ICANN Nairobi
Affirmation of Commitments
Monday, 8 March 2010

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I intend starting on time.  Can people
please be aware that we are starting on time.

Thank you.

>> Ladies and gentlemen, for those of how are here for the affirmation
meeting, would you please move to the center section so that our
speakers can talk directly with you.

Again, if you are here for the Affirmation of Commitments, please move
to the center section.

Thank you so much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon.  We
are about to begin.

My name is Peter Dengate Thrush, I am the chairman of the board of
ICANN, and my co-presenter today is Ambassador Janis Karklins,
chairman of the Government Advisory Committee.

What we propose to do is, first of all, take you through a set of
slides that explains some of the history and the processes and where
we are.  And then we will move forward into a discussion with the
community about next steps, where do we go to from here to make these
reviews the success that we require them to be.

I wonder if you could just rotate that for me slightly so I can see
that.  Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen in the room, we also have about 55, possibly now
about 60 people in the online room, and we will be making sure that
they are also participating at the same time as we, physically
present, are.

So we will have to work in relation to taking questions.

Let me introduce Rob Hoggarth, who is the senior policy director at
ICANN, who is managing the chat room and the online connectivity.

So we'll be asking Rob occasionally to come forward with questions
from that.

So looking at the slide, we are going to work through the affirmation
requirements themselves, have a brief discussion about the processes
we have employed to date.  We will talk about applications for review
team membership, some timelines, and we will be focusing today on the
first of the reviews, the accountability and transparency review.

This is a major step for us in relation to achieving or seeking, and
I'm not sure we will ever achieve it, much greater transparency and
accountability.

You will recall much of this work came out of the work done in terms
of global consultation by ICANN through the President's Strategy
Committee with the community under the heading improving institutional
confidence.

And one of the major themes that came from that which is reflected in
the final report of the President's Strategy Committee is the need for
improving transparency and for accountability.

Much of that work is moved into the Affirmation of Commitments, and we
are now testing the transparency and accountability section.

As you probably know, we are looking at reviews to be performed by
teams composed of volunteer members of our community, some independent
experts, and some designated members set out in the Affirmation of
Commitments itself.

An important point to note is that the board and staff are not
involved in performing these reviews.

Now, let's just put that in the right context.  The Affirmation of
Commitments is a major contract or agreement between ICANN and the
United States government, and the board is responsible for making sure
that its commitments under the Affirmation of Commitments are met.

So the board is paying close attention to the performance of these,
and also to the subject matters that are actually being examined.

Those are identified by the President's Strategy Committee as areas
needing work, and so the board is developing a program to make sure
that the work gets done.  So that when it is reviewed, it meets the
appropriate standards.

Just a quick reminder, there are actually four reviews:
accountability and transparency; security, stability, resilience;
consumer trust and choice; and WHOIS.  And today, we are focusing on
just the first one.

There's some slight -- There's some existing structure suggested -- or
required, rather, by the Affirmation of Commitments.  Looking just at
the transparency and accountability one on the left, you see that it
involves, as named members, the chairman of the GAC, the board chair,
a representative from the U.S. Department of Commerce, representatives
of the relevant SO's, and some independent experts.  So that's what
the Affirmation of Commitments prescribes as being the composition of
the team.

And in the bottom box, um see that the GAC chair and the board chair
are responsible for selecting that team.

Now, we have had a process where a very good, in my opinion, set of
proposals was put together by our director of reviews, Marco
Lorenzoni, who is here.

Marco, would you stand up?  I think it's appropriate that we
acknowledge the excellent work that went into the proposals that were
published.

Responding to that were 32 public comments that raised, in general,
issues under these headings, and we may come back to these when we
discuss next steps.  Questions about the methodology to be adopted,
the timeline, the size and composition, voting rights of Janis and I,
the independence of the review teams, the support that would be
provided those teams.  Should the ICANN staff be supporting us or
should something independent be arrived at?  And when we talk about
the "public interest," what do we mean.

So where are we?  Well, we have had a discussion paper.  It's gone
out.

We have had -- We have no plans to rewrite that.  The comments that
came in raised questions around it.

The review teams, again, to use that original proposal and the public
comments for their purposes.  The trend seems reasonably clear that
the review teams themselves will decide their methodologies.  They
will select what is appropriate depending on each of the reviews, as
necessary by way of tools and indications.

They will decide, with assistance, in relation to what kind of
staffing they require, what data analysis they are going to perform
and so on.

We have had a substantial coordination with the support organizations
and the advisory committees in relation to memberships, because that's
where the memberships need to come from.  Considerable time pressure
imposed on the entire review.  It has to be completed so we have to
start quickly.  We have extended the time as a result of requests from
the community.

We have gotten candidates.  We are in the process now of processing
their applications.  And as of last night, when the area for
nomination or application closed, this was the breakdown of
candidates.  24 have applied.  They come, as you can see, from the at-
large, the ccNSO, the Governmental Advisory Committee, and the GNSO.

If you are interested, a further breakdown shows by country.  Europe,
Asia-Pacific, Latin America, North America, and Africa.

Bottom right-hand corner you see the gender breakdown.  Five women and
19 men.

Further discussion then about the timeline.  I don't think we need to
have that.

We now are in the process of establishing the review teams and, with
luck, we will have that, if Janis and I can carry on the cooperation
that we have started in the same way we hope to have that announced in
the board meeting on Friday.

So that brings us up-to-date.  And we now come to you for community
discussion and questions about next steps.

So I will ask Janis, then, to lead us in the discussion, if you want
to say anything else about the process to date, Janis, do.  Next
steps.

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Thank you, Peter.

I wanted maybe to come back a little bit and to answer to some
criticism what I heard from different quarters on a couple of issues
during the process.  And that the review methodology and the call for
applications at one point went in parallel.

And it was -- the call for applications was perceived as an attempt to
prejudge the outcome of public consultations on draft methodology.

And I must tell you that it has never been intended to prejudge
anything in public comments on proposed methodology.  Rather than
taking into account the time constraints, we felt that it would be
useful to publish this call for -- call for volunteers as early as we
could.  And if you read very carefully the text of these called-for
proposals, it did not allude either to the size of the team nor
composition of the team nor proportions between different constituents
of the team.

So this was done simply to speed up the process.  And the process now
showed that supporting organizations, Advisory Committees needed more
time to think through and to propose names for these review teams.

I think, Peter, it would be useful to, before the launch debate and
answering collecting comments and questions, to say that during the
comment period, it became abundantly clear that the proposed size of
the team, six to eight members for accountability and transparency
team, is far too little.  And we have had several discussions with
Peter, and we are looking in the range of 12 to 15 members for this
team.  And we would be very willing to hear your comments, whether you
think that this is the right size and right -- these are right
numbers.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Let me give you an insight into the dynamics
of our discussion.  I am the mean one because every person we add to
the team is going to make a significant impact to the budget.  We are
going to have to move these people around, provide them with services.
I also share the view that a smaller team will be more efficient.  And
Janis and I are working through issues.  Obviously, greater geo
diversity, gender diversity and skills is a countervailing factor.
Where we get the balance between that, we haven't yet decided.

The other thing that may affect that, of course, is the skill sets of
the team members themselves.  And we have only just started being able
to look at that now that the application process has closed.

So that's a very live debate between Janis and I at the moment, and I
suppose it would be quite good to hear from the people online.  If
there is, somebody, Rob, or from the floor.  Whether there is further
input -- and please, if you have already made a public comment, don't
repeat it.  We have read the public comments and we understand the
point.  We look forward to taking that issue a bit further.

Rob, somebody online?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   Yes.  I would quickly observe, Peter, that we pretty
much have an even distribution.  We have about 75 people here in
person and 77 people online right now.

Eric Brunner Williams asks, has the issue of whether or not the NomCom
makes appointments been resolved?  And if so, what is the resolution
of the question?

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Yeah, I think that there isn't problem.

The call for volunteers was for everybody.  And until yesterday,
everybody could make nominations.

As we see today, noncom hasn't done it, and therefore there will not
be nomCom memory.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Is calls for ACs and SOs, and the NomCom is
neither, so there's a short, technical response.

Somebody from the floor?

>>Sébastien Bachollet:  Thank you, there is trouble for the people to
take the notes and speaking in French.  I will do it in English,
unfortunately.  Sébastien Bachollet, from France.  And I am speaking
on my own behalf.

I have one question.  Is the pie of the candidates for this review
team, you put that they are from ALAC, GNSO, ccNSO.  Is it that they
are willing to be put by this -- those groups?  Or is it they are
already supported by those groups?  Because I think it's a different
issue, because you can have somebody claiming that they want to be
supported, or if they are supported, it's something different.

The other point I want to make, it's just a little personal question
that now you think that it's not eight, but it may be 12 or 15.  Don't
you think that it could change the position of some people to be
candidates?

Thank you very much.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Sébastien, thank you for those two questions.
Let me ask Marco to respond to the mechanics of member applications
and authentications.

>>MARCO LORENZONI:   So the deadline has expired yesterday night at
midnight UTC.  So at this stage, out of those 24 candidates, only
three have been supported.  They are the three that have been
supported immediately by the GAC.

So all the other candidates have been to the relevant supporting
organizations and advisory committees.  And they have until the 17th
of March to decide whether they want to endorse those candidates.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Marco.

>>JANIS KARKLINS: Answering Sebastian's second question, when we made
a call for nominations, we never alluded to a potential number,
because it was felt that it would be community who should, let's say,
define the size of the team.

The comment period on draft methodology ended 17th February.  And in
these comments, it was absolutely clear that the team would be not, as
suggested, 6 to 8, but, rather, bigger numbers were mentioned.  It
went up to 30.

So, therefore, I don't think that if initial proposal would say 12,
15, we would have more candidates.  So this is just pure speculation.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Rob, should we go to the online room?
Nothing right now.

>>ALAN GREENBERG:   Alan Greenberg.  It's encouraging to hear that in
light of the various comments, you have reconsidered the size of the
team.

It would be incredibly useful to the various ACs and SOs to know how
many members they will have on the team prior to their making the
selection.  Are we likely to have that information?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Sorry.  How many -- how many --

>>ALAN GREENBERG:   Well, the original proposal called for, for
instance, one GNSO rep.  If you're increasing the size of the overall
team, presumably some of those will go from one to some higher number.
It would be good to know what that number is prior to us submitting
our endorsements.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Why?  We're going to be selecting people,
not slots.

>>ALAN GREENBERG:   Because we will have to select amongst people, and
our results may well be different if we know we're only going to have
one or if we know we will have two, for instance.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I think we have a misunderstanding.  We've
asked for nominations.  We're now going to be looking at the people.
We're not going to be -- come back to that one.

>> Can I help?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes, please.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   I think the point is this.  And perhaps the
easiest example is -- actually, the ALAC will do as an example.

So there are eight people who have put their names forward.  You are
now asking, as I understand it, the ALAC to endorse, or otherwise,
those eight -- some or all of those eight people.  Now, if the ALAC
knows that you only require one person, they might endorse two or
three.  If they know that you require two or three, they might endorse
four or five.

So what you're actually asking them to do is to endorse a number of
those.  They may decide, for example, only to endorse two.  Then what?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I don't understand the game-playing.

We want you to endorse all of the -- why would you not endorse all of
the candidates coming forward from your group?

>>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   Well, in many cases, in excess of 50%, the
members who are seeking endorsement from the At-Large Advisory
Committee are unknown to us in any way, shape, or form beyond us
receiving their C.V.s and letters when Marco has sent them to us.  So
we're going to be going through a process where we are endorsing
people based on a set of criteria that we, as internal ACs have to
develop and defend to our communities.

Now, if we're getting one person, then that makes a vastly different
checklist and prioritization for our endorsement process.  There is no
system that we had in place to say anyone of the list of people who
wish to put in their bid to be appointed and they would like to
represent at large, there was no preexisting system for us to have
that done before the information on one or two -- the information on
one or two is very important.  And that's my point.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   My misunderstanding.  We assumed you would
relatively easily know who your community members were and be able to
provide authentication.  Thank you for the question.  I understand.

Rob, online?  No.  Let's go to Chris.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   I just want to make one point.  The -- the chair
of the GNSO, me as chair of the ccNSO, and the chair of the ALAC have
actually written formally to you to raise a number of points, only one
of which I'd like to address now, and that is that each of us has our
own extremely well-worn and extremely difficultly-put-together process
by which we find people to do stuff.  And to have imposed upon us a
completely different methodology which totally negates, in our case,
for example, our bylaws, is just -- just doesn't work for us.  We --
there are many reasons why you only have one nomination from the
ccNSO.  But the main one -- but the main reasons -- you know, one of
those reasons is because we simply -- we could not do what needed to
be done in the process that you put forward.

We can sit down on Wednesday and say, "Do we endorse that person?"
Not a problem.  But that's not the point.  The point is we have well-
worn geographic methodologies that we have in place.  And this process
has effectively abrogated all of those.

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Thank you, Chris.

Perfectly understand, because I am wearing the same hat as you do for
the GAC.  And I have exactly the same concern to ensure all the
balances, geographic, gender, and so on.

But the group itself also has to carry the same balances.  And this is
a little bit sort of cooperative approach, if you want, to get to the
right composition which ensures all balances.

I would hate, for instance, to see that all SOs/ACs endorse two or
three males from -- coming from developed countries.  So --  But
somebody needs to take this responsibility and to see that these
balances are in place in the entire group from the one side, and from
the other side, to see whether the skills of the people in the group
as a group that corresponds to the task this group is supposed to do.

And I understand from the affirmation of commitment that that is the
task of collectors.  And then our choice will be put for public
comments.

And that is how we understand endorsement by the SOs/ACs, the list.
This is according to Affirmation of Commitments.  The list will be a
place for public comment.  And when it will be endorsed, then it will
be final.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Okay.  One more thing.  I don't want to take this
too much further, because there's not too much to be achieved by it.
Thank you.  I acknowledge it.

The only point I would make is that the Affirmation of Commitments
doesn't provide any of the detail.  I mean, it makes -- you can make
some assumptions, and I accept that.  And one of those assumptions is
quite clearly that the selectors select.  I accept.

But I think there is, therefore, a misunderstanding, a clear
misunderstanding, if you can have such a thing.  We think that we are
supposed to support, endorse, whatever, representatives of our SO or
AC to be part of this review.  And we think it's our job, because we
do it all the time, to work out regional balances and gender balances
and the skill set.  It's no different, in some respects, to our
decision about who we put on the board.  We look at a whole heap of
things and make our decision.  And we're more than capable of doing
that.  And we would have been more than capable of doing that within
the very tight time frame, had we been asked.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thanks, Chris.  Just two quick responses.  I
think there is a distinction between representatives and -- that go
through your standard process and this, which is being treated as an
authentication process of volunteers.  So this is -- the second point
is, there are a hell of a lot of these reviews and they are going to
be coming up all the time.  Thank you for getting this one right.
Let's try to get it right for the next ones.

Rob, somebody online?

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   Thank you.

I actually have two questions that are relatively quick.  So I'll read
them in order, and you guys can address them.  Kristina ROSETTE, asks
where other than the ICANN Web site was the call for volunteers
published?  I've been asked and don't know the answer.

The second is from Jeff.  Is there a lives of all of those that
volunteered?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Let's turn to Marco to answer both those
questions.

Where was the call officially published?  I know it was unofficially
distributed by lots of people?

>>MARCO LORENZONI:   Yeah.  It was published on our Web site.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  And Jeff's question, are we
going to publish the names of all of the applicants?

>>MARCO LORENZONI:   I think this is intention.  We announced it
already in the call for volunteer applicants that all applications
will be published complete, including the letters of motivation.
(inaudible).

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   This side, Steve.

>> You mentioned earlier that you were considering some flexibility at
increasing the size of that first team.  And I think that makes sense.
So I assume by that that you read flexibility in the Affirmation of
Commitments with regard to the enumerated section, who from each SO
and AC and representatives.  You indicated that you were going to try
to pay attention to diversity and balance.  But my particular question
is the kind of balance we want to maintain.  For instance, if we were
to add another GAC or governmental rep to the first team, would we
also add one more for each of the SOs and ACs as the -- as the
affirmation agreement calls for?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   There's no flexibility in relation to the --
what's enumerated in the AoC.  But there is flexibility between Janis
and I in arriving at our selections.  I'm not sure that we would do it
on a strict pro rata basis.  Depends on, at this stage, for me,
personally, it's got to depend on the skill sets that are coming
through from the volunteers.

>> All right.  May I ask a follow-up, then.  Not with respect to the
team size.  But I think you heard earlier that the comments that came
in from many of us on, for instance, I did some expansion of defining
public interest, tried to suggest some definitions for that.

I think you said that those comments will be passed along to the
review team for them to deal with, for them to decide whether and how
to regard those as they come up with their terms of reference.

But the public interest definition that several of us focused on is
more than just the first team.  "Global public interest" shows up on
paragraph 4 of the AoC, long before we get into the board review
teams.  So it's a term that will affect the work of all the teams.
And so shouldn't we try to deal with a lot of our suggestions that
defining public interest before the first team starts rather than
letting the first team sort of pave the way?

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Do you have a suggestion on the process how this
discussion could be carried out and what would be the weight of that
discussion?  Yeah, and the timeline.

>> Not wanting to delay in any way the work of the first team, here's
one idea.

Since public interest is a cross-cutting -- cross-cutting is what we
say all the time at IGF; right -- it's a cross-cutting theme at all
the review teams, let's in parallel, while they're beginning their
terms of reference on team one, let's in parallel launch a period
where we try to define for ICANN, for all teams, what we think "global
public interest" means.  There was a lively debate on that on the
comments that came in.  And surprisingly, quite a few people agreed
with me.  I think we could potentially do that in parallel and feed
that first team so it comes from community wide.

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Would -- kind of cross-constituency working group,
ad hoc working group would be the solution?

>> I think that's the usual solution around here.  So I suppose so.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  This side.

>> This is Jaime Wagner.  I would like to -- your considerations about
the value of endorsement by the SOs.

As I understood from Janis's explanation, there will be a pre-
endorsement period and a post endorsement period after you, the
selectors, decide.

But I would like your comments on the pre-endorsement period.  Will
the names put by the SOs be -- the selectors will choose them, or they
will not count on the pre-endorsement?

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   No, understand that pre-endorsement is done only
by the GAC.  That others -- other constituencies haven't had to follow
this endorsement procedure before the nominations.  All these names
which have been put forward, they are individuals who are acting --
who have put forward those names and indicating that they would
represent that, and the constituency.

So in the GAC, we adopted a method of nonobjection when information
was passed on to the e-mail address indicated in the call, it was
copied also on the GAC mailing list, and nobody objected, and
automatically, the person or the name or candidate has been endorsed.

So whether all GAC endorsed candidates will be in the review team, I
don't know.  That's a subject of our discussion and the selection
process.  But --  And after that, according to the AoC, we will
publish that for public comment, our proposal, and endorsement for the
community -- for the SOs and ACs.

>>Jaime Wagner:  I'm asking for -- well, GNSO also has put a process
of pre-endorsement and selection of names to endorse.  And I think --
my question is, how is -- with respect to GNSO, how will the list be
considered by selectors?

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   With utmost care and consideration.

So I --  You see, this is slightly -- we cannot say how you will be
running.  So we will be talking tonight, we will be having debate.  We
will take all applications, we will read them carefully.  And so as a
result, we will come up with a proposal.

I don't know what chemistry will be.  Maybe we will not come up with a
proposal tonight.  Maybe we will sort of punch each other in the face.

Without agreement, it's hard to say.  We cannot answer -- at least I
cannot answer that question.

>> Thanks for the sincerity.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   What I can add to this is, I think there was
a very good -- one of the public comments said, please, would we
explain the selection thinking.  And I think we should try and do that
very clearly so that we won't just announce winners and losers.  What
I hope we will be able to do is explain why the people who have been
selected have been selected and why the people who haven't, haven't.
So perhaps that may pick up your point.

>> It still doesn't answer my question of the value of the pre-
endorsement by the GNSO, at least.  We are doing job.  We are taking
hours.  And I didn't see in your answer the kind of consideration that
will be done to this pre-endorsement by the GNSO, at least.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Okay.  Can I just have an indication about
the topics that you want to talk about?  Are we still on size and
composition?  And method of selection?  Or, Bill, have you got a new
topic?  Other things as well?  Same topic?

>> No, still on the same topic.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   New topic, okay.  So it looks like we're
coming to an end on this one, which is good.  Cheryl.

>>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   In fact, the first point, I hoped to clarify
what the speaker before me was asking.  As I interpreted his question
to you, the selectors -- I'll use the ALAC as an example -- we have
eight names, if we endorse six of them, are you only going to consider
the six endorsed candidates or not?  And I think that's the difference
about that terminology, pre-endorsement and the job you do once the
endorsed candidates come up.

So Marco's instructions to us was that the consideration would be
given to those people from the ALAC world who were given At-Large
Advisory Committee endorsement.  That is what we have been working on
the assumption of.

Now, I'd like to know, first of all, is that a correct assumption?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.

>>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   Thank you.  One thing down.  Great.

The next question -- and, again, it might be unique to the At-Large
Advisory Committee part of that pie chart.  We may be the only group
that's faced with quite literally not knowing who from the wider at
large, not ALAC, Joe, Fred, Mary in the street, and 50% of them are
unknown to us people, wishing to volunteer.  This is really important.
We would like to know how we leverage off these excellent skill sets
that they have without insulting or anything else, if we just endorse
half of them, perhaps only the ones who are known to us, what messages
-- we have to deal with the messages that sends to that community, the
potential results on the community.

So from what you were saying --

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Can I cut -- that's an ALAC issue.

>>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   I understand.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I'm not sure that we can help you with that.

>>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   You can by answering the next question.  And
that is, is it -- did I hear you correctly that there was an
assumption that we would pro forma endorse, by looking at the
applicants, all of those who, in our case, say they would like to
represent ALAC?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   That is my assumption, until you told me
that it was difficult.

>>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR:   It's just we need to know that when we sit in
session tomorrow to do these endorsements.

Thank you.

>> Following on to what Cheryl said, I was also reacting to the
statement that the assumption was we would endorse everyone.  And I
just want to make it well understood, we have candidates who
explicitly said, I've always wanted to get involved with ICANN.  This
seems like a good chance.

Given that these people are supposed to be representatives of us,
which the dictionary definition says can speak on our behalf, and we
don't know the rules of the working group yet, which may require
complete secrecy, to take someone who's -- you know, they'd like to
get involved in ICANN, and say, "You're now our representative and can
speak on our behalf," we're not really eager to do that.  So I just
want to make sure you understand the situation we're dealing with.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I do.  And I'm grateful, because I have been
operating under a reasonably different set of assumptions, that the
words "members of the volunteer community," which is what the
affirmation talks about, which means people who are known as existing
members of the community.  But your suggestion is they can be
absolutely brand-new, and as soon as they volunteer, they become
members of the volunteer community.

>> We have several people who have never participated in ICANN
whatsoever.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   So that raises the point --

>> In our list.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   -- at what point do they become eligible by
being members of the volunteer community.  These are things we needed
to work through.

>> Just wanted to do a level set of what the ex- -- what's happening.

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Maybe now I understood the meaning of the
question, two questions, before.  So, indeed, I notice in the list
that Marco was preparing -- but this was the first list, about ten
days ago -- there was indication of the choice of GNSO.  And as kind
of pre-endorsement, if you wish, using the same terminology.

But I would like to say, for me, that is very valuable.  And I will
consider those indications.  And that would be additional
consideration which I will take into account.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Bill S.

>>WILLIAM DRAKE:   Bill Drake from the GNSO.  One comment and then two
questions.  The comment would be, I would support this idea of a
working group on public interest and try to figure out what that
means, I think that would be very useful.  I'm not as confident,
perhaps, that we would be able to solve that really, really quickly.
I think that would take a few months, to be quite honest, because it's
a big conceptual point.  But I think it's a good one for us to tackle.

I want to echo what people are saying from the ccNSO and the ALAC.
The GNSO, we elaborated this whole mechanism about the communication
we were getting about how to proceed that required us to decide who we
were going to put forward, and it wasn't going to be all of them.  So
we've decided to nominate up to six names to give to you, and we have
ten applicants.  Our assumption, then, is that the four that are not
-- that don't pass muster within the council, we're not giving you
those names.  That is okay with you; right?  Just to be sure.  Okay.
That's the -- that's important to know.  Because we have to do this
tomorrow, starting.

The other point I wanted to raise was, we just had a lunch meeting
with the ccNSO.  The calling for applications sort of was written in a
way that invited applications for all the different review teams at
the same time.  So you've got a number of people who wrote in and
said, "I'm actually interested in the WHOIS," which is going to be
done much later.  And we had to basically put those aside and say,
we're only going to focus on the ones for accountability and
transparency right now.

You don't have in the pool altogether now sufficient bodies to do the
other review teams.  And also, there's going to be the need for some
specific skill sets.  So I just want to make clear, it is your
intention, I hope, to do another call specific to each of the new
rounds; right?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Yes.

>>WILLIAM DRAKE:   Okay.  Because we were just not clear on whether
that was happening.  We were interpreting it that way, but we didn't
know.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   We can be clear about that.  There will be
further calls as each -- as we start getting onto the other reviews.

Mr. Zuck.

>>JONATHAN ZUCK:   Yes, hello, Jonathan Zuck, association for
competitive technology.

I think part of the challenge associated with the selection of these
teams is that we may be giving them too much responsibility.  I'm a
little bit concerned that the process that's been put in place in a
rather hurried way sort of turns organizational management on its head
and that what we really need to do is not put them in the position of
defining the metrics for review that should be part of the objectives
for these teams, et cetera, that are going to be reviewed up-front.  I
think it's important for the community to define in each of these
cases what the metrics and measures for success are so that we instead
make the process that these review teams have to go through a much
more straightforward process than actually retroactively deciding what
should have been the management objectives of the teams being
reviewed.

That's the real danger that I see here, is that it's like, you know,
how long will the period be that these things are reviewed.  It's sort
of like will they manage to the test, like teaching for the
standardized tests?  Because once we've announced the criteria, that
will then become the management objectives of the organizations being
reviewed.

I think this is really putting the cart before the horse.  We need to
get back to basics and define those metrics before those review teams
are put in place and before they're given that mandate.

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Let me maybe tell you how I see the timetable and
the further tasks, which are described already in the methodology.

So once the team is constituted -- and I hope that that will be by end
of March.  So the first task of the team would be to decide or start
discussions on terms of reference and performance metrics.  And this
may take maybe a month.  And the draft terms of reference and
performance metrics will be published for community review for 45
days.  And it is expected that, according to current timetable, that
these terms of reference and the performance metrics will be endorsed
or adopted finally, whether right before Brussels meeting or around
Brussels meeting, when team will meet in person, but after extensive
public comment period and engagement with community.  So that is the
first, fundamental work of the team, engage community to define those
performance metrics.

And these performance metrics, in my view, does not -- or do not
determine the work of organization.  Organization is working.
Organization has its own operational plans and strategic plan, and
evaluation team will be looking into specific questions related to
accountability, transparency in this case, and then in other questions
for other teams.

So -- but I can assure you that the intention is that this is a
community effort to define performance -- performance metrics or
questions that we want to answer.

>> I guess in any other organization, if you had a bonus discussion
with your boss coming up at the end of the year and then sometime
around October, an outside review team came in and was going to define
what it is that -- the terms on which you would get your bonus, I
think you'd be a little bit disappointed as an employee, rather than
having the previous January being told what are the measures that are
going to be used to define your bonus.

The organization is going to be judged without objectives really
having -- objective objectives having been sets initially.  And I
think that's a really backward way --

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Jonathan, can I agree?  And I don't think
we've got this quite tied down yet.  You and I have agreed before in
public that what gets measured gets done.  We've also agreed that he
who defines the argument usually wins it.  So there's a great deal of
power involved in setting that.  And I'm concerned about sending off a
review team with only the prescriptions from the Affirmation of
Commitments as what they're going to study as their guide.  On the
other hand, we're dealing with, hopefully, reasonable people.  And the
countervailing argument is that if we set that up too tightly in
advance, we could be accused of capture of the process by the board
and staff who set that.

So somewhere in the middle there, we have to get a community way of
setting the metrics.  And then the team applying them.

And what Janis has outlined is our current best shot at that.  Let's
get the team together and let's have them run that process.  Let's
have them put up what they think the metrics are.  And let's have you
come back and tell them whether you think they've got that right
before the process.  Before -- they should be setting the metrics in
April.

>>JONATHAN ZUCK:   Will then only -- would the organization only be
judged from April until January?  What will be the terms of that
judgment?

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   Accountability -- accountability and transparency
issue is on the agenda of ICANN at least for two years, if I am not
mistaken.  The President's Strategy Committee, we had a number of
discussions about that.  There has been extensive public comment
period on the issue of accountability, transparency of ICANN.  And if
I'm not mistaken, board passed a resolution on that.

So for this particular case, I think there is already something to
measure if there is a board resolution.

>>JONATHAN ZUCK:   (Speaking off mic).

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I agree, and it worries me.  So we will try
and get this right.  Stephane -- Rob, sorry.  Let's go back to the
online room.

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   I would like to recognize two things real quickly,
Peter.  You are at your hour, but you did start late.  You have two
folks in line here.

I only have one comment or statement to read from the remote chat, so
maybe one or two more people want to get in line here, would be the
cutoff.

I'm sorry, I just lost my....

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   While you are looking, let me confirm, we
will go until at least until ten past.  The next session in here
doesn't start until 3:30, I understand.

>>ROB HOGGARTH: Great.  Kristina Rosette submitted an additional
comment.  She said:  Thanks very much for answering my question.  I
suggest that for the other review teams, ICANN publish the call in
other media that are likely to reach potential volunteers with
expertise relevant to those RT's.  It may be the case that the media
sources being used for the new gTLD communications plan could be used
for this purpose, too.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you.  Remember, we are looking for --
the requirement is for members of the community.  So advertising to
the world may amount to overkill.

Stephane.

>>STEPHANE VAN GELDER:  Thank you very much.  Stephane van Gelder,
registrar stakeholder group.

I don't want to labor the points that have been made by my fellow GNSO
councillors.

I just want to make sure you understand, having heard you say that
this is a first shot at the process and it's ongoing and there will be
other reviews and other processes of this kind, to make sure that you
are aware of how challenging it's been, and it is proving for us
within our own groups to come to -- through our processes, which are
actually much longer than the time we have been afforded here to be
able to endorse some of the candidates that we have had put forward.

So I would urge you to take that into account in future.  Just
speaking for the registrars, for example, we normally take a few more
days than have been afforded to us to come to a vote, bring our
members together and be able to coalesce around a vote and be able to
produce a result for the council.

So that's proving a challenge for us.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Stephane, let me on the record thank the
GNSO for the work you have done in this area, in what is an enormously
busy time for you in other ways.  So that has not gone unnoticed so
thank you for that.

And without breaching the confidentiality of the negotiations that
went into signing the Affirmation of Commitments, let me assure that
you the difficulties imposed by this timeline were made very clear to
all parties of that negotiation.

>>STEPHANE VAN GELDER:   Thank you.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:   I think Ayesha was there before me.

>>AYESHA HASSAN:   Thank you.  Ayesha Hassan from the International
Chamber of Commerce.

First of all, for those who don't know, ICC's membership spans across
many of the constituencies that are commercial interest
constituencies.  So my broader membership is very interested in this
first review and are very interested in all the subsequent reviews.

I would first like to pick up on the comment that Kristina made and a
come of the other improvements.  I hope at some point we will have a
chance it take stock of how this one went.  It had to be rushed in
certain ways on many elements of the process and improved for the next
reviews.

That said, at this stage, you will have a very challenging situation
to deal with in terms of selecting.  And I'd like to make a comment
about overall composition, balance, and diversity elements.

From our perspective, the broader business interests and expertise on
the review panels can come in many shapes and forms.  I think when we
look at a C.V., we don't necessarily see everything about the
expertise of a single individual.

So we're hoping that in the selection process, there will be due
consideration given to how many of the GNSO representatives will add
benefit to this panel's work.  From a broader business perspective, we
certainly hope that a broader business understanding will emerge from
the candidates that are considered and selected.

That said, we also realize there would be a real challenge in meeting
all the diversity elements.  And at this stage, given that things were
rushed, and there may not be the full diversity of every kind in the
pool that you are going to select from, we would hope that expertise
in carrying out this review panel's very important work is given
priority consideration, and we may see that compromise has to be taken
on some of the elements of diversity that one would hope for in the
future.

That said, I thank you for the confirmation that we are going to see
the list of your selections, and then we'll have a chance to comment
on it.

So my question is, how do you see the public comments coming in on
that list that you have selected being integrated or changing the
composition or rebalancing the composition?

>>JANIS KARKLINS:   It's a good question.  We will be discussing this
tonight.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Let me give you my private -- my personal
instant reaction, and that is when we were setting this up, we thought
that was going to be at sort of two levels.  Unless there was
something really wrong, unless we go really wrong, it's going to be
taken as advice for the future.

So we are going to make it a selection, publish the reasons, and that
will become the team.  The team gets published for public comment.
But it wasn't my view that that public comment would change the
composition of the selections.  It would be that it would be a
reaction for  future learning and for other teams.

But as I say, there has to be sort of a sanity check in there.  If we
have gone on and appointed eight I.P. lawyers from New Zealand as
members of the team who I think would make a wonderful team,
personally, the community may come back and say, look, you have got
that slightly -- we have to have a chance to respond if we have gone
very wrong, but I don't see us having some kind of multiple process on
team selection.

Is that a help?  That's my current thinking.

>>AYESHA HASSAN:   Can I just react to that?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Please do.

>>AYESHA HASSAN:   Thank you.

My sense is nobody in my community understood that that was the case.
We weren't sure what the case was, how it would be responded to.
Perhaps that's part of the learning process.  But I think it's
important that if there is public comment that the community be given
an opportunity to have some impact.

Thank you.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:   Thank you.  My name is Bertrand De La
Chapelle.  I am the French GAC representative.

First of all, on the criteria, in the Affirmation of Commitment, in
this paragraph 9.1, there are those five subbullets, but I would just
like to call once again the attention of you and the team in the
future to the three words that are at the end which are transparency,
accountability, and public interest.  These are words that are hardly
quantifiable, but they are very important element that have been going
on in the DNA of ICANN since the very early days.  And basically the
assessment is not on what has been done in the last three months.
It's basically how ICANN is performing in regards to those three
criteria.

The second point is that when I hear the word matrix, and I have
already said that often, there is a great importance of attaching an
equal balance to qualitative and quantitative assessment.
Transparency is not just about the number of documents that are being
posted and so on.

I think the evaluation and the perception in the community of whether
ICANN is fully, or as much as it could, transparent, accountable, and
in the public interest is the main thrust of the review.

Next is it is very important that the process incorporates not only
external input in writing, but also opportunities for physical
interaction, physical hearings, ideally in different regions on this
review panel, or with this review panel listening to comments.
Because otherwise we will get the same kind of public comment period
where people will be saying things in parallel, and it will be
synthesized just within the team.

I think it's very important to have the equivalent of what the NTIA
was doing when they were doing the reviews at the end of each
Memorandum of Understanding, which is having formal hearings and,
ideally, in different regions of the world.

And finally, a question.  In the AoC, there is a comment about this
panel indicating the possibility of having external experts.  At the
moment there is no external expert, I understand.  I wanted to know if
it is possible to suggest, because on a very concrete basis, I have
been in contact with the woman who won the Nobel Prize for economics
in 2009, who unfortunately is not sufficiently available for that kind
of thing but directed me to somebody she has been working with
closely.  Her name is Elinor Ostrom and she directed me to Charlotte
Hess.  And this person is very willing to consider participating in
this, but the contact was made very recently and I wanted to know if
it is still time to potentially suggest.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   The short answer is yes, there is time.  My
view is the experts were going to be appointed separately from a call;
that the volunteers are a category.  We are dealing mostly with the
call for volunteers from the community.  Independent experts is
something we haven't yet put our minds to.

Please make that name available.  That is an excellent suggestion.

Thank you.

Rob from the room.

>>ROB HOGGARTH:   One final comment from Eric Brunner Williams.

I know that the public comments, Steve's and mine have been read so I
am not repeating them now.  I do, however, want to remind both Peter
and Janis that when the topic of public interest came up in the new
format discussion in Paris, two very well-known members of the
community attempted to define what each meant by public interest.
This is not a point on which we can assume consensus.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   I agree completely.  And what I talk about
is the balancing of the various elements of the public interest.
There is a public interest to domainers and having the right to make
as much profit as they can from the sale of domain names, there's the
rights of free speech, there are all sorts of rights that are all in
the public interest.  And our job is trying to get a balance of that.
And that balance will be quite different in relation to WHOIS than it
is for transparency and accountability and it is for stability and
security.

So, Eric, I hear that, and I know that that is an interesting debate.
And possibly that's a workshop topic, as was suggested earlier, that
could be running in parallel.

What it seems to me to be touching into is what is the mission of
ICANN.  The mission is to operate the -- to coordinate the
infrastructural resources in the public interest.  And of course that
has to be -- that's key to our mission to know what we're doing.

Bill.

>>WILLIAM DRAKE:  Just to generalize the point that Bertrand was
making.  In our response to the public comment period, the GNSO
council did ask whether it would be possible for us to forward names
for your consideration for the independent experts.

So is that a generalizable thing?  Bertrand has an idea.  Can all the
S.O.s and ACs put forward names for the independent experts?

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:  Yes.  I think we need to address that once we
have dealt with this issue and do a formal call for experts or a
formal consideration.  And we will make up a process for that.

I'd like to move off this.  Bertrand, last one on this and then I
would like to see what people think about support.  I am very
conscious and Rod is very conscious, and Rod was originally slated to
be part of this, but he is very key to make it quite clear that staff
will do what they are told but want this to be a community process.

So the next question I would like some feedback on is how should these
review teams be staffed?

Bertrand.

>>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE:   Just wanted to come back on the question
of public interest.  Precisely because of the ambiguities around the
term, this is why I think it's very important that the team discusses
it.  Just for information and almost for the record, I wanted to share
with you one definition that I found, because I have no better
personal definition.  And Walter Lipman says the public interest may
be presumed to be what men would choose if they so clearly thought
rationally, acted disinterestedly, and benevolently.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And I'm sure we will reach those conditions
just after the Titanic sails triumphantly into New York harbor.

Can I come back to the question about staff support.  Is this
something I am being overly sensitized -- sensitive about?  The
obvious allegation once this review reports that staff is doing a lot
of the work.  And I am talking about the substantive work:  the report
writing, the minute taking, the research that goes into it.  Or do we
appoint an independent Secretariat?  And if we do that, do we need to
start building -- because these reviews are ongoing.  There are four
and then there's going to be every few years.  Do we need to somehow
contract with an outside agency to become the independent review
secretariat?  And if we do, then how do we prevent ourselves from that
becoming captured?  Help me with my paranoia.

Marilyn.

>>MARILYN CADE:   Thank you, Peter.  My name is Marilyn Cade.  I am
the chair of the business constituency but I am speaking in my
individual capacity because this is not a topic we have discussed yet,
but I will put it on the agenda for tomorrow.  So I will speak in my
personal capacity.

I have a huge amount of respect for the work that the ICANN staff does
and for all of the efforts that they make to be neutral, and to be
effective, and to hold themselves away from what I will call the
employments, implorements of the community.

I note that many people refer to this as lobbying.  And I think that
that's actually not the right term.

I think the community seeks to share their views and their
information, and that they think that they are able to add further
understanding to the staff.

We can use either ICANN staff today, as long as they have time to do
this, and I will note that I question that, or we can pilot an
approach for this review team, learn from that, and also be able to
figure out how much time we have to allocate to this process in the
ongoing and reoccurring review teams that come up.

I will say that it's very possible that members of the community will
feel themselves qualified to apply for a tender to do this.  Should
they do that, I would note that it should be a requirement that they
not take on other contracts and that they not participate in other
applications for registry or other services and hold themselves out
merely as an independent and, therefore, a support processor who could
be trusted.

But I will make one other point.  You have indicated to us, I believe,
and I will just reverify that, that there's going to be as much
transparency as possible about this process.  I think that's going to
help a great deal.

>>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Marilyn.  I think you raise an
interesting question which is the declarations and the conflict-of-
interest procedure that's going to go around the staff as well if we
go that way.

Janis?  Anything more online?

Any other questions?

We're close to the end of our time.  If there aren't other questions,
comments, we will say thank you, close the session, and begin the fun
work of making the selections and hoping to avoid that punch-up that
the chairman of the GAC has raised as a possible outcome.  Of course
we won't come to that.  We're going to make -- get started on it this
afternoon.

Thank you all very much.

[ Applause ]