[council] Blog: An Update From the May 2016 ICANN Board Workshop in Amsterdam

[Bruce Tonkin <Bruce.Tonkin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

From:    
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/the-chairman-s-blog-an-update-from-our-may-2016-workshop-in-amsterdam

The Chairman's Blog: An Update From the May 2016 Board Workshop in Amsterdam

Three times a year, between ICANN meetings, the ICANN Board meets in a workshop 
format. During these intensive workshops, the Board, supported by senior ICANN 
team members, comes together for in-depth consideration of important and timely 
ICANN issues. On behalf of the Board, Markus Kummer and George Sadowsky report 
on our recent meeting, 13-15 May in Amsterdam.


This meeting took place at a critical time for ICANN and the Board. We welcomed 
our incoming CEO and President Göran Marby to his first workshop, as well as 
Becky Burr, our Board member-in-waiting who is taking over Bruce Tonkin's seat 
at the end of ICANN57 in October. We were delighted to have them both with us.

As you can imagine, we focused on topics related to the IANA Stewardship 
Transition.  We received an update from ICANN management on the status of the 
transition and all its various parts - including the status of implementation 
pre-planning for Post Transition IANA (PTI) and the contracts and Service Level 
Agreements (SLA) with our partners.

We devoted one session to understanding the new Bylaws and the public comments 
received thus far.  We've been paying careful attention to this critical area, 
to ensure that the Board is ready to vote on them after the Public Comment 
closes.

While we focused on the elements leading up the transition, we also devoted 
time to understanding the work of the organization post-transition. How does 
the transition affect what we do and how we do it? How do we bring the core 
values into ICANN and the organization? How do we communicate and engage 
differently as a post-transition ICANN? This is part of an ongoing discussion 
that the Board takes seriously - it's our responsibility to make sure we, and 
the organization, are ready for the future.

As part of looking to the future, we asked Göran to share his early 
observations about the organization, as well as his initial approach, 
priorities and plans. While we will leave it to Göran to talk about this once 
he formally takes over later this month, this discussion led us to think about 
the various roles and responsibilities of the ICANN Board, ICANN management, 
and the ICANN community in a post-Transition world. We also talked about ways 
to structure Board-CEO communications, to best serve the organization and the 
community going forward.

We've all been talking about trust lately, and the workshop gave the Board an 
opportunity to take a hard look at what we can do to build trust between ICANN 
as an organization and all of its stakeholders. This is also an ongoing 
discussion, and one that we all have a stake in. During the workshop, we 
considered concrete steps that the Board could take to increase our 
transparency and accountability. We agreed to post the transcripts and/or 
recordings of our deliberative sessions and, as a result of this discussion, 
passed a resolution asking Göran and his team to develop a plan for the 
implementation of this new procedure, also making sure that we respect 
confidentiality, as necessary. We know there is a lot of interest in our 
meetings and discussions, and we look forward to reviewing Göran's proposal in 
Helsinki.

In addition to a detailed review of the Draft FY17 Budget, we discussed the 
status of KSK Rollover planning and the planning underway to anticipate and 
mitigate associated risks. We discussed the current efforts to update ICANN's 
Expected Standards of Behavior, and also looked at the Draft Framework of 
Principles for Cross Community Working Groups.

Our agenda for this Workshop was ambitious, and we didn't get to everything on 
the agenda. For example, we had planned to discuss ICANN's volunteer model, 
including the volunteer pool, volunteer fatigue, and ways to help our growing 
community work together more effectively.  We will pick this up at our next 
opportunity.

We also held a formal Board meeting (you can find the formal details on our 
Board page) and a range of Committee meetings, from Audit, Risk and Finance to 
Governance and Organizational Effectiveness. The Board meeting included a 
lengthy discussion about the location of ICANN57 and the challenges we all saw 
in staying and in relocating. Akram sums up our collective feelings well in his 
blog. We are all very sorry not to be going to Puerto Rico this October, but 
are very much look forward to getting back there soon.