Background
Working Group 2 will prepare a statement encapsulating the views of the At-Large community on “the future structure and governance of ICANN”. This is a major current initiative of ICANN, referred to as the “Improving Institutional Confidence” process.
More than two years ago, the President's Strategy Committee (PSC) commenced a series of consultations on how to strengthen and complete the ICANN multi-stakeholder model. In addition, the recent midterm review of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the United States Department of Commerce and ICANN produced useful comments about ICANN's performance and future. More information about this process may be found at:
http://www.icann.org/en/jpa/iic/improving-confidence-revised.htm
Comments responding to documents prepared by the PSC, and specifically concerning “Improving Institutional Confidence, where organized in 5 focus areas:
- Capture
- Accountability
- Globalization
- Financial and Operational Security
- Security and Stability
Working Group 4 is tasked with addressing “ICANN Transparency and Accountability”.
The Working Group 5 is tasked with addressing “DNS Security Issues within ICANN's Remit”
To avoid (as much as possible) overlap with these other working groups, WG2 will concentrate its work on the following 3 items:
- Capture
- Globalization
- Financial and Operational Security
During the last ICANN meeting in Cairo, ALS representatives had an in person meeting with PSC members and since then, At-Large participants have attended conference calls with PSC members participating.
Meanwhile, Working Group 2 began its work – prior to the Mexico ICANN meeting and our ALS Summit held concurrently with the meeting, and also prior to the most recent revision of the PSC document ”Improving Institutional Confidence in ICANN” due out before the Mexico meeting. That revision, posted the 27 of February 2009, is available at:
http://www.icann.org/en/jpa/iic/draft-iic-implementation-26feb09-en.pdf
As At-Large members, we are one of the newer stakeholder groups, having had a long and difficult history to reach where we find ourselves today. We are strong participants and supporters of ICANN's multi-stakeholder model.
1. Safeguarding against capture
At-Large suggests the following definition of “Capture”:
Capture is defined in terms of a decision or a group of decisions taken by a sole party, or when an organization ends up acting systematically to favor particular vested interests.
So, for example, if one entity, interest, or group of interests has undue or out-of-proportion pressure, influence or control over ICANN, or any structural subdivision of ICANN, or any decision or group of decisions made within ICANN may be considered to have been captured.
There are different possible ways to capture ICANN. Included among them would be capture of the organization, or capture of the policy making process. Capture may be full or partial, subtle or overt. The capturer could be a person, private or public entity, government, group of governments, or an international organization. The examples given are not intended to be exhaustive.
Recommendations:
At-Large suggests the following actions as safeguards against capture:
- maintain easily accessible open public forums for all meetings.
- retain the multi-stakeholder model
- broaden participation of all stakeholders
- give special attention to end-user participation
- broader involvement by all communities
- solicit, maintain and address the concerns of all constituencies
- stakeholder education and explanation regarding ICANN and its structures
- stakeholder education and explanation regarding the ICANN policy making-process
- (better) facilitate participation in multiple languages
- creation of simple documents (translated into different languages), and/or document summaries and abstracts, to facilitate greater participation (also discussed under “internationalization” below)
- allow sufficient time for outreach and community feedback and comment
- protocol for reporting and investigation claims of capture or attempted capture
- a regular performance review process, to include risk analysis and consideration of complaints and investigations, to ensure the safeguards are actually working
Institutional confidence is a result of the ability to meaningfully participate
Potential conflict of interests and non-disclosed interests of ICANN participants implicate capture concerns. Should, for example, a single individual be entitled to participate within ICANN wearing different hats? Each individual has the potential to speak on behalf of:
- Oneself, as an individual end-user
- One's organization (e.g., group of end-users)
- One's company or employer, as a business end-user or any other business having an interest in the ICANN process (e.g., registries, registrars, brand owners)
- One's country
- One's religion, tribe, or culture
- One's moral, political or philosophical bent
At-Large suggests that participants be required to (1) disclose all (non-personal) affiliations and (2) state, fully and without reservation, on whose behalf the participant is acting. The ICANNWiki could be a good tool for facilitating affiliation disclosures.
Capture is also implicated by voting and structure participation. At-Large encourages multi-participation but suggests consideration of the following restrictions concerning voting and/or structure participation:
1. Restriction on Voting Rights:
i. One vote per person for each structure in which the person participates. If a person is a participant within more than one ICANN structure, that person would remain eligible to vote once in each of the structures; or
ii. One vote per person within the whole of ICANN, irrespective of the number of ICANN bodies the person participates in. If a person is a participant within more than one ICANN structure, that person would have to elect which structure she or he would vote in.
2. Restriction on Multiple Roles: A person cannot be elected or appointed to more than one ICANN body with voting rights.
A majority of Working Group 2 participants favored the restriction on voting rights expressed in paragraph 1.2 above and agreed with the restriction on multiple roles expressed in paragraph 2 above.
Capture is also implicated by lack of accountability on the part of ICANN and the Board to issues raised by At-Large. Working Group 2 participants expressed the perception that issues raised by ALes were either not being listened to or that there was no indication from the Board that the ALSes concerns were being heard. At-Large suggests a mechanism be put in place, similar to that in place with the GAC, requiring the Board to provide some kind of response or feedback to issues raised by At-Large.
Also expressed was that At-Large should have a more substantial way of influencing Board discussion and decisions. This could be through direct elections of Board members and would be in line with the final draft of the Independent ALAC Review document.
or
ii. One vote per person within the whole of ICANN, irrespective of the number of ICANN bodies the person participates in. If a person is a participant within more than one ICANN structure, that person would have to elect which structure she or he would vote in.
2. Restriction on Multiple Roles: A person cannot be elected or appointed to more than one ICANN body with voting rights. A majority of Working Group 2 participants favored the restriction on voting rights expressed in paragraph 1.2 above and agreed with the restriction on multiple roles expressed in paragraph 2 above.
Capture is also implicated by lack of accountability on the part of ICANN and the Board to issues raised by At-Large. Working Group 2 participants expressed the perception that issues raised by ALSes were either not being listened to or that there was no indication from the Board that the ALSes concerns were being heard. At-Large suggests a mechanism be put in place, similar to that in place with the GAC, requiring the Board to provide some kind of response or feedback to issues raised by At-Large.
Also expressed was that At-Large should have a more substantial way of influencing Board discussion and decisions. This could be through direct elections of Board members and would be in line with the final draft of the Independent ALAC Review document.
2. Further internationalization of ICANN
The Internet is a critical resource to all humanity. Given the economic and social importance globally of a safe and stable Internet, the process of internationalization of ICANN must:
- safeguard the global/worldwide role of ICANN regarding domain names and numbers identifiers;
- promote larger participation from all stakeholders globally.
At-Large agrees that governments should continue to play a role in the work of ICANN, but should not direct ICANN's functions or decisions. No government should capture ICANN. ICANN should continue to move in a direction such that U.S. influence in ICANN's work and decisions, whether real or just perceived, diminishes. While moving in this direction, ICANN needs to stay vigilant regarding the danger of capture by others.
At-Large already functions regularly in a very international environment. Our experiences can be useful to the larger ICANN community. We:
- regularly work in multiple languages, including in conference calls
- we produce documents in multiple languages
- we comprise real multi-regional bodies (i.e. ALAC, Ex-com, Secretariat coordination)
- the At-Large Summit is fully tri-lingual
The internationalization of ICANN needs to address, respect and accommodate not only language issues, but also issues arising from cultural diversity.
ICANN has made good initial progress in producing important documents in the main UN languages. At-Large believes ICANN should go further to make a summary of all the ICANN documents available in English and in all the UN languages. In our view, having more summary documents translated is better than having some full documents translated. At the same time ICANN should encourage the preparation of original documents in languages other than English and arrange for the translation of these non-English documents as well.
Translations must be prepared in a timely manner with the goal of having the same document available in all languages at the same time, as opposed to the non-English versions lagging the English language versions.
At-Large members expressed the view that ICANN should make a greater effort to geographically diversity its organs, staff and activities. One way to accomplish this would be to have important ICANN functions and responsibilities split among various regions, languages and cultures:
- Headquarters
- Chair of the Board
- Vice-Chair of the Board
- President and CEO
- Vice-presidents
- Chairs of the SO/AC
- Oversight by?
- Bureaus
- Staff
The splitting of functions and responsibility, however, should not be done in a way that would result in inefficiencies or duplication of effort. ICANN must also remain vigilant concerning the efficient use of its resources (topic 3 below).
More activities (to be determined) could be managed from outside the USA, through secretariats, for example, located in different geographic regions of the world.
Also discussed was the possibility of having ICANN comprised of a number of sub-entities or affiliated entities, each being a national of, or having a presence in, a nation state within one of the five ICANN regions. It was pointed out, however, that this would cause ICANN to become the subject of multiple and likely conflicting national laws and regulations, burdening ICANN and hampering its work.
During the process of internationalization, ICANN should avoid developing a burdensome bureaucracy of the type encountered among U.N. organizations. ICANN should remain flexible in order to accomplish its important work.
3. Exploring alternative sources of funding
Diversification of funding sources:
- Does ICANN need this?
- What is the goal of a diversification of funding sources?
- Is the goal more sources or/and more resources?
One of At-Large's main concerns is how ICANN is allocating and monitoring resources and funding sources. Working Group 2 members felt ICANN should focus on using its current resources more efficiently, and that it implement a system that measures the effectiveness of its use of resources.
Currently, most of the funds are coming from the registrants (individuals and businesses).
There was some discussion of looking to those businesses who obtain substantial revenues from e-commerce as a source for additional ICANN revenues, but also expressed was the view that ICANN not attempt to levy activities not directly related to the DNS.
Any new funding should be without condition, express or implied. ICANN should have unfettered discretion in the manner it determines to use funds, for example, to subsidize improvements to infrastructure in areas that are economically disadvantaged.
If needed, what other funding sources could be acceptable to the individual end users?
And how will this change ICANN and its relationship with each and all the constituencies / stakeholders?
At-Large agrees that capture, internationalization and the continued funding of ICANN are among the more important governance issues now facing ICANN. The ideas and recommendations presented above are offered to assist ICANN to better navigate these concerns. At Large is prepared to work together with the other ICANN constituencies to address and solve these issues.
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[1]Members of the group
ALS Rep
Carlos Aguirre - LACRALO
Izumi Aizu - APRALO
Louis Houle - NARALO
Tommi Karttaavi - EURALO
Glenn McKnight - NARALO
Antonio Medina Gomez - LACRALO
Sivasubramanian Muthusamy - APRALO
Jose Ovidio Salgueiro - LACRALO
Aislan Vargas - LACRALO
Mathias Altamira - LACRALO
Mamonia Niangl - AFRALO
Adam Salazar - LACRALO
Chung L.Liu - APRALO
Ting-Yun Chi - APRALO
Jose Luis Barzallo - LACRALO
Fernando Maresca - LACRALO
Non ALS
Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond - Europe
Cheryl B. Preston - NARALO
Joung Im Kim - APRALO
Samantha Eisneer - ICANN
Rapporteur: Seth Reiss - NARALO
Vice-Chair: Sylvia Herlein Leite - LACRALO
Chair: Sebastien Bachollet - EURALO
Glossary
ALAC - At-Large Advisory Committee (Also referred as At-Large)
ALS - At-Large structure
ICANN - The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
IDNs - Internationalized Domain Names
GNSO - Generic Names Supporting Organization
RALO - Regional At-Large organization
IGO - Inter Governmental Organizations