[CWG-Stewardship] Paul Kane's DIPD Request

[Alan Greenberg]

As I said on a call recently, I was somewhat distressed that the CWG 
building the plan for transition of the IANA stewardship from the 
NTIA to (as is now part of the plan) to ICANN had to file a formal 
request under ICANN's Documentary Information Disclosure Policy 
(DIDP) to get information relevant to our effort 
(https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/didp-request-20150407-1-kane-redacted-07apr15-en.pdf).

The reply 
(https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/didp-response-20150407-1-kane-07may15-en.pdf) 
does confirm that most of what we are asking for is already in the 
public domain and available.

However, it also identifies one more class of information that may 
contain confidential information (presumably about registries) and 
that ICANN feels would not be appropriate to publish openly. I 
completely support that position. If I were to supply information to 
ICANN with an expectation of confidentiality, I would not want to see 
that information published either.

But that reply sidesteps the real issue. The information is, today, 
routinely provided to the NTIA. When the NTIA is not longer part of 
the process, what happens. Since we do not know exactly what is in 
these reports, it is not possible for us to say whether they are 
needed any longer, and if so, who should they go to. Almost certainly 
they should not go to the CSC if they include registry-confidential 
data. Or perhaps they should go there, and we need to get registry 
sign-off that such distribution is acceptable.

Surely if the NTIA currently feels that the information is valuable, 
we need to at least make an assessment and then make an appropriate 
recommendation on how to proceed. We either need mocked up reports 
(or whatever these are) purging them of possible confidential data, 
or we need to identify a number of individuals for who this 
information would not harm registry secrecy/privacy and who will sign 
a non-disclosure agreement, so that we can properly assess what to do 
post-transition.

Alan