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Public Comment CloseStatement
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14 January 2018


Enhancing Accountability - Recommendations for Diversity


ADOPTED

14Y, 0N, 0A


Yrjo Lansipuro

Bastiaan Goslings

Judith Hellerstein

Beran Dondeh Gillen


14 December 2017


21 December 2017


03 January 2018


09 January 2018


11 January 2018


Patrick Dodson
patrick.dodson@icann.org


AL-ALAC-ST-0118-01-00-EN

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Brief Overview

Purpose:

This Public Comment seeks community input on the CCWG-Accountability Work Stream 2 (WS2) draft recommendations to Improve Diversity. These draft recommendations were developed by the CCWG-Accountability as required by Annex 12 of the final report of the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability, Work Stream 1 (CCWG-Accountability, WS1).

Current Status:

The CCWG-Accountability reviewed these draft recommendations at its 27 September and 11 October 2017 plenary meetings and approved their publication to gather public comments.

Note: Implementation of Diversity within ICANN – During discussions it emerged that a majority of the members of the diversity sub-group agreed that the implementation of the recommendations should be left to the ICANN organization to determine appropriate mechanisms and structures. A number of CCWG-Accountability-WS2 diversity sub-group members thought this insufficient and believe it is essential to establish an Office of Diversity. The role of this office would be to independently support, record and keep track of issues including complaints from the community on diversity issues within the organization. The proposed office being a very specific structural adjustment to the organization it did not receive consensus from either the diversity group or the CCWG plenary.  However further input and comments on this matter from the wider community is welcomed.

Next Steps:

Following the public comment period the inputs will be analyzed by the CCWG-Accountability WS2 who will consider amending the recommendations in light of the comments received and will publish a report on the results of the public consultation. If significant changes are required as a result of the public consultation the CCWG-Accountability WS2 may decide to not include these recommendations in its final report given it must complete its work by June 2018. If there are no significant changes required, the CCWG-Accountability WS2 will include these in its final report and forward it to its Chartering Organizations for approval and then to the ICANN Board for consideration and adoption.

Section I: Description and Explanation

The CCWG-Accountability-WS2 Diversity project obtains its mandate and scope from ICANNbylaws and the CCWG-Accountability, WS1 Final report which included Recommendation 12 the following:

As part of Work Stream 2, the CCWG-Accountability proposes that further enhancements be made to a number of designated mechanisms:

  • Considering improvements to ICANN's standards for diversity at all levels.

Annex 12, which details Recommendation 12, also included the following recommendations with regards to diversity:

Comments received on the Second Draft Proposal revealed that incorporating the diversity component into Accountability and Transparency reviews may overburden Review Teams. Therefore, the CCWG-Accountability recommends the following actions with the view to further enhancing ICANN's effectiveness in promoting diversity:

  • Including diversity as an important element for the creation of any new structure, such as the Independent Review Process (IRP) (for diversity requirements for the panel) and the ICANN Community Forum.
  • Adding Accountability, Transparency, and Diversity reviews of SOs and ACs to structural reviews as part of Work Stream 2.
  • Performing, as part of Work Stream 2, a more detailed review to establish a full inventory of the existing mechanisms related to diversity for each and every ICANNgroup (including Stakeholder Groups, Constituencies, Regional At-Large Organizations, the Fellowship program, and other ICANN outreach programs). After an initial review of the current documents, it became clear that they do not address the full concerns raised by the wider community on the issue of diversity.
  • Identifying the possible structures that could follow, promote, and support the strengthening of diversity within ICANN.
  • Carrying out a detailed working plan on enhancing ICANN diversity as part of Work Stream 2.
  • Strengthening commitments to outreach and engagement in order to create a more diverse pool of ICANN participants, so that diversity is better reflected in the overall community and thus more naturally reflected in ICANN structures and leadership positions.

Section II: Background

The Diversity sub-group focused on requirements 3, 4 and 5 for its work. This report presents a discussion of diversity at ICANN and identifies a number of diversity elements by which diversity may be characterized, measured and reported.  It provides a summary of diversity provisions in the new ICANN Bylaws, and is informed by feedback from ICANN Supporting Organization(SO)/Advisory Committee (AC)/groups through a Diversity Questionnaire. Finally, it proposes a number of recommendations by which ICANN may define, measure, report, support and promote diversity.

Section III: Relevant Resources



Section IV: Additional Information

Section V: Reports

Staff Contact

Patrick Dodson
patrick.dodson@icann.org

FINAL VERSION TO BE SUBMITTED IF RATIFIED

The final version to be submitted, if the draft is ratified, will be placed here by upon completion of the vote. 


 

FINAL DRAFT VERSION TO BE VOTED UPON BY THE ALAC

The final draft version to be voted upon by the ALAC will be placed here before the vote is to begin.


While supporting the recommendations for enhancing diversity as a whole, we want to focus on Language, which is one of the seven elements of diversity identified by WS2.

It is a laudable goal that “all languages should be possible to be represented in ICANN for the organization to position itself as a fully global multi-stakeholder entity”. However, this is not achieved by improving the balance among the six official UN languages or even by occasionally adding a few other languages. Many important languages and billions of people are still left out.

Because it is not possible to cater for the wide diversity of languages, at least people who are not fluent English speakers should understand the English used as the working language of ICANN. This is why efforts to improve the quality of ICANN documents and presentation in order to enable informed, inclusive and meaningful participation[1] are important also from a diversity point of view.

In order to communicate with a diverse community, it is necessary to explore other ways and means to bridge cultural and language barriers (in addition to translations), e.g. infographics, animations, videos that are langue-neutral or which can be localized by communities in their own cultural contexts. Infographics and pictures need to be accurately described in the meta tags or text attached to the picture so screen readers that are used by the visually impaired can understand and describe the picture. 

Captioning is a particularly useful tool to help people whose native language is not English and for those with disabilities. It would also help those whose remote participation at ICANN events is hampered by low bandwidth in areas where they live. The use of captioning should be extended to all groups and constituencies who want it, and efforts should be made to improve its accuracy.


[1] https://atlarge.icann.org/advice_statements/10443

 

FIRST DRAFT SUBMITTED

The first draft submitted will be placed here before the call for comments begins.


While supporting the recommendations for enhancing diversity as a whole, we want to focus on one of the seven elements of diversity identified by WS 2, viz. Language.

 

It is a laudable goal that “all languages should be possible to be represented in ICANN for the organization  to position itself as a fully global multi-stakeholder entity”.   However, this is not achieved by improving the balance among the six official UN languages or even by occasionally adding a few other languages. Many important languages and billions of people are still left out.

 

For speakers of languages other than the official UN ones , working language for practical purposes will be English.  Thus, the use of maximally understandable English in documents and oral presentations, along the lines of  the joint ALAC/GAC statement from 2 November, 2017, would be of crucial importance also from the diversity point of view. (Yrjö Länsipuro)

3 Comments

  1. Maureen Hilyard

    I very much agree with this statement. Because it is not possible to cater for the wide diversity of languages, at least ensuring that the working language of ICANN is in English that can be understood by people who are not fluent English speakers is important.  

    Also in support of Judith's comment, captioning would also help non-fluent-English speakers to at least follow along with what the speaker is saying - if the captioner captures the words correctly.

  2. Judith Hellerstein

    I sent this in to the Yrjo, Bastiaan, Sebastien, and others on December 4 but somehow it did not get incorporated. I have incorporated Beran's comments and emphasis into these comments I am leaving.

    My comment is that we in At Large have put much money onto language support, but I think we need to put equal money into captioning so we can get more people engaged. Captioning helps people whose native language is not English, for people with low bandwidth, and for people with disabilities. People with low bandwidth have trouble engaging in calls and it affects everything they do. This is in the recommendations but I think we could mention that we hope this will be adopted and that ICANN should be funding captioning for all instead of just transcripts at a much later date.

    Only the GAC has language support and they also have live captioning which we do not. MSSI also have live captioning on all their calls after I had suggested it and demoed it on one of their calls.  We should all be able to have this and I think all constituencies should have this option. WE also need to figure out how to change the culture in ICANN as regards captioning.  While in At large we have language support but in additional to language support we should have live captioning for all meetings. We should also make every effort to welcome people with disabilities into the sessions. ICANN is very late to the game. Many of their videos are not captioned making it hard for people with impairments to use them. Hopefully the new ICANN learn platform will be more accessible but many of the videos are not captioned, especially the older ones

  3. Satish Babu

    I agree with the statement. I'd like to add that we should not see language as a substitute for communication itself (in this case, the need to communicate to a diverse community on its activities). The need is for communication, and language is an instrument for this communication.

    If communication to a diverse community is the objective, then we also need to examine ways by which communication can happen (in addition to language translations). Infographics, animations, videos that are language-neutral (or which can be 'localized' by communities in their own cultural contexts, perhaps using automatic translation tools or voice overs or subtitles) could be one way, but there are probably others too.