From: Mathieu Weill

Time: 5 March 2015

To: Olga Cavalli; Suzanne Radell; Julia Katja Wolman; Pär Brumark; Alice Munyua; Thomas Schneider 

CC: León Sanchez; Thomas Rickert; Adam Peake

 

Dear GAC members of the CCWG Accountability, Dear Thomas,

[Cc: CCWG Co-chairs]

 

As you are aware, the CCWG Accountability has identified a number of contingencies and is applying stress tests to its proposals to check how they would mitigate them.

Consistent with the principle set out by the NTIA that the transition proposals should not replace the NTIA role with a government-led or an intergovernmental organization solution, one of the identified contingency is currently defined as such :

Governments in ICANN’s Government Advisory Committee (GAC) amend their operating procedures to change from consensus decisions to majority voting for advice to ICANN’s board.

Consequence: Under current bylaws, ICANN must consider and respond to GAC advice, even if that advice were not supported by consensus. [...]

While investigating whether the measures currently proposed by the CCWG would provide adequate mitigation, concerns were raised that, despite the ability for the community to veto a Board decision, changes in the GAC decision making rules might infringe on the principle set out by the NTIA.

It was proposed within the CCWG that a mitigating measure might be to amend Icann Bylaws so that the provision of article XI 2.1.j of the Bylaws (duly taking into account GAC Advice) would only apply to consensus advice (see current proposal here : https://community.icann.org/download/attachments/52888421/Accountability%20Mechanism%20Template%20WP1%204A%20-%20GAC%20consensus.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1425289292000&api=v2). 

Some similarity could be drawn out from the gNSO policy recommendations Bylaw provisions (Annex A, 9.a) where supermajority votes from the gNSO can only be vetoed by the Board if there is a 2/3 majority to do so.

 We are aware of the high sensitivity of this question within the GAC as well as with the community. The GAC is also one of the chartering organizations of the CCWG Accountability. Therefore our group wishes to engage with the GAC to identify how we can meet both the NTIA requirements and a solution that is consistent with the GAC expectations.

Ideally, we would welcome inputs via GAC appointed members to the CCWG and/or specific discussions between ourselves. 

Best regards,

Thomas Rickert, Leon Felipe Sanchez, Mathieu Weill

Co-chairs, CCWG Accountability