[CCWG-Accountability] Work Stream 1 and the concept of Leverage

[Alan Greenberg]

Steve, family matters have kept me from replying to this earlier.

Several points.

- I completely understand the issue of the 
leverage given to us by the IANA stewardship 
transition. I have talked about this a number of 
times in CWG-Stewardship prior to the start of 
the CWG-Accountability (and have been chastised 
for daring to mention it). You may recall that I 
have championed one of the "internal to ICANN" 
transition proposals which presumes (or rather 
demands) that the CCWG-Accountability put in 
place real and effective accountability and the 
existance of this leverage is why I believed that it was indeed possible.

- As I said (or perhaps wrote in the chat) later 
in the meeting, I support using this leverage to 
get overall Board accountability and I have 
explicitly documented some of the methods that your inventory itemizes.

- I still feel that some of the items flagged as 
WS1 are not in this category (examples of those 
are ones that reference details on registrar or 
registry contracts, but there are others) that I 
feel are not at all connected to either IANA or 
general Board accountability. Others are specific 
instances of accountability that may not be 
needed if we succeed in the more generalized methods.

Regarding this being the "last kick at the can", 
that will depend on whether the Affirmation of 
Commitments is replaced in this pass or not. My 
hope is that even if this is not the last kick, 
we will not need another one if we do our job properly.

Alan


At 02/01/2015 12:12 PM, Steve DelBianco wrote:

>Alan Greenberg has questioned the accountability 
>measures we were placing into Work Stream 1, saying,
>"I am somewhat troubled by all of the items in 
>WS1 where I do not see the direct link to the 
>IANA transition. Note I am not saying that they 
>might not be perfectly valid and desirable 
>accountability mechanism, just that I do not see 
>the direct link, and thus perhaps greatly 
>increasing our work to be done to allow transition.”
>
>
>In responding to Alan, several of us said that a 
>direct link to IANA transition is neither 
>required nor desirable.  Instead, the IANA 
>transition is the community’s last bit of 
>leverage to force accountability measures on 
>ICANN’s board.  The leverage is directly held 
>by NTIA, who has said they would not transition 
>IANA unless there was consensus about holding 
>ICANN accountable to the community once the IANA 
>contract is gone.  And the internet community 
>has indirect leverage, though pressure being 
>brought on the US Administration and on Congress.
>
>So I would hope that Alan and others can gain 
>confidence and comfort with the leverage our 
>CCWG holds in this process.  With that leverage 
>comes the responsibility to create 
>accountability mechanisms that will guide DNS 
>policy making for decades to come.  And we must 
>also get our work done without causing undue 
>delay to the IANA transition process.
>
>Alan’s group is the ALAC, which has often felt 
>the lack of leverage over ICANN’s board and 
>and management.  As a recent example, ALAC 
>called on ICANN to stop delegating new gTLDs 
>serving highly regulated sectors but lacking 
>enforceable public interest commitments 
>(<https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/correspondence/alac-to-icann-board-16oct14-en.pdf>link). 
>ICANN’s board and management might continue 
>signing contracts despite concerns of the ALAC 
>and others, perhaps fearing lawsuits by gTLD 
>applicants.  The fear of lawsuits may also have 
>led the board to ignore community concerns over 
>delegating both singular and plural forms of the 
>same gTLDs.    After all, the ICANN board’s 
>duty is to the interests of the ICANN 
>corporation — not to the community. (see 
><https:///www.icann.org/resources/pages/bylaws-2012-02-25-en#VI>Bylaws 
>Article 6, Section 7).
>
>What would be the source of leverage to hold the 
>board accountable to the community for this 
>decision?  We have seen the futility of 
>Reconsideration requests and Independent Reviews 
>that lack leverage to reverse a board decision.
>
>This IANA transition is our last chance to 
>create mechanisms that could hold ICANN’s 
>board accountable to the community it was 
>designed to serve.   Let's embrace that 
>challenge and use all the leverage we have.
>
>—
>Steve DelBianco
>Executive Director
>NetChoice
><http://www.netchoice.org/>http://www.NetChoice.org 
>and <http://blog.netchoice.org/>http://blog.netchoice.org
>+1.202.420.7482
>
>
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