[CCWG-ACCT] [community-finance] IANA Stewardship Transition - Project Expenses - FY16 Q3 update

[parminder]

On Monday 08 August 2016 04:26 PM, John Curran wrote:
> snip
> Parminder - 
>
>     ICANN by its function is not a "public governance body” - it is
> actually a coordination 
>     body that supports the stable and secure operation of the
> Internet’s various identifier 
>     systems.

Thanks for your response John. I dont see why the latter (Internet
identifier coordination) cannot be or isnt a subset of the former
(public governance) . More specifically, I dont see how, for instance,
allocation of a generic language term, of immense cultural value, .book,
as privately owned gTLD to Amazon, in complete violation of the spirit
of trademark laws, is not a public governance or public policy issue.

OECD defines Public governance
<http://www.policy-community.eu/results/glossary/public-governance>as
""the formal and informal arrangements that determine how public
decisions are made and how public actions are carried out, from the
perspective of maintaining a country’s constitutional values in the face
of changing problems, actors and environments" . (You may just have to
change from 'country's' to the 'world's' to talk about a global public
governance function.)  Are ICANN decisions and actions not public
decisions and public actions?

I dont see how the most important and contested functions of ICANN are
of not a public governance nature. If it is were only doing some
technical management, maybe 30 people sitting is a small office
somewhere could have achieved it rather well, rather than this whole big
juggernaut that we know ICANN to be.  

Also note that ICANN's charter speaks about its raison d'tre to be of
'/lessening/ the /burdens/ of /government '/which clearly makes its work
to be of public governance (and its implementation) nature. ((I know
this term is used specifically to claim tax exemptions, but I am sure
this cannot be a false claim.)//
/
/
>
>     This does not in any way impinge on your main point: i.e. that
> ICANN should operate
>     under very high transparency requirements – only that it should do
> so because such
>     transparency was a basic tenet of its establishment and remains so
> to this day.

So, if I paraphrase and extrapolate rightly,  you are saying that ICANN
is just whatever it says it is, and that is it. No external cannons of
public propriety - like transparency, accountability, etc can be applied
to it. It is sui generis and sovereign in its constitution.  It is these
kinds of unabashed political claims about ICANN that most worry many of
us. (And the effort then to extend the ICANN model to other aspects of
global, and then perhaps, national, public governance -  a post
democratic governance system.)  And these, explicitly or implicitly, are
inherent in much of the thinking of the current establishment around
ICANN. It is difficult to engage and argue at the level of the details
of institutional structures and systems, when the real difference is at
such a higher political principles level.

parminder

>
> Thanks!
> /John
>
> p.s.  my views alone (and perhaps that of the ICANN bylaws, to some
> extent…) 
>
>

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