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/alac/2015-December/thread.html 

    Comments on the 1st Draft published on the iana-issues@atlarge-lists.icann.org: http://atlarge-lists.icann.org/pipermail/iana-issues/2015-December/thread.html

  3. Olivier Crepin-Leblond

    (comments relating to main proposal document)

     

    Dear Alan,

    I have finally managed to get through the whole proposal, plus 15 annexes plus 10 annexes - and have no idea whatsoever how one could read through all of these and form an opinion if they had not been knowledgeable of the recommendations prior to publishing.
    Different parts of the document read in different ways, with some passages that are particularly poor prose. There is a fair amount of repeating, sometimes complete, sometimes partial paragraphs. Although the final documents are actually quite impressive, sadly, it shows that this proposal was put together in a hurry.

    Now for my comments:

    * Paragraph 68:
    The CCWG-Accountability expects that disagreements between the ICANN community and the ICANN Board might arise from time to time. In an effort to prevent such disagreements from happening the CCWG is recommending that ICANN be required to engage with the community on any key decisions it is considering such as Budgets or changing Bylaws."

    My question --> ICANN or the ICANN Board should engage with the community?

    I gather that it should be the ICANN Board. There a several places where the ambiguity is apparent. I really hope that these will be picked up by the final professional proof-readers we are told will clean this up.

    * Paragraph 72 & 88:
    This mentions "approving the IANA Budget". This is different to "rejecting the IANA budget" (paragraph 144). *
    In any case, and with the relevant Paragraphs 149-154, The IANA Functions Budget is deemed to be rejected using Recommendation #2's escalation and enforcement processes.
    I find it absurd that the ICANN Community would have the power to veto a budget that is so important for the whole operation of the Internet, especially since starving IANA of funding for its development and requirements to provide Service Levels according to Service Level Agreements is a great way to make it miss its SLEs, thus potentially triggering a separation process. Step 1: refuse IANA budget increase; Step 2: blame IANA for missing its SLEs and initiate a separation process.

    * Paragraph 183:
    "The Interim Board will have the same powers and duties as the Board it replaces."

    It is important to mention in the same sentence, --> subject to the limits described in paragraph 184.
    Otherwise an interim Board could take major decisions that might affect ICANN significantly.
    Also: there is no mention of any kind of Due Diligence performed on potential Board members. So I do not know how they CCWG thinks SOs & ACs can appoint Board members at will, but the process takes several weeks - except of course if there are "shadow Board members" but that's probably out of the question...

    * Paragraph 237
    The CCWG-Accountability’s enhancements to the Independent Review Process ensure that the Independent Review Process will not be empowered to circumvent the bottom-up, multistakeholder-driven nature of ICANN’s processes.

    There are several places which mention curbs on the circumventing of the bottom-up, multistakeholder-driven nature of ICANN's processes. Could this be used to counter ALAC & GAC advice when policy is being made in the GNSO?

    Finally, I am alarmed by the fact that the current Bylaw changes proposed would take place before the implementation of ATRT2 recommendation 9.1:

    9.1. ICANN Bylaws Article XI should be amended to include the following language to mandate Board Response to Advisory Committee Formal Advice:
    The ICANN Board will respond in a timely manner to formal advice from all Advisory Committees, explaining what action it took and the rationale for doing so.

    With the current amendments to the Bylaws, the Board would need to obtain approval from the community for this Bylaw to be accepted prior to making the change. This was already hard fought during ATRT2 and I hope that the ALAC would not have to fight this again with the rest of the Community. I can see that with the current prejudice we've heard from members of the CCWG, we would probably need to fight for this *again*, all due to ICANN Staff being unable to complete the ATRT2 recommendation implementation, even thought the Board has already given its green light for ALL ATRT2 recommendations to be implemented?

    Kindest regards,

    Olivier
    (also sent to IANA Issues Mailing List)