[CCWG-ACCT] Fwd: Special Community Leaders CAll - 6 October - Shared Materials

Thu Oct 8 08:32:04 UTC 2015

+1 indeed.  Well said both Avri and Malcolm

P

Paul Rosenzweig
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-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Shears [mailto:mshears at cdt.org] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 7, 2015 8:12 AM
To: avri at acm.org; accountability-cross-community at icann.org
Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] Fwd: Special Community Leaders CAll - 6 October - Shared Materials

+ 1 Avri.

On 07/10/2015 12:29, Avri Doria wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My reading of this is that if the Board is willing to accept the CCWG 
> proposals, which do reflect broad agreement, then we can make the 
> schedule.  If, on the the hand the Board continues to go their own way
> and stands in opposition to the community, we may not.    We need to
> complete our work quickly with the fixes and then, as always, it is in 
> the Board's hands.  We have already lost several weeks because of the 
> spanner thrown when the Board produced their own proposal for 
> accountability. Just imagine where we would have been had the Board 
> met with us in LA with the attitude of working with the community 
> instead of against it.
>
> I also think the doomsday scenarios are just a bit exaggerated.  We 
> have to stop scaring people with the G77 boogeyman.  And if the 
> Protocols and Number no longer trust ICANN, they will go their own 
> way, whether it is before transition or after, they have been crystal 
> clear about those intentions - it could happen anytime - why would the 
> status quo of continuing NTIA oversight convince them to leave ICANN? 
> I do agree with point V, if the Board continues to overrule the 
> multistakeholder process, it will become ever harder to convince 
> people that this is a workable modality for decision making.
>
> avri
>
>
> On 07-Oct-15 06:11, Malcolm Hutty wrote:
>> On 2015-10-07 08:03, Mathieu Weill wrote:
>>> You will find attached the set of slides that was prepared by ICANN 
>>> and presented during the calls.
>> Wow, that slide on page 4 ("5 risks we face if the IANA Stewardship 
>> Transition is Delayed/Fails") is a contentious parade of horribles if 
>> ever I saw one!
>>
>> Setting that aside as merely disputatious, page 5 ("4 Remaining 
>> Questions on  The Road to Transition") is interesting.
>>
>> Firstly, the framing - that these are indeed the questions, and the 
>> only gating questions, is certainly open to debate. But the answers 
>> don't currently point to swift completion either.
>>
>> Here is my assessment.
>>
>> Q. "Do we have broad agreement on ALL the elements to address the CWG 
>> Dependencies?"
>>
>> A. Within CCWG, using its proposal as the base: yes.
>> Between CCWG and Board, on the Board's counter-proposal: Not really.
>> There is no agreement as to whether the power to challenge the Budget 
>> and Strategic Plan would be effectively available in the absence of 
>> the SMM, which the Board opposes. Our Counsel raises key concerns 
>> about this in their recent memo comparing the Board proposal with our 
>> own.
>> And this power (or some variant) is noted as being a CWG requirement.
>>
>> Q. "Do we have broad agreement on the requirements and enforceability 
>> of the five community powers?"
>>
>> A. Within CCWG, on its proposal: yes.
>> Between CCWG and Board, on the Board's counter-proposal: No. The 
>> enforceability of the five community powers in the absence of the SMM 
>> is a significant area of disagreement; there is no agreement within 
>> CCWG that the MEM is an effective alternative means to ensure 
>> enforceability.
>>
>> Q "Are the above areas of broad agreement consistent with NTIA 
>> criteria and do they meet the requirements for a safe/secure 
>> transition of U.S.
>> Government stewardship?"
>>
>> A. Within CCWG, we are content that our proposal would achieve this.
>> Between CCWG and Board, neither party accepts that the other's 
>> proposal would achieve satisfy the NTIA criteria. For the Board, the 
>> CCWG's reforms pose a risk to "safe and secure" stability of ICANN; 
>> for CCWG, the removal of NTIA oversight without its replacement by 
>> accountability mechanisms that it agrees to be effective and 
>> enforceable poses just as great a risk, and of like kind. Moreover, 
>> the Board's counter-proposal omits or reduces* safeguards the CCWG 
>> thought necessary to guarantee the openness of the Internet, another 
>> NTIA requirement.
>>
>>     [* Discussion on this hasn't yet concluded; the Board might argue 
>> that it
>>        offers adequate alternatives, and while some in CCWG may have 
>> arrived at
>>        a firm conclusion to the contrary; others may be yet to make 
>> up their minds.
>>        What cannot be contested is that the CCWG as a whole has not 
>> has not yet
>>        accepted the adequacy of the Board's counter in relation to 
>> this particular
>>        NTIA criterion, which stands independently and complementary 
>> to the "safe and
>>        secure" criterion. See also below for comments on the need for 
>> a systematic
>>        re-evaluation.]
>>
>> Q. Do we have broad agreement on an assured process to continuously 
>> improve ICANN’s accountability and evolve its governance structure?
>>
>> A. Not really. CCWG has tasked itself with addressing in WS1 only 
>> those items that must be addressed before transition, and has chosen 
>> to leave everything else to a
>> WS2 that it trusts will be continued. The Board seemingly proposes 
>> closing down CCWG upon transition, ending WS2 as a distinct programme 
>> and leaving those issues to be addressed by disparate parts of the 
>> community (although it is not clear that the SOs even have the 
>> capacity to initiate proposals on all WS2 issues).
>> So there is
>> no agreement between CCWG and the Board on the process for continuous 
>> improvement either.
>>
>> Once again, an overview from ICANN that seems intended to force the 
>> pace actually shows how much still remains to be agreed. Perhaps this 
>> will persuade the Board to rethink its opposition to the considered 
>> view of the community, worked on by this group so intensively for 
>> almost a year.
>>
>> One thing the slidedeck does usefully point up is that before 
>> agreeing to abandon its proposal in favour of the Board's counter, 
>> even if it were minded to do so, CCWG would need to do a full 
>> re-evaluation against the NTIA criteria and stress tests to determine 
>> its adequacy. Our assessment of how our proposal satisfies the stress 
>> tests is only an assessment of OUR proposal, not of the Board's 
>> counter.
>>
>> Accordingly, if the Board remains unwilling to accept the 
>> cross-community proposal, this slidedeck suggests to me that 
>> expectations management, rather than "racing to the finish line", is 
>> the more prudent course of action.
>>
>> That further demonstrates how unhelpful and counter-productive is the 
>> scaremongering on page 4.
>>
>> Malcolm.
>>
>>
>
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-- 

Matthew Shears
Director - Global Internet Policy and Human Rights Center for Democracy & Technology mshears at cdt.org
+ 44 771 247 2987


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