[WP1] A comment about advice from advisory committees

[Steve Crocker]

Thomas, Avri and/or Jonathan,

I’m not sure if I have posting privileges to wp1.  If this doesn’t show up there, perhaps one of you could forward it.

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The following is from me, not from the full Board or any other group of people, and represents my personal view, not an official ICANN position.  I am, however, speaking about ICANN processes based on my experience as both SSAC chair and ICANN Board member over more than a dozen years.

I want to respond to some very particular aspects of the dialog about advice from Advisory Committees.  These comments would also apply to advice from other entities, e.g. advice — not policies developed through a formal PDP — from Supporting Organizations or any of their constituencies, from working groups, and even from expert panels.

The quote from Thomas Rickert’s recent note is representative of the overall dialog, so I’ve copied it here.

On Apr 9, 2015, at 12:13 PM, Thomas Rickert <rickert at anwaelte.de> wrote:

> I still think this is a way the board can be threatened to take action requested by the community. Thus, I am not sure the response to the stress test would inevitably be „inadequate“. Avri’s point is a very good one. By requesting the Board to provide information on progress made and action / inaction, the Board is forced to deal with recommendations and provide a rationale for their (in)activity. One of the concerns would certainly be around security, stability and resiliency of the DNS. If the Board chooses to ignore a recommendation by the SSAC and puts that in writing, inaction would likely be a violation of the bylaws we are working on and could lead to removing the Board.


I see two general thrusts within the dialog.  One is that advice should be acknowledged and responded to, and this obviously includes that the response should be timely.  The other thrust is that the advice should be followed, or, if not, the rationale should be convincing.

I’m in unequivocal agreement with the first thrust.  Among other reasons, it’s simply proper form, i.e. courtesy, as well as smart management to acknowledge receipt and to follow up with what was done with the advice.  With regret, I acknowledge we have not always handled all advice expeditiously and completely.  This is a weakness in internal organization, resource allocation and execution, and we are addressing this.  It is one of the things I feel strongly about, and I have applied a fair amount of pressure on this.  We have created a register for publicly keeping track of advice that has come in and for recording the disposition of the advice.   It has turned out to be more complicated to do this than it first seemed, at least in part because documents containing advice, e.g. a report from SSAC, often contain several pieces of advice, each of which needs to be understood, recorded, tracked and dealt with.  This effort is moving forward, and I hope to be able to report significant progress at the next ICANN meeting.

I understand the desire for a bylaws change to make this mandatory.  In principle, it shouldn’t make any difference, but perhaps it will be helpful for both Board and staff in the future to see this emphasized in the bylaws and not just in our operational practices.  And a bylaw change is indeed in the pipeline.  I believe the language will be presented to the community by Buenos Aires and we will follow the proper procedures and timeline for approving it.  However, repeating what I’ve already said, the more salient issue is getting the process organized, and we are working vigorously on this independent of augmenting the bylaws.

Regarding the second thrust, the situation is more nuanced, and I speak with both the experience of several years as SSAC chair and several years on the ICANN Board.  Without exception, each group that has provided advice has done so in good faith and with considerable energy.  Every instance of advice was thoughtful and earnest.  But that’s not sufficient.  I have also seen that in some cases, perhaps more than one might first guess, the advice is not appropriate or comes from a limited point of view.  Sometimes the group creating the advice develops a mindset of believing it has a mandate to create the advice and to insist that its advice be followed.  This is inherently dangerous.  There must be checks and balances.  When I was chair of SSAC, I felt strongly — and said repeatedly — that it was important that SSAC gave advice but did not have the authority to insist on its acceptance.  It was up to others to decide whether to accept SSAC’s advice, and this served as an essential form of feedback and quality control.

I am not suggesting the Board is in a position to dismiss or counter advice from an expert group as if it were an equal or stronger group of experts.  We have some very knowledgeable people on the Board, but that’s not our role and it’s not what we do.  What we do instead is to test advice we get against a variety of criteria, including feasibility, resources, etc. and also against common sense tests of sensibility.

Our preference is always to accept advice from the advisory bodies, but it’s also very important that everyone, including the groups providing the advice, keep in mind their mandate is to provide advice and no more.  They do not have the authority to implement the advice, and, of course, they are not held responsible for the consequences, pro or con, when the advice is translated into implementation or, equally, when the advice is not implemented.  This is the essential bargain in our advisory process, and it’s vital we keep in mind this bright line.

Steve