[Comments-board-integrity-screening-02mar18] Uniform Board Member Integrity Screening Process

[Stephen Deerhake @ GDNS]

First, I wish to thank the Board for recognizing the importance of having Board members who exhibit only the highest level of integrity serve.  This is critically important now that ICANN is organized under the Empowered Community structure.  And overall, I support what the Board and ICANN Org are trying to achieve here.

I note that to date, as described in the Proposed Uniform Board Member Integrity Screening Process, that currently ALAC, the ASO, and the Nominating Committee engage in a screening process for their prospective Board members.  This leaves the ccNSO and apparently the GNSO as the outlying SO/AC’s that do not currently screen their prospective Board members.  I should also note that the ccNSO does not appoint their Board members, but instead, chooses them by a democratic process (i.e., a representative election process involving their members).  My remaining comments are based on my experience with the ccNSO’s procedures; I cannot address how the GNSO does things, as I am not sufficiently familiar with their processes to do so.


I have some concerns regarding this proposal as it now stands, and in particular, how it might impact Board member selections of the SO/AC’s that elect rather than appoint.

In its current form, the proposed screening process contains no objective criteria that would govern the disqualification of a prospective Board member.  What prior offences or life events are considered disqualifying for a Board member?  A brush with the law as a youth?  A personal bankruptcy?  Certainly, any offense related to financial irregularities would probably be high on the list of disqualifying offenses, but again, the proposal is silent.

Further, who decides what is a disqualifying offense? For those SO/AC’s that appoint rather than elect (specifically, those who do not elect via a wide-open membership election process that may include a candidates’ forum for the community, as we do in the ccNSO), I think the process is much simpler.  Especially so for the Nominating Committee, who are essentially free to apply whatever criteria they wish against their candidate pool, without risking reputational harm to the individuals within their candidate pool.  Candidates who fail their background checks I assume are simply dropped from the consideration process.

But how to carry out screening without risking reputational harm is much trickier if the Board member is elected by an SO/AC.  At what point in the election process is the integrity screening performed?  Once a candidate is nominated (and seconded, in the case of ccNSO procedures) and thus is publicly known to be interested?  After the election?  And if after the election, who does the vetting, and who makes the decision regarding the newly elected Board member’s fitness to be on the Board?  The SO/AC Council?  ICANN Org?  Or the Board itself?  None of these thorny issues are addressed by this proposal.

And most dangerous of all, under this proposal, given its ambiguity, it is entirely possible that procedures may be adopted that would set up the possibility that SO/AC elections for Board members could be nullified after the fact, by arbitrary action based on subjective criteria.  And that, in my view, is extremely dangerous for the Empowered Community.

Stephen Deerhake