[At-review] Conflicts of interest

[Fabio Colasanti]

Dear all,

 

Many thanks to Peter for his remarks about the importance of the conflict of
interest issue and to Cheryl for the material she has distributed.   I
wonder, however, if we are not making too much of it.

Let's go back a second to what ICANN is supposed to do and to the remit of
the external review set up by the AoC.   ICANN is supposed to take a number
of technical decisions about a "scarce/essential resource", the DNS, in the
interest of all the internet users (which will coincide more and more with
simply the interest of the world population).   

 

The RT is tasked with the objective of examining if the organization of
ICANN and its practice ensure the necessary taking into account of all
external inputs, if its decisions are taken in a transparent way and if
ICANN feels/is accountable to the Internet (world) community for its
decisions.

 

Under these circumstances, what are the situations that could generate a
conflict of interest in the RT?   I do not see very obvious ones.   More or
less transparency, more or less accountability will not, per se, favour one
particular group of stakeholders over another.   All RT participants can be
expected to genuinely desire an effective review process independently of
their position in the internet world.   The only difference of interest a
critical observer might imagine is more of the type "ICANN insiders" vs.
"ICANN outsiders"; i.e. some observers may fear that ICANN might not want to
have more transparency and accountability and might therefore be interested
in frustrating attempts to have an effective review.   Such an observer
might want to be reassured that the RT identified the members who might be
in a position that would incline them in this direction.   If we want to
reassure the internet community on this point, we need only to identify the
existence of strong links - financial or other - between the organisations
to whom some team members belong and ICANN.  

 

I do not see how the many issues raised in the detailed questionnaire
circulated by Cheryl would help.  Our backgrounds, our past experiences and
present links are all spelled out in our CVs that have been made public.

 

The only clear conflict of interest situation is one built into the system
from the start, i.e. the position of Peter, who might appear as "making
recommendations to himself".   He is at the same time the highest
representative of ICANN and a member of the body that should make
recommendations to ICANN.   But he is an ex-officio member of the RT.
Perhaps, we should explain to the internet community how we are going to
deal with this situation.

 

All the best,

 

Fabio

 

 

Fabio Colasanti

36, rue des Patriotes

B-1000 Bruxelles

tel. +32 2 736 26 16

mob. +32 488 14 24 05

fabio at colasanti.it

 

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