[CWG-Stewardship] Narrow focus (was: CWG-Stewardship Chairs' Statement - Summary of ICANN 52 Meeting)

[Christopher Wilkinson]

Good evening:

>  … cut the problem down to a manageable size.

I would tend to support the direction of Andrew Sullivan's approach.
It would also respond to earlier warnings agains undue complexity.

Thankyou.

CW


On 18 Feb 2015, at 15:10, Andrew Sullivan <ajs at anvilwalrusden.com> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
> 
> On Wed, Feb 18, 2015 at 05:06:25AM -0800, Kieren McCarthy wrote:
>> 
>> There are a few signs that ICANN corporate is being a little more open minded and helpful than in most of the previous SEVEN accountability reviews (but not all).
>> 
>> But when it comes to non-cosmetic changes, particularly over ICANN corporate's unquestionable final authority, I have seen only critical and defensive responses, as well as accusations of bad faith and various efforts to undermine the commenter - the same pattern that has played out for over a decade.
>> 
> 
> This is not to pick on Kieren McCarthy, but those paragraphs where
> helpful to hang my remarks on.  I've been thinking about something
> along these lines since Singapore and thought I'd take this occasion
> to send.
> 
> It seems to me that we heard in Singapore some pretty strong
> suggestions from parts of the community that we ought to concentrate
> on the narrow question of the IANA transition and how to make those
> arrangements at least as reliable and safe as the current arrangements
> are.  In my opinion, Larry Strickling also asked some pretty pointed
> questions about this group's focus on that narrow issue.
> 
> It seems to me that the IETF and RIRs have come up with fairly narrow
> discussions of their issues, and have focussed on the specific issues
> for their communities.  I do not pretend that things are just the same
> in the names community, because of the way the IANA names functions
> and the policy functions are located in the same organization.  But
> perhaps we could focus on the exact places where the existing
> organizational boundaries inside ICANN (for the IANA function) are,
> and see whether there is a sort of "accountability interface" that
> could be placed there.  This is an admittedly less ambitious approach
> than the proposals that have been previously circulated, but I wonder
> whether this might not cut the problem down to a manageable size.  It
> seems to me that much of the conceptual work that has been done could
> be re-jigged to match that narrower task, too, and so we might be able
> to make speedy progress.
> 
> Of course, that still leaves us with a difficult dependency, because
> the CCWG-Accountability work would need to complete and be compatible
> with what we might suggest.  But I think that is manageable, it's in
> any case a requirement, and it allows us to declare general
> discussions of, "wWhat if the Board does X?" out of scope here.
> 
> Does this seem in any way a helpful direction, or am I off my gourd?
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> A
> 
> -- 
> Andrew Sullivan
> ajs at anvilwalrusden.com
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