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

[John Curran]

On Aug 16, 2016, at 1:22 PM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
> 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 ( seehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_laws_by_country <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…

Please be specific.  ICANN already has a "Documentary Information Disclosure Policy”,
and to the extent you believe it needs to be changed, it would be good to hear how.

> 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. 

Actually, I again do not concur with your characterization of anything that might 
affect the public as an institution of "public governance", and you’ve failed to clearly
distinguish why this is the case for ICANN and not the hundreds of other bodies
that make standards and policies for objects that the public uses…  

> Some of us may have decided that we will jettison all known concepts and theories of political science and governance

Not jettison, but simply not apply without a valid basis.

> … 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 :) 

Most excellent.
>>  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.

Cite the standards that you believe are not being met, and the specific 
changes to ICANN you believe this group should consider in its work.
By doing so, we may be able to make progress in areas of commonality
despite the lack of alignment in underlying belief systems.

/John

p.s. my views alone.



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