Personal Comment on Enhancing ICANN Accountability.

[Avri Doria <avri@xxxxxxx>]

Writing from a personal perspective.

I believe that the Accountability and Transparency Reviews (ATRT) that
originated with the Affirmation of Commitments (AOC) are the foundation
on which other accountability mechanisms should be built.  I also
believe that the accountability mechanisms need to be strengthened and
improved.

I think the first requirement for improved accountability is the full
implementation of the recommendations of the completed current AOC
reviews.  Creation of new accountability mechanisms should
be parallel to the task of completing the work that has already been
recommended by the ATRT2. The current and future work should not be used
as a reason not to implement improvements that have already been
recommended.  In any case where the Board or Staff feels a
recommendation cannot be implemented, that issue should be brought back
to the community for further discussion and refinement.

In addition to this, I recommend the following:

1. Broadening the basis of the AOC though additional MOUs between ICANN,
democratic governments, and global INGOs, e.g. those with full ECOCSOC
consultative status.

2. Modifying the membership of the ATRT for greater organizational
parity and for rotating government seats and global INGO seats on the
ATRT among the signatories of MOUs.

3. Membership in future Accountability and Transparency Review Teams
(ATRT) should:

    a. be balanced among the ICANN community - for example
by a formula that requires every supporting Organization or Advisory
Committee to contribute at minimum 2 persons and at maximum 5 persons,

    b. selection of members should be at the discretion of the
respective Supporting Organizations (SO) and Advisory Committees (AC).

    c. The chair, or another member selected by the review team of each
of the most recent AOC review teams should be invited to join the ATRT
as an observer in order to insure that the ATRT has all the information
needed to review the follow-up on the other AOC reviews.

    d. Invited experts for any of the AOC review teams should be at the
discretion of the review team members.  They should not be preselected
by the staff, the Board or the GAC.

4. ATRT members should have confidential but open access to all ICANN
internal documentation and should be empowered to recommend the
declassification of items that have not yet been made available to the
community.  All embargoed ICANN information should be tagged with a time
when it will be made public.

5. The special community group discussions recommended in the ATRT2
report on improvements in the Independent Review mechanisms should be
initiated as soon as possible.  One of the minimal goals of these
discussions should be the creation of an external appeals mechanism that
could produce binding decisions as allowed under California and other
applicable law in keeping with its charter as a public interest corporation.

6. The creation of a mechanism by which the Chair of the Board could be
voted off the Board by a defined super-majority in the Supporting
Organizations (SO) and Advisory Committees (AC).

7. The creation of a mechanism by which the the entire board could be
voted off by a defined super-majority in the Supporting Organizations
(SO) and Advisory Committees (AC).

8. The creation of recall mechanisms for any elected Board Members, or
Supporting Organization council members or RALO elected ALAC members by
the SO or AC that elected them.

9. The creation of a recall mechanism for Board, Supporting Organization
Council members, and ALAC members selected by the Nomcom.


Thank You