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

[parminder]

On Tuesday 16 August 2016 10:27 PM, John Curran wrote:
> snip
> Parminder - 
>
>  Could you please cite specifically what “transparency standards”
>  for public bodies you believe that ICANN should comply with?
Sure John

As I said, most democratic governments of the world have laws for access
to public information. Take India's Right to Information Act for
instance. Wikipedia information on it is here
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005>, and here
is the actual text
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act,_2005>. The US
also has very good laws in this regard, to which you can get easy
access. Over 95 countries have some kind of freedom of information laws
( see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_laws_by_country )
and I think most of them have better transparency laws than what ICANN
adheres to...

>  I do believe ICANN should operate with an exceptional level of
>  transparency, but I believe that about my accountant as well

First, transparency to whom? Probably you mean accountant's transparent
to you, not to the public... But even if you are so good as to be
calling for the latter, that is your expectation from someone, which is
an entirely private matter, and your will to do or not do. We, on the
other hand, are talking about *legitimate* expectation of the *public*,
and I see no basis for a legitimate expectation of the public for your
accountant to be entirely transparent to it.

>  (and it makes neither of them a "public governance body"…)

Some of us may have decided that we will jettison all known concepts and
theories of political science and governance and consider the Internet
and ICANN sui generis but I would suggest that it is not at all wise to
do so. I do not want to comment on what two kinds of ideologies converge
in this, what I see as, very dangerous direction, so let me not comment :)
>  If you would be specific regarding which particular norms and 
>  standards for transparency you believe ICANN should meet 
>  (regardless of your underlying justification why), then perhaps
>  we may find areas of agreement among the working group?

Yes, I am specific. I want ICANN to uphold the same level of
transparency standards that the more democratic governments do, and the
details are all in the documents linked above. Tell me how would you
want us to go from here.

regards, parminder
>
> Thanks!
> /John
>
> Disclaimer: my views alone.
>
>
>
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/accountability-cross-community/attachments/20160816/735269c6/attachment-0001.html>