My nominee for "possibly the greatest example you will see of accountability and transparency failings"

["Metalitz, Steven" <met@xxxxxxx>]

While I fully support Kieren McCarthy's recent post (I follow the new
gTLD process very closely and still had to delve far into the
"Recommendation 6" document before finding out what this report was
about), I do not think this communications lapse can compare with the
fact that ICANN chooses the majority of its Board of Directors through a
process that lacks all transparency and accountability -- the Nominating
Committee.  

I have been deeply involved in the selection of one member of each
Nominating Committee since this process began (the Intellectual Property
Constituency -- selectee, I suppose, since it cannot be called
representative or delegate).   I don't have the slightest idea about
whether these people have done a good, bad or indifferent job in this
post.  To me this is the epitome of lack of accountability.  

As to transparency -- well, there is none.  One small piece of evidence
for this is the fact that, when the successful candidates were revealed
to the world on September 7, ICANN's posting stated  "Biographies of
these individuals will be posted soon." 

Today, eighteen days later, I was advised by ICANN staff:

" Biographies of the nominees selected by the 2010 Nominating Committee
have not been posted as we are following up with a few nominees on their
bios. We hope to post bios of all the selected nominees in early
October. "
The fact that the Nominating Committee does not deem it very important
to inform the community promptly about the results of its work, beyond
the list of names, indicates to me a complete lack of concern about
transparency.  One wonders, too, about a process that purports to vet
candidates but apparently does not gather enough biographical
information about them to post at the end of the process.  

Steve Metalitz