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

[Milton L Mueller]

Andrew:

> 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

To me, "narrow" is code for "let's pretend that NTIA oversight with contracting authority wasn't an critical and essential aspect of the status quo." In other words, this approach seems like a way of pretending that we don't need significant new accountability mechanisms to deal with the post-NTIA world. 

> 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

Yes, but IETF and RIRs both are independent entities capable of contracting with IANA and separating from ICANN as IANA functions provider if need be. Therefore they have in hand the most simple and significant accountability check. Some of us are trying to achieve the same thing with respect to names. 

> 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. 

But this is precisely what the new Integrated model is attempting to do, if I understand it correctly. What is your opinion of that?

> 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.

I don't know whether your approach is "less" or "more" ambitious because it is not sufficiently specified. All you are doing now is offering a verbal description at best, and an internal solution at worst. And the latter simply shifts the problem to bylaw changes and accountability changes within ICANN. Those will, as I am sure we will discover when we get a legal advice, prove to be just as complicated and difficult as either the structural separation proposed by the new integration model or the external Contracting Co solution. 

>  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.

This is a false hope. Either the community has separability or it doesn't. It is a binary possibility in the end. 

> Does this seem in any way a helpful direction, or am I off my gourd?

No one thinks you are off your gourd. But you are in my opinion simply sugar-coating the problem in a way that does not really move the discussion forward. If you are holding the RIRs and IETF up as successful models, please tell us how the names community can achieve the same level of accountability.