Status
Assignee(s)
CCWG-Accountability - Draft Proposal on Work Stream 1 Recommendations
22 Dec 2015
ALAC Monthly Teleconference - 2015.12.22
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.
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 PowersRecommendation #2: Empowering the community through consensus: engage, escalate, enforceRecommendation #3: Redefining ICANN's Bylaws as 'Standard Bylaws' and 'Fundamental Bylaws'Recommendation #4: Ensuring community involvement in ICANN decision-making: seven new Community PowersRecommendation #5: Changing aspects of ICANN's Mission, Commitments and Core ValuesRecommendation #6: Reaffirming ICANN's Commitment to respect internationally recognized Human Rights as it carries out its missionRecommendation #7: Strengthening ICANN's Independent Review ProcessRecommendation #8: Fortifying ICANN's Request for Reconsideration ProcessRecommendation #9: Incorporation of the Affirmation of CommitmentsRecommendation #10: Enhancing the accountability of Supporting Organizations andAdvisory CommitteesRecommendation #11: Board obligations with regards to Governmental Advisory Committee Advice (Stress Test 18)Recommendation #12: Committing to further accountability work in Work Stream 2
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
Click here to download the PDF document below.
Final Formatted Version - December 21, 2015
