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Comment: Incorporated some of Avri's changes

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  • Publish ICANN’s appraisal of challenges in the international and institutional fields, and its programme for the coming year in this respect, as a mandatory component of its Strategic Plan.
  • Transform the roles of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and At-Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) from purely advisory to involvement in policy formation. This measure shall not be implemented separately from, nor before, a coordinated reform of structures affecting all Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs).
  • Provide qualified and stable Staff and other resources to ensure a permanent, trustworthy and dynamic relationship with other entities in the Internet ecosphere (IGF, ITU, WIPO, ISOC...). These relationships will not be engaged solely by ICANN staff, but augmented and highlighted by its stakeholders.
  • Study the conditions under which Country-code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) shall be harmonized with ICANN’s general standards.
  • In the Board’s Global Relationships Committee (GRC), include one or two non-Board members with experience in external forums of Internet governance as well as international and institutional affairs (e.g. drawn from the ALAC, which arguably assembles the most widespread user experience in the ICANN structures).

Structural changes within ICANN

  • Ensure that ICANN’s default behaviour is for all proceedings, minutes and staff documentation to be open, unless of an expressly confidential nature (i.e. about explicitly determined subjects such as personnel issues or contracts dealing with trade secrets).
  • Make the Board the executive committee of the ICANN community.
  • Redirect the fiduciary duty of Directors to the community, not to ICANN itself.
  • Improve the articulation between the Board and the CEO: the Board to provide direction and oversight, the CEO to propose, implement, control and report.
  • Remove the CEO from the list of voting Board members to the position of being permanently in attendance, except when the Board decides otherwise.
  • Merge some of Reorganize the roles and relationships of Supporting Organizations (SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs), along thematic lines (e.g. TLDs, IP allocation, security...)with explicit aim to improve balance and avoid silos.
  • Reform the procedures within the Board’s Governance Committee (BGC) to increase transparency, accountability, and freedom from the risk of capture.
  • Review the structure, procedures and name of the Nominating Committee.
  • Ensure that progress reports by ICANN, including its compliance and enforcement activities, are reviewed by an independent body (self-evaluation by Staff is contrary to the principle of fair assessment).
  • Study the extension of the duties of the Ombudsman to include the role of “independent objector” and consideration of “freedom of Information” requests regarding documents deemed confidential.
  • Give all due consideration to Conflicts of Interest, and correct any situation where such a conflict, real or perceived, is detrimental to mutual trust and harmful to the public interest. Accepting mere statements of interest while allowing vested interests to influence policy affecting them is inefficient, and harmful to ICANN’s credibility.
  • Provide for relevant whistle-blowing (e.g. regarding conflicts of interest), with proper rules protecting both the corporation and prospective whistle-blowers.
  • Provide permanent and qualified staff support for each stakeholder group.