Improving ICANN's accountability [comments of Shawn Gunnarson]
Comments on "Questions to the Community on Accountability and Transparency within ICANN" public comment period. Submitted by ICANN Staff on behalf of Shawn Gunnarson -------------------------------------------------- Improving ICANN's accountability Members of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team should be complimented for their efforts to gauge the opinions of ICANN constituents regarding the organization's performance in terms of accountability and transparency. They have raised important questions that deserve wide and thorough debate. Attached is a white paper that I hereby submit in response to the call for public comment. Below is a summary of the arguments made in that paper. The DNS White Paper established the principles of stability, competition, and private-sector-led DNS management as the gold standard for DNS governance. ICANN is struggling to achieve that standard, however, and a dramatic change in direction may need to be considered. ICANN's weak accountability, transparency, and legitimacy are depriving it of the institutional confidence it needs. Solving this problem without harming ICANN's capacity to act effectively has proven to be a daunting challenge. In the attached white paper, entitled "A Fresh Start for ICANN," I propose a different set of solutions from those tried in the past. For ICANN to exemplify the principles set forth in the DNS White Paper, its corporate structure should be redesigned to ensure accountability. That new structure and ICANN's fundamental commitments should be reduced to a written charter and presented to a representative body of ICANN constituents for ratification. Key provisions of the charter should include: * Limit ICANN's authority to the narrow mission of performing the technical management and coordination of the Internet DNS. ICANN's powers need to be held within the narrow technical purposes for which it was created to prevent mission creep, where ICANN tries to resolve matters over which it has no authority. * Put ICANN's core obligations from the Affirmation of Commitments into the Charter, to give those obligations greater permanency. Require ICANN to maintain the security and stability of the Internet DNS without qualification or trade-off. * Enumerate and check the powers of the board of directors. Board decisions need to be subject to reversal, not merely reconsideration. Board members should be bound by the charter and the (revised) bylaws and removable if unfaithful to them. * Remove the president as an ex officio member of the board of directors. Make him independent of the board, instead, with power to veto decisions that are manifestly inconsistent with the charter and bylaws. * Create corporate members of record, place directors under fiduciary duties to those members, and authorize the members as a body to remove any director found to have violated the charter or bylaws. * Restrain ICANN's budget growth to 10% per year and its net uncommitted assets to the total annual budget of four years before. Require excess revenues to be redistributed for infrastructure and security improvements, WHOIS and contract compliance, and remote meeting facilities and a travel allowance for participation in ICANN's meetings and proceedings by ICANN constituents from developing countries. * Establish a Board of Review with authority to adjudicate disputed decisions of the board of directors and to reverse them if repugnant to the charter or bylaws. * Make bylaws subject to amendment by a 2/3 vote of the board of directors and the charter subject to amendment by a 2/3 vote of all members of record. Thank you for taking these views into consideration. Sincerely, R. Shawn Gunnarson Kirton & McConkie Attachment:
ICANN-White Paper-Shawn-Gunnarson.pdf |