[CWG-Stewardship] Concern with Contract Co.

Sat Nov 29 04:22:53 UTC 2014

I quite like the current form of the proposal and feel we are headed in the
right direction.

That said, I can understand why Olivier is upset.

We started off with three strawman proposals, which were modular and mix
and match, leading to an endless number of permutations to be discussed in
Frankfurt.

The discussion in Frankfurt started on a good constructive note wherein
there appeared to be immediate consensus that IANA should stay in ICANN;
eliminating the modular aspects of Strawman 2 & 3 that represented IANA as
a subsidiary and IANA as an independent corporation.

Then we came to the discussion of the Oversight Body and there appeared to
be somewhat of a prolonged disagreement/holdout.

After a break, the coordinators completely abandoned the Strawman approach
and adopted a new approach, which everybody was slightly unprepared for.
This approach was to understand and list down the functions that NTIA
performs. This eventually turned into an exercise of faithfully replicating
the functions that NTIA performs. Replicating the NTIA functions eventually
led to the creation of a PRT, CSC and finally the Contract Co for holding
the IANA contract (that NTIA currently holds).

People slowly started realising that an exercise to faithfully replicate
NTIA automatically eliminates options that diverge from the NTIA model. For
example, the non-contractual model that Olivier seems to be arguing in
favour of, or the trust-like model that Avri argued for, or the model that
Bertrand now suggests, would naturally be eliminated from the discussion.

By this time it was the last RFP3 session of the last day of the
conference. Participants did object to the creation of Contract Co in the
followup sessions on the way ahead. These objections were tackled by saying
nothing in final and everything is open to change.

I can therefore understand why Olivier is up in arms when he now hears that
the Contract Co is final.

Funny are the ways of a multi-stakeholder process. In this case, mostly
driven by lack of time.

Please forgive me if my reading of Frankfurt is shallow. I am not pointing
fingers. Given the lack of time that we have had, I think Frankfurt was
handled exceptionally well. And I reiterate that I feel that the current
proposal is headed in the right direction. I'm just glad i'm not on the
other side of the argument.

On Sat, Nov 29, 2014 at 6:46 AM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
wrote:

>  Greg,
>
> again, did we ever consider an alternative to creating a corporation?
> Kind regards,
>
> Olivier
>
>
> On 29/11/2014 00:32, Greg Shatan wrote:
>
>  Olivier,
>
> I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the "configuration" of Contract Co.
> We certainly have discussed the "form" the entity would take, i.e., a
> nonprofit corporation.  Place of incorporation has not been significantly
> discussed in recent days, though we had a number of email exchanges and
> some discussion of jurisdiction earlier in a variety of contexts.
>
>  Greg
>
> On Fri, Nov 28, 2014 at 6:19 PM, Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond <ocl at gih.com>
> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 28/11/2014 16:36, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org [
>> mailto:cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org
>> <cwg-stewardship-bounces at icann.org>] *On Behalf Of *Bertrand de La
>> Chapelle
>>
>>  Is the idea of a contract Co. a done deal? Establishing any
>> organization with whatever limited staff is usually a recipe for its growth
>> in time.
>>
>>
>>
>> MM: The idea that there should be a contracting entity separate from
>> ICANN is, I believe, a done deal. It reflects some of the principles we
>> agreed on (such as separability) and the general agreement that, as the
>> draft proposal says,
>>
>> “The current arrangements provided by the NTIA for the oversight and
>> accountability of the IANA Functions are generally satisfactory and the
>> objective of the CWG is to replicate these as faithfully as possible”
>>
>>
>>  This is not at all how I understood it. The discussion on whether the
>> "contracting entity" should be a contract co. or something else has never
>> been touched - certainly no alternatives have been seriously considered.
>>
>>
>>
>> MM: On the other hand, whether the specific configuration of the Contract
>> Co. is optimal for achieving those purposes could still be open. I would
>> say is still open to _modification_; any modification that accomplishes the
>> agreed objectives but avoids any problems that might arise would be
>> welcomed by the CWG I imagine.
>>
>>
>>  The configuration of the Contract Co. has not been discussed either. We
>> know what functions should be undertaken and what broad characteristics
>> would be needed. No discussion of jurisdiction nor configuration of the
>> entity has been done except on RFP4 call today where we started to touch on
>> it.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Olivier
>>
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>>
>
>
> --
>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
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>
>
> --
> Olivier MJ Crépin-Leblond, PhDhttp://www.gih.com/ocl.html
>
>
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