[CCWG-ACCT] An mplication of accountability models being discussed

[Malcolm Hutty]

On 2015-07-13 04:48, George Sadowsky wrote:
> But I would like to push back on your belief that past practice, while
> interesting, is not relevant to our discussion.  I believe that it is
> relevant, if only to agree with George Santayana's statement that
> people who do not understand history are doomed to repeat it.
[..]
> 
> But it should also help the CCWG, in that where there is factually
> verified and agreed upon evidence of out of bounds behavior by the
> Board (or for that matter any other organization in the ICANN orbit),
> one of your "stress  tests"should be to discuss what kind of reaction
> that behavior would produce if one or more of your accountability
> models had been in place at the time.  I would think that this is a
> necessary test of any new accountability proposal.  Wouldn't not doing
> this be a failure of due diligence?

Generally I agree with Jonathan when he says that accountability is
desirable per se, and improvements should be put in place because they 
are
desirable in their own right, and should not have to be justified by
reference to some past misdemeanour they are intended to correct.

On the other hand, the advice I quote above from George is also 
compelling:
if we fail to address identifiable problems that have arisen before, 
then
that would be delinquency on our part.

So it seems to me that the question of past issues is not symmetrical:
evidence of past problems is relevant input to justify a proposed 
accountability
improvement, but a lack of evidence of past misbehaviour is not relevant
input as to why a proposed accountability improvement is not necessary.

Malcolm
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             Malcolm Hutty | tel: +44 20 7645 3523
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