[CCWG-ACCT] Clarification

[Steve Crocker]

Folks,

I’ve gotten quite a few messages today, many on the list and many sent separately.  I’ve thought it best not to respond to each, partly to avoid creating confusion and partly to avoid making this personal.

For clarity, let me echo what Fadi is saying.  If there is an adverse IRP ruling and the Board is proceeding nonetheless, three SOs and ACs is an acceptable number to spill the Board.  (Since IRP rulings will be binding, it’s hard for me to imagine any future Board proceeding against an adverse IRP ruling in any case, irrespective of whether the GAC or anyone else is advocating that we do, but I gather the group feels it important to frame this in terms of GAC advice.)

If the Board is within the organization’s mission, the threshold remains at four.

It’s this last part that was not made clear when the proposal was made to lower the threshold to three, and it’s where the controversy has arisen.  Apparently some in the CCWG assumed the lowering of the threshold applied only if there was an adverse IRP ruling after the Board indicated it was going to accept GAC advice, and others assumed the threshold is lowered whenever the GAC gives advice.

Within the Board we debated vigorously.  There was really no question about what was right: the threshold should remain at four.  (Well, several people within the Board also said that these cases should never actually happen because the Board should gather enough information ahead of time to know the sense of the community, but we’re not talking about practice; this discussion is about eventualities in the extreme.)  The only real question we wrestled with was whether an upside down rule that treated the GAC worse than everyone else and did so only when the Board was acting WITHIN its mission was important enough to deal with at this late stage.  Ultimately, a strong majority of us felt it was not acceptable to pass along to our successors a rule we felt was clearly incorrect and one that conveyed a strong negative message that the role of the GAC was being downgraded.

We fully expect the overall proposal will go forward.  The community has worked very hard and created a proposal that represents a very earnest and constructive effort.  Like everyone else, we are anticipating a positive sense of accomplishment in Marrakech, and we’re all eager to move quickly to the next phase, the drafting of the bylaws and the other aspects of implementation.  We all have common cause and are fundamentally on the same side.  We want ICANN to be a robust, stable and effective operation that is a model of transparency and accountability.  And all of us know that no matter how much effort we put in at this point, it will be necessary to evolve further over time.

Thanks,

Steve



On Feb 19, 2016, at 5:34 PM, Fadi Chehade <fadi.chehade at icann.org> wrote:

> 
> Alan, that is my understanding as well.  
> 
> There is a solution to this dialog that can maintain the fundamental balance of the multistakeholder model
> 
> When the IRP rules that the Board has violated the Bylaws/Articles in accepting GAC advice, the threshold can be 3.
> When there is no IRP ruling, or no allegation that the Board has violated the Bylaws, keep the threshold at the same level that it was set in the prior versions of the report – 4.
> 
> Fadi
> 
> From: Alan Greenberg <alan.greenberg at mcgill.ca>
> Date: Friday, February 19, 2016 at 2:17 PM
> To: Jordan Carter <jordan at internetnz.net.nz>, Samantha Eisner <samantha.eisner at icann.org>
> Cc: Thomas Rickert <thomas at rickert.net>, "accountability-cross-community at icann.org" <accountability-cross-community at icann.org>
> Subject: Re: [CCWG-ACCT] what the Board is objecting to here -
> 
> The Supplemental Proposal says that the threshold CAN be reduced to three under two conditions:
> 
> (1) after an IRP has found that, in implementing GAC advice, the Board acted inconsistently with the ICANN Bylaws, or 
> 
> (2) if the IRP is not available to challenge the Board action in question. 
> 
> My recollection is that the Board proposed only (1). Becky (and/or perhaps others) proposed (2), but I do not recall it being accepted by the Board or by the CCWG as a whole.
> 
> Alan
> 

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