[CCWG-Accountability] WA4 and next steps

[McAuley, David]

Dear co-chairs, 
 
Thanks to those involved in the debate that has been going on surrounding the contingencies/stress tests.
 
I believe that Steve DelBianco’s latest “de-cluttered” approach is best. 
 
While some of the tests might be merged at some point (e.g. the separate tests for change authority and delegation authority; and certain kinds of financial crises), for now more and crisper specificity, in my opinion, is critical.
 
As a number of participants have noted from time to time about accountability, this transition is the ONE chance to get it right. 
 
(BTW, the BC’s idea of stress tests has received significant support in the overall community over the last year plus -  so to not pursue it as proposed to the community would be to ignore community input in that respect. Moreover, our CCWG charter tells us how to do scenarios, and we should adhere to that charter.)
 
ICANN’s board today is comprised of people of accomplishment, honor, and dedication to the best interests of the Internet – but that state of affairs is not guaranteed – and the transition is forever. 
 
If there is to be any winnowing of the list, or any merging of tests, let’s reserve that until after the Singapore F2F, when this group will may have had sufficient time and discussions to have developed a realistic sense of what tests are needed.
 
I have been reading through some recent IRP panel decisions and Reconsideration Requests and come away from that process thinking that any community member with a grievance today has a mighty tall (nearly impossible) climb ahead of them to make the case, or even get documents to fully understand what happened. 
 
In that process, I kept in mind that one significant Board step of recent years was to formally NARROW the scope of review of Board action. David Maher covered that bylaws change well in Circle ID last year: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20140829_accountability_and_redress/
 
All of this work is important – coming up with the right mechanisms for objective accountability, and creation of a binding appeals mechanism.  The process for testing the ultimately chosen mechanisms should be inclusive at this stage. 
 
David McAuley
 
-----Original Message-----
From: accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org [mailto:accountability-cross-community-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Rickert
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2015 12:14 PM
To: Accountability Cross Community
Subject: [CCWG-Accountability] WA4 and next steps

Dear all,
as you know, WA 4 is working on a list of contingencies that we need to address when working on accountability mechanisms. This work is still in progress and we will surely discuss the individual items on the list in Frankfurt to then make a determination as to whether the list is complete and whether all items that are currently on the list are in scope of our work.

While this work is going on, we recommend that either WA4 or other individuals start going through the list of contingencies (as well as contingencies that you think should be on the list, which are not yet there) and start analyzing whether these contingencies are already being taken care of by existing accountability mechanisms or work previously done by ICANN (and its community). Such analysis will help us to better understand whether the list is complete and accurate.

The outcome of this analysis can be the following:

- A determination is made that the contingency is adequately addressed by an existing mechanism. In this case, we would conclude that no further work needs to be done on this item by this group and write a rationale to explain this.

- A determination is made that the contingency is not adequately addressed by an existing mechanism. In this case, we would need to define what is missing and write that as part of our report. As we move on, we will then see what needs there are and analyze those. As an outcome of that analysis, we will potentially need to amend one or multiple existing accountability mechanisms or, where that proves insufficient or not feasible, establish new accountability mechanisms. Ideally, we would be able to cluster additional demand to ensure that we need to make as few changes / inventions as possible by coming up with responses that each cover multiple issues.

We will discuss this during tomorrow’s call, but we would like to encourage you to review the current list and pick one or more contingencies that you would volunteer to work on.

Thanks,
Mathieu, León and Thomas