[CCWG-ACCT] A way to avoid the 'The Single Member Can Do Anything!' problem

[Bruce Tonkin]

Hello Keith,

That is a good summary of some of the issues that have been discussed by Board members.

When I get some time over the weekend - I will post some relevant extracts from the Board's public comments, and also offer some of my own personal thoughts on the single member model.

Regards,
Bruce Tonkin


-----Original Message-----
From: accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Drazek, Keith
Sent: Thursday, 1 October 2015 3:16 AM
To: Nigel Roberts <nigel at channelisles.net>; accountability-cross-community at icann.org
Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] A way to avoid the 'The Single Member Can Do Anything!' problem

Thanks Nigel.

In no particular  order, my interpretation of the Board's written comments, what we heard in Los Angeles and from Fadi yesterday is:

-- Introducing a different governance structure, i.e. membership, is new, untested, and cannot be proven to resist capture in the limited time available to meet the September 2016 date.

-- Shifting authority from the Board to an untested membership body is potentially destabilizing and will be difficult or impossible to sell as not introducing risk at a delicate time.

-- If we're going to shift authority, we must also shift a commensurate level of accountability, and the current SOs and ACs do not have sufficient accountability at this time.

-- ICANN and its SOs/ACs need to be safe from capture from outside and from within; empowering the SOs and ACs without clear safeguards is problematic.

-- Concentrating power in a new "sole membership" body is not balanced if it doesn't include all community members, and two groups (SSAC and RSSAC) have said they want to remain advisory.

-- Shifting from consensus-based decision-making to reliance on a voting structure is not consistent with the multi-stakeholder model.

-- The CCWG recommendation is too complex and difficult to explain/understand, so we need to make smaller, incremental changes that are more easily implemented and understood.

-- A recommendation requiring a substantial governance restructuring will suggest that ICANN is currently broken -- a politically risky message going into the transition.

I'm obviously not in a position to speak for the Board, but that's my non-legalistic reading of the concerns.  I'd be happy to be corrected if my interpretation is off-base.

That was a reply to your question (a).  I can't respond to question (b).

Regards,
Keith