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

[Michael Karanicolas]

Hi all,

As one of the Rapporteurs for the transparency working group, I've
been following this conversation with some interest. Ever since I
first saw the list of groups, I knew there was significant potential
for overlap, since transparency is, of course, a key aspect of robust
accountability.

As a lifelong advocate for transparency and the right to information,
I always love to see people digging into these issues. However, I am a
bit concerned about the potential for the groups to be working at
cross purposes, since reforms to the DIDP are the central focus of our
own process.  At a minimum, having two seperate consultations about
how to reform the DIDP seems to me to be rather inefficient. More
seriously though, I am also concerned that the processes may lead to
conflicting recommendations, which could make it more difficult to
impact the kinds of positive improvements that we all want to see.
I've seen this happen many times before: where parallel processes
produce different avenues forward, the least ambitious route will
inevitably be the one that is adopted.

My preferred approach would be if we could feed this discussion into
our own transparency consultation process. I'm really not trying to be
"territorial" here, so forgive me if it's coming off that way - it's
really not my intent. I just think that consolidation will make both
processes more efficient and effective, and to me it makes most sense
to put them together under the "transparency" umbrella. The issues
raised: confidentiality clauses in ICANN contracts, the grounds under
which DIDP requests may be denied, etc. - have all come up already as
part of our own discussions, which are specifically designed around
developing specific Recommendations for reforming the DIDP, so it
would be great if these conversations could happen together.

TL/DR - What a great conversation. We're having a dialogue on exactly
these issues in the transparency group. You'd be very welcome to come
join us!

Best,

Michael Karanicolas
Senior Legal Officer
Centre for Law and Democracy

On Mon, Aug 22, 2016 at 7:17 AM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net> wrote:
>
> On Sunday 21 August 2016 11:46 PM, Sam Lanfranco wrote:
>
> I must be a bit dense here. For me much of this transparency discussion
> reads like a badminton game where the topic (the birdie) is being batted up
> and down, back and forth.
>
>
> No density .... Just that it is a political subject, and would have its
> political to and fro (and worse, just wait till the proposal actually goes
> to the ICANN board). If transparency is not political, not much is.
>
> Shouldn’t we be looking for enlightenment as to what is an appropriate
> transparency regime for ICANN. Transparency is a means to accountability and
> we should be able to critique existing ICANN transparency regime from an
> accountability vantage point, and work toward an improved ICANN transparency
> regime by starting from two poles.
>
>
> Sure, pl do suggest your response to these two posers... Mine are below.
>
>
> - First, in ICANN’s multistakeholder governance model what might
> accountability require in terms of transparency?
>
>
> The required transparency is that applicable to bodies undertaking public
> functions, including governments .
>
>
>
> - Second, what are the “best practice” models of transparency that we can
> benefit from as we review, critique, and advise on a best practice
> transparency strategy for ICANN?
>
>
> Take India's right to information act (which is now also applicable to non
> profits that take governmental funds) , or US's freedom of information act
> (about which I admittedly know much less).
>
> parminder
>
>
>
> Sam L.
>
> (tempted but won't change Subject: line :-()
>
>
>
>
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