[CCWG-ACCT] comments on Annex 1 to draft report

[Robin Gross]

Comments on Annex 1.

p.4: “This includes the IRP, which issues binding decisions and grans the Empowered Community the power to launch an Independent Review Process challenge if it believes the ICANN Board is in breach of its Bylaws or Fundamental Bylaws.”  Isn’t this too narrow?  Aren’t we forgetting to list a breach of the Articles of Incorporation (not only bylaws)?

p.4: Additional Powers Granted Inclusion in the ICANN Bylaws - We should explicitly cite California corporations code section 6333 and the transparency rights it provides as our benchmark.

p. 6: “Maintaining the advisory role of govts in the Supporting Organization and Advisory Committee Structure”.  This sounds like we are trying to hide the truth, which is that we are changing the GAC from being an advisory role to being a decisional role on key ICANN issues.  We should be more upfront about how this changes the roles and why we think it is worth doing.

Also, I don’t see where we explain why we didn’t follow the public comment, which cautioned against devaluing SO’s to ACs and instead went in the opposite direction by providing an even higher decisional weight to ACs than had be offered in the 2nd draft.  At the very least we owe an explanation for why we are doing the opposite of what public comment called for.  There is no discussion at all as to how public comments were treated in the formulation of this report.

It also seems misleading to say we are not voting when we treat all five SOACs with equal weight in a decisional process.  I expect this annex will lead to much public dis-satisfaction over how comments and other concerns were handled and then not explained in any way in the report.

Best,
Robin