Accountability and Transparency Management Operating Principals Consultations Workshop ICANN Meeting San Juan, Puerto Rico 27 June 2007 >>PAUL LEVINS: Good afternoon, everyone. Paul Levins is my name. I'm the executive officer and head of corporate affairs for ICANN. Thanks for coming along this afternoon. As one of our panelists just said, who'd be at the pool when you could do this? We are here to talk about accountability and transparency. And I want to do that as an interactive a way as we possibly can this afternoon. But I think it is, at these sessions, useful to start with context and some input, and that's the reason you've got these distinguished people sitting up on the table in front of us. We'll do our presentations as quickly as we can and then get down amongst you because this isn't exactly a terrific environment or setup for interaction. For those of you who have not yet settled, squeeze up a little bit, will you? Move in, if you can. We are very disparate and sort of a separated audience. If you can squeeze together, that would be a good thing. On the end of every row of seats, you'll discover a document entitled "ICANN transparency and accountability frameworks and principles." We posted that on Saturday evening -- in the afternoon, I should say, and that is part of the topic for today. I am keen to get input on accountability generally but those inputs are going to inform the development of this document. I will provide you with some background on that in a minute. We've got a relatively limited time until 5:30 and, as I said we've got to get some input, first of all, from the people assembled up on stage. It is going to be a case of going fast but talking slow. We found in these sessions that, particularly for our scribes, it's a difficult thing when people rattle off terminology and nuances in conversation. So if we can go fast but talk slow. It's not as large an audience at this stage as I was anticipating, but I think what I'd like to do is get a little bit of data on the audience to start with. Hands up -- don't worry, I hate audience participation as much as the next person. Hands up this is your first meeting. (Raising hands). Hands up if this is up to the fifth meeting you have been at? Between one and five meetings you have been at? (Raising hands). Hands up if it is beyond five? (Raising hands). Beyond ten? (Raising hands). Beyond 15? (Raising hands). And beyond 20? (Raising hands). That's an interesting mix. This is the 29th meeting, our 30th in Los Angeles. It's encouraging to see that we had out of the room, I don't know, what would have been 10% of the people, I guess, who one knew so that's helpful. One of my roles is to encourage participation, and we were talking if we reached 10% additional participation on this meeting, then we would sort of be happy over and above. I'm not going to use this as the measure of that. So what I will do now is provide a little bit of a presentation by way of background and then we'll go to these gentlemen here who I will introduce in a moment and then there will be an opportunity to interact and ask questions. What's some background? September 2006, the board signed -- approved, I should say, what's called an affirmation of responsibilities associated with the joint project agreement that we signed with the U.S. Department of Commerce. And in those affirmation of responsibilities, there were two of those responsibilities involved devising and testing accountability and transparency mechanisms. So that's if you like some background and linked to a formal -- the formal documentation which is internally linked to the joint project agreement. Historically, there has been concerns that I think have been accurate about accountability, but I also think -- And bear in mind I have been with the organization for about a year now, so I'm still relatively new, but I also think that there is a lot more being done than many realize on the transparency front in particular but also in relation to the accountability front. We commenced a consultation in October 2006. That's sort of have been an ongoing consultation. There has been input from the community and overwhelmingly that input was don't rush this process. So we've not been rushing that process. Some of the other suggestions that have come through are things like Web site improvement and we've made some changes to the Web site which I think have made it more navigable and accessible, better communication, the way we present the organization, making it very clear about what its mission is, suggestions that there could be improvements to appeal and review processes, suggestions that there should be expert advice, that ICANN should seek expert advice from an independent third party. And then also an interesting one which, I think, personally has got a lot of merit which is how the inputs are considered. But that we mean when the board makes a decision, it receives advice and there has been critique over time, I think, about how -- what is the transparent and accountable process that demonstrates that those inputs have been digested. It's almost -- people have sort of considered there has been like almost a gastric bypass in the past where you don't -- those inputs haven't been able to be seen, if you'd like, the digestion process hasn't been seen. So the other input was that there's a need for a set of principles as measures, and that document which you should have in your hand is the commencement of that process. You'll recall from the previous slide I mentioned that there was suggestions that we get independent advice. That took the form at least by one input -- by way of one input through the One World Trust providing an independent review to us. One World Trust is an organization based in the U.K. that works with global organizations to make them answerable to the people they affect. That's their mission. They say after a process of four years of looking at accountability, they've established a process of assessing accountability which is based on four things: Transparency, participation, evaluation, complaint and response mechanisms. The headline response from One World Trust was that ICANN is in many ways a very transparent organization already. It discloses a large quantity of information, probably more than any other global organization. They noted, however, that we had room to improve. I said that I thought that we were doing more and lot of people realize. I want to quickly -- particularly for the sake of people who are new -- and this is their first meeting -- quickly give you a rundown on some of the things we do or have done recently. We've got strategic and operating plans which are the subject of pretty extensive consultation and development. The strategic plan being three years, and the operating plan being the formulation of that annually. We've got a budget plan and process. Importantly, I think -- this is in response to a criticism -- we have a much better board reporting process now with a 72-hour posting process to the community. For those who are new, there is some history to this. There was critique around the fact that we were not historically able to meet the five-day posting rule. I'm not going to go why the whys and wherefores of that argument. Suffice it to say we now have a process which meets that bylaws requirement, if you'd like. If you go to that link that I've got there, you'll discover that the minutes are pretty fulsome. What else have we done? We have an ICANN blog, public participation site, newsletters, but we need to do more on that. We need to do much more by way of developing newsletters that are purpose built for constituencies, for example, the GAC. We've appointed a general manager of public participation. That was a bylaws requirement, and we've fulfilled that. The Web site, as I mentioned, is a bit more navigable. There's more features. There was a critique about the fact that it was very difficult to be able to understand ICANN's processes, and we've now addressed that by having a processes button on the front page which gives you timelines about where various discussions and documents are at. And I think we've improved access a little bit better in relation to it. We post all correspondence inbound and outbound. We've adopted the OECD best practices very recently. That approach to be adopted for consultations, we've got an annual report. Our first being last January which as a consequence of the joint project agreement. And then we've released that document very recently, very late, up against this meeting. What are some future developments? Out of the One World Trust review that I mentioned, we are going to commit to an annual review of compliance with an information disclosure policy that you will discover within these frameworks and principles document. We are developing a whistleblower policy, which was a feature of the One World Trust recommendations. There will be better assistance in locating documents on the Web site. We are going to make some improvements to translations, not just in static form. We've historically translated documents that are in static form. We want to improve that. There will be an independent annual review of ICANN accountability and transparency. Then, of course, as I mentioned, referenced a few times, these frameworks. Already in place we've got a number of external legal and internal rule-based accountabilities and they are explained in this document. We have very consultative planning and budgeting processes and a robust dispute resolution process. The frameworks are an attempt to bring that information together in one place for a common understanding. And then in that document as well, there are new draft principles. In response to the community comment and the One World Trust review, we've developed a document information disclosure policy which you will find there, consultation principles, a set of translation principles and importantly -- and this came up a number of times during this meeting -- a code of conduct. So what are the next steps in terms of consultation? We are going to be seeking comments online, through an online forum up until the 31st of August. There are some specific questions which you'll find posted on the Web site. We intend to summarize and analyze the inputs to inform some new drafts and then reconsider those drafts at the Los Angeles meeting. In a little while after some further inputs, I want to get to some direct questions. Some of these are posted on the Web site. Some, I think, are more global. The first of those is the more global, what is accountability? I want to try to have a debate about what that means. We keep hearing that, what do people mean when they say, "ICANN should be more accountable?" What more can be done to strengthen ICANN's internal accountability? What more needs to be done to improve translation? Particularly interested in people who have an opinion on that. Are there mechanisms for dispute resolution -- are the existing mechanisms for dispute resolution suitable for ICANN's needs? We will get some different perspectives. I'm going to ask John Jeffrey, our general counsel, the gentleman sitting immediately on my right and board secretary from ICANN, to talk to the information disclosure principles in a moment. Then I will can Kieren McCarthy to talk about both the translation and the participation principles documents. Then quite separately I have asked Jon Nevett who is vice president of policy and ethics at Network Solutions to speak from his perspective. And I think, also, Jon will talk a little with a hat on representing the International Chamber of Commerce as well, provide some perspectives as well from there. Milton Mueller, who is professor of school of information studies at Syracuse University, and finally, Bernie -- sorry, Milton will talk specifically around issues to do with accountability, if ICANN were to further internationalize. And Bernie Turcotte is the president and chief executive officer of CIRA who is going to talk about consultation but generally about accountability issues as well. So the other thing that I wanted to do very quickly, very quickly -- actually, we'll leave that until later. We will get the input first. So I might ask my colleague John to give us a bit of a rundown on these information disclosure principles, bearing in mind this is the first time that we've had these principles written down, documented practice. I will hand it over to onto give us a bit of a low-down. >>JOHN JEFFREY: Hello, everyone. How many people in the room are lawyers? [Show of hands] >>JOHN JEFFREY: And more precisely, how many people have ever filed a request for information from a government or an organization? [Show of hands] >>JOHN JEFFREY: On many of you will be aware of what I'm going to put up on the screen. We're going to show very briefly one of the documents in detail. I'll try to go through it very quickly and not bore you. It's dry but it's important, we think, from an ICANN perspective. And the document in particular is the part of the posting from last weekend called the ICANN documentary information disclosure policy. He's working to put it up right now but I'll keep talking anyway. This came specifically -- the concept of having disclosure policy for documents in particular came from the One World Trust recommendations to create what we're calling a DIDP, so a documentary information disclosure policy. And it's intended to ensure that information contained in documents concerning ICANN's operational activities, ICANN's possession, custody or control -- that are within ICANN's custody -- are provided to the public, unless there's a specific compelling reason not to do so. So going on to the next slide, this is what the new disclosure policy specifically does. It identifies a class of documents that have already been made public. It develops a time frame for us to respond to requests for information. We've not had a formal process for someone to request information that ICANN has, and now we're introducing that through this policy. And these are documents that aren't already publicly available, but in some cases we believe it will probably be pointing you to things that are already available somewhere on the Web site, but might be difficult to find. So one of the aspects of this will be where people aren't able to find documents and are making requests, it will highlight to us where we can make those documents more readily available and identify those locations. The third thing is that it identifies specific conditions where we don't believe disclosure is appropriate. And the fourth thing is, it will describe a mechanism where, if you disagree with our determination that it's not appropriate to disclose some documents, it provides you with the specific basis upon which you can appeal that process. So if you look at what we've done recently, there's no "you could go to the ombudsman, you could go through a reconsideration process," but since there's no policy requiring us to disclose those documents, rather than the main bylaws provision that says we'll be transparent, this gives you a specific thing to attach your request to, to make sure that we're more accountable as it relates to these documents. Going on to the next slide, very quickly I'm going to run through some documents that are already available, and it's interesting to us that sometimes people don't realize these documents are available because of where they're located on the Web site. So one thing that would be good for us to get in feedback is if you see things here that you didn't know you could get to, let us know, and let us -- we'll try to work on ways to make them more available. So documents that we already present are annual reports, articles of incorporation, board meeting transcripts, minutes, resolutions, budgets, bylaws -- both current and archived ones -- correspondence, financial information, litigation documents, major agreements, monthly registry reports, operating plans, policy documents, speeches, presentations and publications, strategic plans and material information relating to the supporting organizations and advisory committees. Another thing that this relates to is making staff more accountable and making our own staff aware of the documents that we consider important to be published. So we intend to enforce more deeply internally the concepts of making sure these documents are where they need to be. We realize that there has been -- there have been lapses in posting of correspondence and other things, when people bring those to our attention, we try very actively to bring those documents up, put them up, and make sure people are able to access them. But there are still some instances where that isn't perfect and as we get more staff and we become more capable of being accountable, we intend to enforce that much more internally. So the second category was the time frame for the ICANN response, so when ICANN receives a reasonable request, we will respond to it within 30 calendar days or will identify that there's a problem and tell you that there would be a longer period of time required. If we deny a request, we'll provide you with a written statement that says that denying the request and indicates the reasons for such a denial. Going on to the next category, this is the -- these are the identified reasons for nondisclosure, and I encourage you not to rely just on this text but go look at the document, because I didn't put in the very long explanations. What we tried to do in reaching these categories in particular, were looking at -- we looked at the One World Trust references. They gave us a couple of referencing to a bank and some other organizations where such policies already existed. So Amy Stathos from my staff went through those and tried to make it more expansive, make the things that we would provide more expansive than we saw in those other policies. So the details of that are in the specific delineated areas but it's important to look at that because we tried to narrow them down as much as we could. So some of those categories include where documents -- disclosure of documents would compromise our ability to obtain information from third parties or governments. So some conversations, some e-mails, obviously would make us not able to have conversations if they knew that every communication we had would be published. Personal and private or confidential information, that would personnel-type information or information that we obtain about -- for example, recently when we obtained data about RegisterFly's escrow, there's data in that that we wouldn't provide because it would relate to personal information. Trade secrets, proprietary and confidential business information, attorney-client privileged information or information that might obstruct justice. Going on to the next slide. Drafts of documents or letters, we think that drafts are drafts because they're drafts. We want our staff to be able to make mistake before we give you a copy of every draft along the way. Documents relating to confidential activities or secure activities of ICANN, like the "L" root. Confidential business information or internal policies and procedures. Deliberative and decision-making process documentation between ICANN, its constituents, and other entities. And I think this is a hard one to define and I encourage you to look at the language of this. By the way, all of this -- all of this policy is put out for public comment, and what that means is, this is not ICANN staff telling you where we're going to end up. This is us asking you to help us find this in a way that's going to make us a better, more transparent organization. The last category of nondisclosure items would be information where it's not reasonable, and that's subject to some subjectivity. Where the request is excessive or burdensome. For example, if somebody said, "Print out every registrar agreement," we'd probably not think that was a good idea. All 800 of them could be a lot of information, a lot of material. Especially where we have most of the information relating to that already available on line. Complying where it's not feasible or where there's a vexatious purpose or an abusive purpose or, in particular, where we have a querulous individual whose goal is to disrupt the organization or cause havoc rather than obtain information. The last category I wanted to speak to is how you appeal a denial. To the extent a requester chooses to appeal a denial, we're encouraging you to use processes that are already available that are already part of our accountability, the reconsideration process with the board and the independent review process. One thing that's interesting to staff is that there's not been an independent review process request. It's not been tested. Some people think that's because there isn't a provider. There is a provider. The provider has been designated by the board in 2004. Information is available on the Web site and my office would be happy to show you how to access it, if you can't. So, you know, we encourage you to use these accountability processes. We take our work very seriously. We're trying to be as accountable as we possibly can. We think we make mistakes and we want to improve, so let us know how we can. And I look forward to your going to the last slide. I look forward to your comments and if you have specific questions about this policy, please contact me, send an e-mail to me. My e-mail address is jj@icann.org. >>PAUL LEVINS: Thanks, John. That's a very clear explanation, I think, of the draft document. We won't take comments now. We'll do that in a little bit. I want to go through these inputs so I'll ask Kieren McCarthy to talk specifically around the issues to do with -- issues to do with participation and also the translation framework. Kieren? >>KIEREN McCARTHY: Yeah. Is that on? Hello? Okay. I don't have a PowerPoint presentation because I can't stand them and I think the whole thing slows down the process of talking, so, you know, you should be able to have picked them up. I'll basically tell you what's in them and then you can read the fine print, if you like. There's two bits I've been -- I have mostly written, I think. Yeah, I mostly wrote consultation and translation frameworks. The consultation framework was an effort to try and fix what drove me crazy when I was on the other side of the fence, which was that there was very limited public comment and a lot of it was quite poor, and the stuff that was good never appeared to appear in the papers at the end of it, and it seemed to be a vicious circle, which didn't really help anyone, because people thought they were -- ICANN was ignoring it and ICANN was looking at the comments they got and they thought, "There's only about four comments here and three are spam." So this is an effort at least to try and improve that, so people do comment, so ICANN does consult with people, and it becomes more valuable and we start working with one another rather than against one another. So to go through briefly, to maximize the ease of participation. We will -- oh, I should also say that I spoke to Bernie and Sara, because they've done a few of these and they gave us very good pointers. Maximize participation. We will provide information on upcoming issues as far in advance as possible to give the community time to respond. That -- I've been in ICANN for a bit now. I can tell you that that is -- it's not a conspiracy. It's simply busyness and the fact that there isn't a system in place that says you have to do this, and there isn't someone like me that goes around and tries to drag the information out of people to tell people like you. This will, you know -- but I will try my best. Maintain a calendar of forthcoming and current consultations. Need to build the Web site for that. I think Mark is halfway through that, I'm halfway through the other half. There should be just a Web page soon, which you click on it and it tells you what is up for public comment and when it will close, and there will be a page that you can go and look at so that should make things slightly simpler. On-line forms are still -- we're going to keep that as the basic mechanism, but we are looking to jump down, we are looking to use new technology. I think a lot of the problem with the on-line forums, as anyone that has used them will know, is that because every comment is of equal value, you end up with certain individuals flooding it with -- it just becomes flame wars, half the time. And so I try and find and use technology maybe -- I don't know if you know slash dot technology in which the community is able to rate comments. So the community rates the value of the comments. So that should make life much easier, although we still have to install the technology. Follow the ICANN translation policy. I'll come back to that. And the bylaws where -- unless they stipulate otherwise, ensure a minimum time for comment of 21 days. And I think 21 days is enough. I mean, it's -- I think it's currently 15 days in the bylaws for certain issues, but we've added another week on that. This is all up for consultation, if people think it's longer, if people think it should be shorter. Get back. And then there's probably participation site which I hope you've all accessed and there's a subsite at the moment, just for this meeting at San-on 2007.ICANN.org, and we're working on that, and that should get better and better with each meeting, more and more useful with each meeting, so I hope you follow that. And that's the -- to encourage active debate, ICANN will explore interactive approaches to comments, so that's a poor wording on my behalf. To encourage discussion or resolution between members of the community. What I mean there is rather than having -- rather than having people stand up and give reports and then other people stand up and say, "I don't think that's right" and then they write another report and they say "I don't think that's right," try and get the community to discuss with one another, under an ICANN umbrella. We need to bring in some technology to help this work, but so people talk to one another before we sit in meetings like this, and I think that will -- that will help speed the process up and help come up with better results. And hopefully less argument as well. In the spirit of the values of the -- or contained in the bylaws, proactively seek comment from those entities most affected by an issue and that's something I think ICANN has generally failed on, is that you simply post something and expect people to find it, and when it runs through the whole process and then people find it, they say, "Why on earth wasn't I consulted?" So the thing to do, we're trying to do, is say, "Well, who would be interested in this?" And then try and, you know, e-mail people, call people, say, "This is -- exists. Please come and comment" and hopefully with improvements in the comment process, people will be more willing to do that than they are at the moment. This is fairly important. I think there's a couple of changes here, real changes. To maximize transparency, the consultation process, ICANN will -- and this is about the comments. The most important ones are, post a summary of comments at the end of each comment period and in the same place of the comments, so anyone that's looked at a process I've been told -- I was being told -- have looked at the process, you have comments and then sometimes there's summary, sometimes there isn't, sometimes there's analysis, sometimes there isn't, but I want there to be a summary of comments at the end of where the people post their comments saying, "These were the comments and these are what the comments mean" and then request -- make clear the impact of those comments and request that whatever the constituency is makes an explicit reference of that summary when -- in their deliberative process. If someone makes a comment, they can actually follow through what impact that comment ha! s had on the actual process. So that is my hope and intention, and if people find that it doesn't work, then you should come to me and I will chase people up. That's my job. And then briefly, the translation, I did a -- quite a lot of work on this, and the basic summation I came to was that it was extremely complicated and I'm no expert. If people want to -- me to explain how -- the little bits, I'll happily do that, but what I came up with was that a four-layer system, one in which we have core documents that we can say like a budget, a strategic plan that we know we're going to produce, which we produce in a set number of languages, and then the next layer will be the class of documents. It will be like draft reports, something that we can define, which we will say will be provided in these various languages. The third layer is what -- what the community says, "I would like this in this language" or which staff say, "It would be useful if you had this in this language" and we run that through the translation policy. And the fourth is -- which we've got a technological solution which we're going to try and test out, which will be a machine! translation of information followed hopefully with a Wiki style so the community can go in and change it, plus a rating system so you'll know how good the translation is. So we're hoping, because ICANN produces so much material, we're hoping that if the community wants it, the community will go in and make that translation worthwhile. Wikis sometimes work and they sometimes don't. We're going to try and see if we can get that working. And then you also should have a sheet out there which is a more pragmatic side of what we're doing, because these are -- these are simply the principles. The pragmatic side was that we agreed it was very complicated and we needed to get an expert in on this, so we're going to get an expert in. Who hopefully will have run a translation policy for an international organization before and we'll simply go through it and say, you know -- so we don't have to learn the lessons, because you could spend -- we could spend a year and waste a lot of time, so we're going to get an expert. And in the meantime, we've set up an internal committee where we're going to try and do all the background work for that expert, find out what all the other departments want and need, so that when the expert says, "I need this information" we're all ready to go. And there's a couple of other things that we're going to try and cover. And then with luck, we'll get to the point where we become an international organization that is able to communicate in different languages, and that's where we need to get to. >>PAUL LEVINS: Thanks, Kieren. I should point out that those frameworks and principles documents will be made available in a range of different languages as well. So I might now ask Jon if he would give us the benefit of his thoughts. As I mentioned, Jon particularly came to hear your thoughts in broad, but also interested to get some perspective -- I know the international Chamber of Commerce provided us with some substantive comment around these issues, and to the extent that you feel across that, I'd be interested in getting some comments. >>JON NEVETT: Thanks, Paul. Again, my name is Jon Nevett. I'm the vice president of policy and ethics for Network Solutions. My comments are on behalf of Network Solutions, not as my role as chair of the registrar constituency. But my comments are also consistent with comments filed by the international Chamber of Commerce and the U.S. council of international business, of which I and Network Solutions are a member. Let me first talk about transparency principles. I think ICANN has made some great strides in transparency, and I give credit to Vint and the board and Paul and Paul and John on all the success. For example, I looked in March 2006 for board minutes. And I would have to look back for the meeting on July '05, so almost a year before, to find the minutes. The 10 previous board meeting minutes were not available as of March 2006. That problem has been corrected and I think that's a great thing. As far as transparency -- additional transparency principles and recommendations, I agree with a lot of what was in the report that I read that Paul posted recently. ICANN should absolutely comply with additional decision-making procedures, provide analytical components of decisions, explaining how feedback from various stakeholder groups were considered, and why decisions were made. Accountability, I think, is the area where we need to roll up our sleeves and do a lot more work together as a community. And that may be what the deputy director of the NTIA was referring to on Monday. This is an area that I believe we need some great improvement as we grow as an organization. I think there -- on board accountability, there are ineffective -- at this point -- checks and balances on the board. Who is the ICANN board accountable to? A simple majority of eight ICANN board members can make decisions with huge impact, but the community, in my opinion, has no real recourse to challenge their actions in an effective way. What happens if a slim majority of the board goes off the proverbial reservation? We could file a reconsideration request. And who reviews that? It's an ICANN board Reconsideration Committee, which is a subcommittee of the same board that went off the proverbial reservation, and they report back to the same full board. We could file an independent review request, and what happens with an independent review request? First, you have to show that the board acted in violation of the ICANN bylaws. And if you hit that -- if you make that -- hit that hurdle and make that step, then the independent review panel advises the exact board that made the decision in the first place. Removal of board members requires three-quarters vote of the same board that made the decision in the first place. So as far as some recommendations go, and we should consider this as part of the board review process, that's hopefully coming up soon, you know, I think about supermajority votes on important board decisions, amend the bylaws to permit vetoes of board decisions, maybe through a supermajority vote of supporting organizations or something -- I think Sara had some comments on that, and they sounded interesting. Obviously, strengthen the independent review process. And by analogy, if you look at -- I'm a United States attorney, so I -- I know U.S. law but U.S. public corporations, shareholders have rights over the world. There are some checks and balances that shareholders have, and many nonprofits -- for example, the American Cancer Society -- there's a -- both a board of directors but also a national assembly and they both have checks and balances over each other, so there are accountability measures that protect the organization when necessary. And I don't mean to sound like chicken little, but I spent a lot of time cleaning up a major U.S. telecom that went bankrupt after a major fraud and right now five of its former executives are in prison, so, you know, bad things can happen to a good organization, and we want to prevent that from happening. I think financial accountability is an important issue that we should look at. ICANN should develop stronger financial and budgetary oversights. Oversight should be increasing, not decreasing. Because of the new registry agreements, historical safeguard of voting on proposed fees are becoming minimal -- a minimal review process. There was a Budget Advisory Group that no longer meets. So our recommendation is that we reform the Budget Advisory Group, or create a new working group, of the board Finance Committee that would include members of the community. To provide more accountability and more input. The last thing I want to mention is something that Paul mentioned earlier, about a whistle-blower program, and I assume that that refers to something in the United States that I helped develop at Network Solutions. Paul mentioned that my title includes vice president of ethics. We, under a U.S. law called Sarbanes-Oxley, there's a requirement that all U.S. public corporations have a -- what's called a help line. We don't call it a whistle-blower line because it's an opportunity for employees or third parties to call and -- or send an e-mail anonymously, and provide input or report on suspected violations or ask questions about whether something would be a violation of a code of conduct, bylaws, or something like that, without fear of retaliation. So we set that up at Network Solutions even though we weren't bound to because we're only a private corporation but we thought it was important to do so and I applaud Paul and folks on bringing that kind of program over to ICANN. I think that would be a worthwhile endeavor and I would be more than happy to support your application to the ethics officer association, of which we're a member. So I'll leave it at that and be happy to answer any questions that anyone has during the give-and-take process. Thank you. >>PAUL LEVINS: Thank you. Thanks, Jon. You've raised a lot of issues. And a number which I think I'm particularly itching to get into, but we'll put them on notice, park them and if we can go now to Milton, who will give us a more international perspective. Thanks. >>MILTON MUELLER: Thank you. Yes. It's very important, this accountability issue. That's what I'm going to focus on. ICANN is, indeed, more transparent than most international organizations. The problem has always been one of accountability. The draft principles distinguishes between internal and external accountability. It's an important distinction. Internal sort of means ICANN's own organic processes for selecting board members and kicking outboard members and so on. External means what kind of stands above ICANN and prevents it from going off the proverbial reservation. I'm -- always have been most interested in the problem of external accountability, and this is an issue of high politics at the global level. The current draft mentions only the California nonprofit public benefit law, which is indeed an important form of legal grounding that might provide some accountability. It does not, however, mention the Department of Commerce, the NTIA oversight which occurs through the joint projects agreement and the IANA contract. Right now, those are probably the most important forms of external accountability. This brings in the Commerce Department most centrally, but clearly through them, the U.S. Congress, which is a highly political entity, and can hold hearings on the NTIA budget, and the president. Another important and very vague and hard-to-deal-with kind of external accountability is the Government Advisory Committee. It's not clear whether to call this internal or external. I guess I would see the most important reform in external accountability having to do with the future status of U.S. government oversight. If it's not given up altogether, USG control of IANA could be neutralized by some kind of formal agreement by the U.S. to perform only a pure auditing function and not to interfere with the decisions arbitrarily. The JPA could clearly be brought to an end, but the issue that interests everybody is: Once you take the U.S. government out of the picture, what kind of external accountability replaces the U.S. role? I'm afraid I have no magic solutions to that, but I do have some general opinions about direction. I believe very strongly that ICANN should remain a private-sector organization, that it needs to steer clear of geopolitical conflicts that could undermine the global connectedness of the Internet and subject the process -- its processes to parochial regulations. The nature of the GAC role needs to be clarified. I've written about this a bit. I think my preference is for governments to negotiate some kind of a convention on Internet governance that establishes a clear division of labor between governments and ICANN, and clarifies where governments do and do not have authority, and what is left to ICANN or the market. Once it has successfully concluded such an agreement, I believe that the GAC should disband. If that's not possible, its classic status as a more limited advisory committee should be reaffirmed more strongly. The role of government is to provide rule of law, not to issue opinions about something called "public policy" that it makes up on the fly. ICANN should make the relevant policies regarding DNS. Governments should determine whether those policies break existing laws or international treaties. They should be able to hold ICANN legally responsible for such breaches. They should also protect us from a corrupt ICANN or one that abuses its power. If governments want to alter their policies, however, they have -- they have to have the authority to write new laws and treaties that might affect ICANN. Now, in addition to this kind of governmental oversight that, again, we think of not as government sort of sticking their fingers in the process and saying, "This is what we want," but as an external legal form of accountability such as, you know, you -- such as occurred to one of these telecom carriers, where they were accused of breaking specific laws regarding the use of funds, or shareholder assets, that's -- that's the kind of governmental accountability that I'm envisioning and that should be internationalized and also limited. End users should also have the power to litigate against ICANN when it breaks its own rules or other binding laws. In particular, it should be subject to antitrust laws and trade rules, since it is primarily a kind of economic -- econo-technical regulation. For internal accountability, I feel somewhat optimistic about the direction that ICANN seems to be taking. I would like to see for individual users to directly elect board members again, through the at-large member. The concept of the shareholder that Jon mentioned. I like many of the board governance committee working group proposals regarding the reform of the GNSO that remains to be seen how those play out. A lot of other internal reforms could be made, but I don't really have time to focus on them here. I think the big issue is more the external accountability. That's what's holding us to the -- the U.S. government, and that's what everybody's worried about. >>PAUL LEVINS: Hello. Thanks, Milton. Again we'll come back to some of the issues that you've raised substantively in the process of discussion. We do have board members here and are encouraging them to participate in this forum and we'll hopefully get to an exchange around those issues. Bernie, you're our final formal input, if I can put it that way, and I appreciate you giving us your perspectives around the issues that I mentioned before. >>BERNARD TURCOTTE: Thank you, Paul. It's a pleasure to be batting cleanup here. Let me begin by saying that I'm encouraged by the fact that ICANN is undertaking this exercise and I'd like to thank Paul and all the other staff who have contributed to producing this document. I can only hope it will be the starting point of what should be a serious discussion between ICANN and the community it wishes to serve. I have a few good points. The ICANN consultation principles, I think it's great you've taken on board our suggestions and look forward to ICANN working hard at developing its capacities in this area with special attention to the analysis part. There is doing things and then there is doing things right, so we need to keep working on that. The ICANN translation policy, good. I encourage continuous evolution of this. I work in a fully bilingual environment, and it is always a challenge but in the end, it's worth it. The ICANN code of conduct is a great thing to have. On the other side, my personal favorite from this document was the ICANN documentary information disclosure policy of John's. Nice try but...I just don't seeing this very useful the way it is just from a general user point of view. As an alternative, ICANN may wish to consider a policy that would see the documents and reports that are being considered by the board in its policy deliberations being made public as default. I can see that as being useful to a lot of people and sort of simple to decide. You either as a default it's public and if there are good reasons, then it's not. I am going to close off on accountability and transparency. I think on the transparency part there has been a lot of good work. I said so in Lisbon, and there continues to be evolution and I'm very encouraged by that. And encourage ICANN to continue along that line. On accountability, this document provides an adequate summary of what is currently in place which we are familiar with and understand, but proposes no significant changes or improvements. The heart of our initial accountability question to ICANN, that is a serious question, remains unanswered. Who are the stakeholders that the ICANN board are formally accountable to and how? While ICANN ponders this, I'm looking forward to some of the comments that were made regarding the more detailed explanations of how we get from inputs to board consideration to decisions so that people can truly understand that because I think that will make a great difference. I think in the end, I like a lot of Mr. Nevett's comments on accountability. There has to be some checks and balances. The issue of stakeholders and who the board is responsible to is tied up in there, and it will not go away. I think without this in a sense, ICANN keeps trying to be everything to everyone and inevitably, this ends up spreading the organization a little thin on some issues and I think that may be at the root of some of the end results that we end up in the community with a lot of dissatisfaction. So overall, great starting point. I like it. I think there are a few things which I'm sure the comments will bring out great suggestions about how to go forward, but I think the full issue of accountability, I'm more concerned from an internal point of view and the balances and the checks has to be addressed and we're not seeing that here. But maybe this is a starting point for seeing something along those lines. That's it for me. >>PAUL LEVINS: Okay, thanks, Bernie, I appreciate that. I might ask you all to come and join us down here. While we're doing that transition, we are going to play a little game. We started a little late but bear with me. Again, this is more geared towards people who are brand new in the organization, perhaps some of the -- even some of the older participants, I don't mean chronologically, but some of the ones who have been here longer will enjoy this game as well. There are treats for those who get the questions right. We are going to play a game called bylaw bingo. I want to make the point, firstly, have a common understanding of some of the accountabilities and some of the rudimentary elements of board structure. Now, as soon as this -- Mehmet, you are you able to assist me in bringing the screen up? It is not behaving. Uh-oh, maybe we are giving some of the answers away. No one saw the answers? Good. As I mentioned, there are treats here. Bylaw bingo. How many board members and liaisons are there? Anyone? I would prefer a board member not to answer this question, but anyone else in the audience? >> (inaudible). >>PAUL LEVINS: Hang on. One down the back. Marilyn. Marilyn Cade. You must say your name as well -- >>MARILYN CADE: I'm definitely going to get the count of board members right. There are eight board members appointed by the Nominating Committee, two board members elected by each of the SOs, 14. Plus the CEO and president who makes the 15th. >>PAUL LEVINS: Keep going. >>MARILYN CADE: I'm thinking. I am counting. Liaisons, there's the Security and Stability Advisory Committee. There's the ALAC. There's the liaison from the technical committee. There's the liaison from the -- ahhh -- root server community. There's the GAC liaison. How many am I up to? >>PAUL LEVINS: (inaudible). >>MARILYN CADE: There is one more. The technical community. >>PAUL LEVINS: Well done. [ applause ] >>MARILYN CADE: You notice I had to think it out. >>PAUL LEVINS: Take your selection. There is Rolos, Bounties. I am disappointed she took the Bounty. This is going to get a little tedious if I keep walking up and down. I might have to get someone to distribute these after I do this. The answer was 21 in total? How many can vote? Marilyn, you've had your turn. [ Laughter ] How many would you expect to vote out of that 21? Marilyn has given us a bit of a hint. Board members and staff may well be the only one who knows this so I might have to give it to a board member on this occasion. Is there a board member who'd like -- or John? Anyone? >>JOHN JEFFREY: You just wanted to give me candy, right? 15. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Paul, can I say something? Under the practice of the current chairman is to treat, in effect, all the liaisons as if they were board members and very few of the decisions in the end come down to a vote. Just to make that point. The voting/non-voting decision under the present regime is really quite a minor one. >>PAUL LEVINS: In other words, the inputs from the liaisons are considered. Good, good, that's handy. That will speed things enormously. Next slide? How many members are appointed by the Nominating Committee? >>JON NEVETT: She already told you. >>PAUL LEVINS: She did, that was a badly found question. I will give this to Olof. He can answer anyway. >>OLOF NORDLING: Remembering Marilyn's comments, there were eight. >>PAUL LEVINS: Well done. Take a chocolate. Staff are actually outnumbering here so I want some more audience participation. Okay, keep going, Joseph. How many people are will on the Nominating Committee? Keep going. Oh, I beg your pardon. How many people are there on the Nominating Committee? We're meant to know this. We all pride ourselves, especially the people who have been here for more than 15 meetings all say they know the accountabilities and they are not sufficient. What are one of the things that keep us accountable? Call it out. What's best guess? We will do this by way of best guess? Marilyn knows. Marilyn has had a turn. We can't keep asking Marilyn. Let's go to the answer. 17 voting members, three non-voting liaisons, non-voting chair. So no one gets the prize. I get to keep a Bounty. What organizations are they from? You got it. Hang on. This is a real staff bias settling in here. Don't take the Bounty. What organizations are they from? Now, actually, I don't think we will tediously ask everyone to list those. I think we will go straight to the answer. That way I get to keep a chocolate. The At-Large Advisory Committee, five members. The business users constituency of the GNSO, two members. You can read this. gTLD registry constituency of the GNSO and so on. Keep going. Intellectual property constituency of the GNSO, the council of the ccNSO, the council of the ASO, an entity designated by the board to represent academic and similar organizations. I think that's it. No? I was wrong about that. There was the three non-voting liaisons. My point is in demonstrating that was this is extraordinarily representative by way of its breadth for the organizations that contribute to nominate those eight members on the board. This is one for the pennants. Where policy affects public policy concerns, whose advice must the board seek? >> The GAC. >>PAUL LEVINS: Well done. Take a chocolate. The Governmental Advisory Committee. After taking action on any policy subject through the policy development process, what are the three things the board must do? >> Apologize to the committee. [ Laughter ] >>PAUL LEVINS: Susan, I'm not sure everyone heard. >>SUSAN CRAWFORD: Apologize, litigate and reflect. >>PAUL LEVINS: Have a chocolate. Did someone call out? Yes, what are the three things the board must do when they make a decision, take action on any policy subject through the policy development process? They must publish in the minutes their reasons for taking the action, the way each director voted, any separate statement that a director might choose to make on the topic. And I think that's not. Is it not, Joseph? Yes, the end. [ applause ] With that sort of a starting point, that was a little bit of fun. It was keen to sort of get people to understand that there are already some pretty strong internal accountabilities in place. I would be interested -- I am not trying to fix this. I would be interested -- you've heard others have a reflection that's contrary to that, but I would be interested in getting people's perspectives. I would like to get a sense -- let's start at the broad level -- about what people think about accountability as an issue. Is accountability the issue over transparency? It sounds like we have jumped the transparency hurdle. Sure, we can go further. But is accountability the issue? Who's got an opinion on that? Peter Dengate Thrush, board member. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: I think several one of the panelists said that transparency was good or could be better, but the real issue was accountability, and I think I agree with that. I think it's unacceptable, really, that you can be appointed as a director and then basically come and go to the beach for three years if there's a beach. And your constituency and the rest of the community request do nothing about it. I think the prospect of getting a three-quarry vote or 75% majority, whatever it was, of the board to knock you off is going to be very difficult, so there's something wrong with that. I understand how it arises. And it's part of the inherent conflict in ICANN, and that is that in an organization which which has, in fact, got a largely political role in some ways, and a democratic requirement, we're using a corporate model. And we had a good look at this the very first thing I did, I think, for ICANN was to be a member of the independent review advisory committee back in 1999 when we tried to analyze what could be done with a corporate model where the directors have to, under that model, carry the paramount responsibility. How could we impose some kind of controls or balances on the directors. And independent review was the best that a bunch of us -- and it was an international panel of legal experts looking at this -- could come up with. The idea at the time was that there would be a panel of the great and the good, in the original proposal, who would act as a kind of Senate or sort of superior chamber, without any constitutional legal authority but! who would be looking down and who the board if there was an adverse comment from these great and good would feel compelled by the pressure of public comment to take some action. The difficulty with that was we couldn't find anybody to be the great and the good. Nobody either wanted to do it or thought they were great enough or good enough, and so we've abandoned that as a model and we haven't really replaced it with anything else to create any real accountability in terms of that as a political sense. >>PAUL LEVINS: Susan, you'd like to add to that? >>SUSAN CRAWFORD: Just very briefly there, I share Peter's suggestions here that we haven't really found something better. The independent review panel right now looks, as the panelists said, only at whether the ICANN board has violated its bylaws, and then reports that back to the board. This has always seemed quite circular to me. And so when you ask: What does accountability mean, I really think there should be some avenue of real appeal of a board decision or of the place of a board member on the board, and right now in this current system, as we set it up after evolution and reform in 2002, the three mechanisms we have don't provide those avenues. >>PAUL LEVINS: So what would that look like? What -- I mean what does a real appeal against the board member look like? Jon? Jon Nevett? >>JON NEVETT: I mentioned a couple ideas. You could take the model like a nonprofit like the American Cancer Society where you have a national assembly and their checks and balances between the board and the assembly, so you could have a stakeholder group, you could have a supporting organization, referendum, or something like that and that's something we should all consider, what would work for this organization. But I think you're hearing -- so far -- you anonymity that we need to do something differently and improve the accountability of the organization at this point. [Speaker is off microphone] >>CLYDE BEATTIE: I think maybe a 360 review conducted by a global consulting corporation of the identified stakeholders would be as an objective an analysis as you could probably get. >>PAUL LEVINS: Vint, you had a view on this? [Speaker is off microphone] >>VINT CERF: Bernie, had you your hand up too. Okay. I'm just standing up because it feels funny to be talking that way when you're over here. [Laughter] >>VINT CERF: A couple of things. I think accountability -- what I hear people wanting under the accountability title is the ability to deal with specific actions with which they disagree. I think they are also looking for an ability to take an action in a more general sense. This would be the board member who is spending three years on the beach, for example. Finding rules that board members have to follow to be board members in good standing. Things like attendance and participation. There are some organizations that will remove a board member on grounds that the board member isn't participating sufficiently. Then there have to be arrangements for replacement and the like. There have been some -- in some quarters, there have been discussions about having two boards, and this is probably a little bit like what Peter was alluding to. In some settings, there are -- let me give labels to them. They don't mean anything special. An executive board and a management board. The executive board might be the one to which actions of the management board are appealed. The management board is -- is the day-to-day operating board. It is the one which deals with policy decisions, it deals with the whole process, responding to policy development, actions relating to contracts and the like. The executive board might be there having responsibility as one would have for a corporation. You have certain obligations as a corporation. In the case of ICANN in California, it has to report its activities, its finances and the like, to the State of California and to the federal government. Someone has to be sure that that reporting is accurate. One could imagine the executive board having that kind of responsibility, but not day-to-day responsibility for actions that involve the substance of ICANN's work. But that executive board could be convened in reaction to a complaint, for example, about a particular action taken by the board or by the staff. I'm not sure that any of that should replace things like the independent review, however. I always worry about a kind of infinite recursion where you keep inventing new things -- what is the Latin, quo vadis something? Who will watch the watchers? And I forget exactly how that goes. Noli proziki [ph] or something. I never get this right. Anyway, sorry. So I worry about the possibility that you will have infinite recursion. John's -- several alternative ways of having a place to go to, to appeal. My first reactions to national assembly are that I don't fully understand who would be qualified to be a member, so, you know, I struggle with that a bit. We don't have membership in the classical sense at ICANN as it's currently structured. So we -- we would have to understand what it means to be -- have appropriate standing in order to respond to a complaint. Let's see. Bernie said something -- oh, I'm sorry. It was Martin. You said something about individual users electing board members, and I still struggle with that concept for two reasons. One is scale, since there are reasonably -- arguably a billion individual users on the net. The second one is qualifying them. Who has the franchise and how do you qualify that? The third one is that there are other stakeholders besides end users who are affected by ICANN decisions. Those are people who operate parts of the Internet, that depend on some of ICANN's responsibility. So it feels to me like -- oh, quid custodiet ipsos custodes? Thank you very much very much, counselor. [Speaker is off microphone] >>VINT CERF: Yeah, that's -- this is like getting a degree -- honoris causa, which literally translated means you didn't earn this. [Laughter] >>VINT CERF: So looking for standing and looking for, I don't know, completeness of the representation of interested parties in actions taken by ICANN would be -- is what would guide me towards trying to figure out who should be included in this list. I'll stop here. Thank you for letting me go on and on. Bernie had his hand up and then -- no, no. I'll give him this myosin. You can keep that one. >>BERNARD TURCOTTE: Thank you. I think as the discussions have pointed out, and Jon said, I mean, everyone's -- I don't see a lot of people that are arguing the fact that we need to do stuff on accountability, and a lot of the things we've talked about are the core of what we've said. One way or another, it ends up about identifying the stakeholders you're going to be responsible to, and the mechanisms you bring to those things are varied, and you can choose amongst them. But this will keep haunting ICANN. >>PAUL LEVINS: And Marilyn, did you want to provide an input there, or a question? >>MARILYN CADE: Thanks, Paul. I do. I'm going to just say how important it is for us to not just talk to ourselves about this issue, and note that accountability, in my view, may include, of course, broader participation of those who are willing to be accountable themselves and transparency, we've all already acknowledged, isn't just provision of lots of different new kinds of information, but information that can be digested by those who receive it. And we've already heard acknowledged that accountability is different than that, may be built on elements of both of those things, but is something beyond it. I do think it is important to think about how anyone can be recalled. And I mean, by that, in a bottom-up environment lots of people are elected and they're elected in the SOs as well, or they're appointed and they have, according to a board member we heard earlier, they're treated like voting board members even though they're not elected, they're appointed, I think we have to look at that accountability mechanisms all the way across and say, "How can anyone be recalled?" But reasonably, and responsibly. And so I'm kind of thinking we probably don't have the answer yet about what the checks and balances are, but probably they have to extend within the organizations that put people onto the board, whether it's the SOs or the nominating committee, as -- so we basically have accountability at all levels. I think that also means changing some of our understanding of transparency. >>PAUL LEVINS: Thanks, Marilyn. That touches on a point that I wanted to get people thinking about, which is -- excuse me -- when I came on board, everyone told me and what I observed was that this was a new model of governance. This was a new model of governance that we're driving -- or working towards. And I'm wondering whether, in fact, we are consistently applying old models of accountability onto what is a new model of governance. I can see Bertrand shaking his head. I'm sorry, Milton, if I can provide him with an opportunity to -- >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: For once I was not asking for the microphone. [Laughter] >>PAUL LEVINS: Oh, okay. A brief comment. >>BERTRAND DE LA CHAPELLE: Later. >>PAUL LEVINS: Okay. Well, in that case -- [Speaker is off microphone] >>PAUL LEVINS: Yes, Peter. [Speaker is off microphone] [Laughter] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Can I agree with you and with Marilyn, when I was talking about directors before, I intended that to -- issue to deal with everybody who is appointed. The principle of accountability doesn't start or stop at one level. It should go through the whole place. So let's -- I think we all agree on that. The second thing is, I think you're right about the context of this and I just wanted to pick up on that. This is a new model. That's partly why I'm here. All of the issues around ICANN are always so new and exciting, particularly constitutional law, competition law, all the stuff we do is new, and one of the problems with that is we can't turn around and find an easy precedent somewhere else. So as we've done with other things, we will do, I think, we'll look around and try and find models and modify them and improve them. [Speaker is off microphone] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: But the context of this is we are -- we've invented, to a large extent, I think, this international multistakeholder model and we've started to export it. I won't mention any names but we've seen it start to be picked up in other places. It's kind of -- you know, we've got an obligation on these offspring of ours to actually -- [Speaker is off microphone] >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: -- lead it, so this is starting for work. People are going to look for us for solutions. I don't think we should shrink from trying to develop, difficult as it might be, an international multistakeholder accountability solution, and I think we should start, as we've done, and we may have to reform it. Don't be afraid to start -- don't think we need to get it perfect, and I think the obvious model and it may be falling into your trap of using old ideas, but why can't the people who appoint also disappoint? There is an immediate problem with that, as far as directors is concerned, and that is directors are expected to sever their connection with the people who appointed them and assume a much greater fiduciary responsibility to the whole, and there is a threat that if -- taking myself as an example, me as an example, of having been appointed by a particular SO, if I was constantly concerned that -- of a duty to that SO that started to exceed my dut! y to the rest of the corporation -- so there's a risk of that, but I think having -- being aware of the problem means we can go on and find a solution that doesn't apply where there are much more clearly representative issues at the constituency level. I can't see why, if the business constituency appoints someone, they can't, you know, disappoint them. So I think let's get on with it, let's try. We may have to go through two or three iterations. We're into ICANN 2 or 3 in other ways. Why not have it with that as well? >>PAUL LEVINS: Under your duty of loyalty, you, in fact, have to serve the interests of the organization and not the interests of any other person or group. I'm not a lawyer. I'm telling you what you know. Including the constituency of the organization, which caused the director to be selected. So I think that's an interesting accountability. I am interested -- Milton's got his hand up and I do want to give him an opportunity to respond but I am interested in inputs from others than those who have spoken already, but Milton, in addition to whatever you're -- and and I'll come to you in a moment, in addition to whatever you were going to say, I'm interested in this idea of isn't -- you mentioned that the GAC should not be at the table. At some point in the future. Or have I -- that's not what you've said? I'm misquoting you? [Speaker is off microphone] >>PAUL LEVINS: But is it not better to have the GAC in this new participatory model than not representatives of of the world's governance? >>MILTON MUELLER: That's related to waives going to say because I think we might be -- have a clearer discussion if we separate certain kinds of accountability from certain other kinds of accountability. For example, if you're talking about the board member who is asleep at the beach or the person from the business constituency who is not doing what the business constituency wants, those are clear cases of kind of internal accountability. What I had been focusing on is the broader sense of policy or political accountability that what happens if in a perfectly legitimate manner, the ICANN board starts passing policies that are just awful? Or like the question with the XXX or these new TLDs, people are asking what gives you the right to make these policies? Who are you accountable to in that sense? How do we know it is conforming to this gigantic, broader global community? That's where you get into these interesting questions of ICANN's private status about having to be somehow accountable to global laws or global principles. Those are, I think, the hard legal questions. I'm not saying throw governments out of the table. I'm saying put them in their proper role to use a word that they like to use. What is their proper role? Their role is not in the same sense -- I think their role is to pass laws, okay, and that they have no legitimacy outside of that function other than an informal advisory one which! we do want. We do want them in here and formally participating in an advisory capacity, but we don't want there to be an irresponsible, unaccountable governmental influence on policy which is sort of what we're backing into where governments can essentially legislate by raising their eyebrows and expressing displeasure, not by going through a formal process of passing legislation. So we have to worry about the accountability of governments in the international arena as well as the accountability of ICANN. And I think working out that relationship is where the real problem is in the broader sense of policy or political accountability. >>PAUL LEVINS: I know people want to respond. I know you do, Bernie. Can I take input from this gentleman over here. >>MAWAKI CHANGO: Thanks. I was going to raise the same issue, but maybe in a more bottom-up approach than institutional. Peter talked about the distinction between corporate accountability and democratic, but still I've heard people developing under corporate side more than the democratic side. What I mean by "democratic" here is for me accountability in addition to being corporate responsibility is also about ownership of the public, the public we intend to address and that public is virtually global. So we need to take every necessary step and action for -- in order to reach that virtually global community. And we can't pretend to be accountable -- to be really accountable to a global community in a single language, for example. We need to evolve towards something like multilingual environment. I know ICANN will not ever be able to speak all the languages and nobody asks for that, but we need to give enough effort in that direction of at least using two, three, four different languages. That we will be able to cover as broadly as possible the community we are trying to address. Thanks. >>PAUL LEVINS: Now, I need a sense of the room. We really should be winding up officially. But I'm happy to keep going if people are pleased to keep going as well. Yeah? I will get to you Bernie, I promise. This is a consultation. I want to get as many new input from first-timers as possible. Are we happy to keep going for another 15 minutes? Yes? Yes? >> Yes. >>PAUL LEVINS: Terrific, thank you. >>CHUCK GOMES: Chuck Gomes. It's easy to talk about accountability and the need for it and there has been some good thoughts in that regard, but what it really comes down to is you have to be able to measure it, otherwise you have a very subjective process. One of the things -- and several people have suggested answers to this question, is you have to decide to whom you're accountable, whoever the "you" is. And, secondly, you have to decide accountable for what? And if we don't specify that in some -- as objective way as possible, then we can run into the danger of a very subjective process that can really do damage. And so a very important task, it seems to me, is to work on that question of accountable for what? Not going to be able to be totally objective I'm sure, but efforts and work to put into answering that question would go a long ways towards, I think, accomplishing what we all want. >>PAUL LEVINS: I will just get Ayesha Hassan to provide commentary as well. Who are we accountable to? Are we accountable to no one? I want to ask that in the same way we have these documents that form a base of understanding. Who are we accountable to? I would like to ask you ask about that. >> AYESHA HASSAN: Thank you, Paul. Ayesha Hassan from the International Chamber of Commerce. Thank you for calling attention to the comments that ICC submitted in writing that are on the Web site and ICC's Web site and Jon Nevett has articulated some of the points that are in those comments. I just wanted to link why ICC put the transparency and accountability comments with structural or participation comments and you've done the same thing in this workshop today. That also comes to the point who are we, ICANN, accountable to? The global business community, some of them are involved in ICANN and some of them are part of the ICC community but are not involved in ICANN. So we also tried to distinguish in the comments between making clear that there are certain things that the ICANN stakeholders, which includes some of the global business, are aware of or need or what have you and then there are other parts of what we discussed that address the larger Internet community which includes global business out there that isn't involved and tried to tie it into some of our improvements suggestions, many of which I would underscore everybody else's compliments to a lot of the efforts that are being made, the multilingual, the translation efforts, many of the other things that we've mentioned here today. But I just wanted to make that link because ICC's community, some of them are involved in the business-related constituencies. But we also have a very brought community of businesses from different sizes, all the geographies, 130 countries and part of what will help to -- help the accountability aspect is to get more of that community involved in ICANN so that they can benefit from the transparency improvements that are going on and they can also seek -- because virtually all of our members are affected by what ICANN does and its functions and its decisions. Some of the improvements we've suggested link to that discussion in that way. Specifically I thought it was important to highlight -- and I am happy to talk about this later with people -- but ICC has an organization has its own internal processes and accountability issues and transparency issues and so vis-a-vis our members, we have certain responsibilities and our interaction in ICANN and bringing global business input and participation to ICANN has to be synchronized with some of those responsibilities. So it is a bit of a complex web but I think it is important because it is not just ICC. I think there are a lot of organizations and a lot of entities out there that have similar responsibilities which tie into how we improve the meeting structures, the PDP processes, et cetera, in order to make sure that to some degree it's linked with what other organizations and entities have to do vis-a-vis their communities. Thank you. >>PAUL LEVINS: So I will get Bernie to talk. Bernie, who are we accountable to? Are we completely unaccountable, are we? >>BERNARD TURCOTTE: I don't think that you are completely unaccountable. That's a nice way of putting it, but it is unclear who you're accountable to for specific things. One of the threads we picked up here, though, is there's this continual sort of chicken and egg on do you define what you are going to need to be accountable for and then define the community? Or do you define your stakeholders that you want to be accountable to and then define how you're going to work for them for specific issues. Personally, my personal preference is always simpler to find out who you want to be accountable to and once you identify them you can work out with them how you are going to be accountable to them on what which is why we've been harping on this point for a long time. The second thing is I always worry a little bit when I hear we're such a new organization. Organizations have been around for a real, real long time. Yes, there are new things that we are doing and, I guess, a lot of our organizations are a little new. But it is about how people work together. And there are a couple of things that we all understand about how that works and a couple of things that don't work. So for me, it is always interesting, it is always innovative and it is nice to have the flexibility. In closing, I really like Peter's idea, and I don't know if I am going to translate this properly. But it's like -- it is pretty clear people want to do things, let's do something. Maybe we can just see the best we can do and then just have a process for making sure we improve it going forward. But this has been around for a long time, and I think it is fairly clear across the board from this discussion that we need something: Thank you. >>PAUL LEVINS: Thanks, Bernie. Other inputs that people might like to make on this topic, or observations? If not, I will let Kieren McCarthy provide us with some input. Kieren? >>KIEREN McCARTHY: I think it should be accountable to the people who put in an input into a particular process. So whoever puts in an input into that process, those are the people you're accountable for. For what? For that process. That way it encourages people to put in their thing and also you don't have to be accountable to people that aren't interested in a particular aspect of what ICANN does. ICANN does more and more things, goes to more and more areas. And there is the technology people, there is very few -- even IPv6 now has a political element and that's a very technological thing. I say accountable to the people who have input to the process for that process and you are accountable to different people depending on who is putting in input on each thing. >>PAUL LEVINS: Marilyn, sure. >>MARILYN CADE: I'm going to question that assumption a little bit, Kieren, in that I think it's really easy to make a comment and not be accountable yourself. And I think that's -- so that's why I don't think we quite have the answer yet. You know, it's really easy to throw comments over the transom and influence a process, but not participate actively in the organization otherwise, and think that the organization should adapt itself to the view that you throw over the transom one time. So I do think that this question of who are the stakeholders and the fact that ICANN may have an ever-growing set of stakeholders, both geographically and perhaps by the depth of the issues that we engage in related to our core mission, I think that's a valid point, but I think if it's just about I file a comment and ICANN has to be accountable, that sounds -- and I'm happy to talk about it more outside, but it sounds pretty much like ICANN will be buffeted and even potentially completel! y taken over and I'm going to give an example about the green paper. During the green paper, a certain individual filed 123 comments out of the roughly 500 comments. So if you weighed them and you counted them, you had 500 and some comments. If you looked at them, you had 123 comments from one person. I think participation can be subject to capture, if there aren't expectations of accountability at all levels. >>PAUL LEVINS: Thanks, Marilyn and Peter, I think you had a slightly different topic. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yeah, just adding onto that last one, I think Kieren is right, if we can meet Marilyn's point, and that's usually dealt with legally by some concept of standing, so that you don't -- nobody everybody can comment. You have to have some conditional threshold that you meet, and then -- and I assume -- that's why I assume you meant, that we were talking about people who had standing, they weren't just officious or vexatious bystanders come into -- as Marilyn warned us just throwing just comments over the transom. I want to make just a slightly different point about the disclosure principles because I don't think there's -- I think the most disclosure principle isn't there or I can't find it. It seems to me that we should actually have explicit reply in writing the principle that we will disclose everything unless somebody wanting to keep it concealed asks for that and justifies it. When we started this, the principle was the opposite. The principle, I think, of all of our materials was that it was going to be -- it was there but damned if we were going to show you. And we've come a long way from that but I think in recognition of that, what we need is a written principle. Principle 1 of our disclosure principles should be: We will disclose. The material that's in ICANN, the material that comes in, our minutes, all of our materials will be disclosed, unless someone asks for it to be and can make a proper case for keeping it concealed. Now, having said that, let me just say that's how we've shifted things at Internet New Zealand and we even went back through all of our archives and paid someone to go through and recharacterize all of our material. So that stuff that was -- had it come up at the time, would have been treated in the same way and that was a difficult exercise but that's how we honored that principle. And let me also say that in practice, it works. Because all of us recognize that to be functionally efficient, we have to have confidentiality. There has to be sometimes timed disclosure for important reasons and there has to be some things that will never come out. But the ownership beyond the people who want to keep it secret shouldn't be too hard to get secrecy for a good reason. For example it's about someone's personal problems or it's about their salary or it's about some delicate negotiation or someone's commercial secrets. We could all think of the reasons why. So provided you can have reasonable confidence that you can get it when you need it, a principle of disclosure is actually a very easy one to live by, and I think it would -- it would look good to have that as a -- as principle 1 of our disclosure principles. >>PAUL LEVINS: Can I get John Jeffrey, put him on the spot? And to talk to that. Simply to make the point that when we engaged One World Trust, one of the recommendations of One World Trust, Peter and others interested in this topic, were -- was the -- they pointed us in the direction of the Asian Development Bank and also -- and said, "They are best practice." You know, you should look at -- well, maybe not best practice. You should look at the Asian Development Bank disclosure principles. So I'll get John to talk to that, because I know he'll have some illuminating comments. >>JOHN JEFFREY: Well, I think I spoke to it a little bit during my presentation, which I was quickly going through. One World Trust in describing the type of policy that we should set up gave some specific examples and what we did from the staff side, what Amy did in particular, was to go through that document and find things that we could make ourselves more accountable to, and how we could enhance what we were going to provide. I actually liked Peter's suggestion and I think that's what we're trying to do in this document. We're trying to start with the principle of it's going to be disclosed unless there's a reason not to. Now, and so I -- one of the things I'd love everybody to focus on and give us some comments back on are those things that we're trying to exclude. Do you think those are the appropriate things or do you think there are other things that -- that's too much or we're going too far with where we're trying to stop it. I think it's a really useful thing for us as staff to understand what you're looking for and to make sure we're being as accountable as we can. >>PAUL LEVINS: Okay. So we're running really over time now, so just after quarter to 6:00. We've all got better things we can do, I think, so thank you very, very much. Can I just explain that -- or reiterate, I should say, the 31st of August is the -- is the existing deadline for comments on-line in relation to these principles and frameworks. They will be translated to pick up on at least a small portion of the point that you've made. Into a range of different languages. As well as that I'm most keen to find out what other organizations we can push these into. I don't want them to lamely sit on the -- on the comments side in the ICANN Web site and I want to be able to push these into as many entities who may have an interest as possible. So I -- I'd be keen to receive that information from you as to where you think we can send these, and direct people's attention. So please feel free to do that. And thank you very much for your attention. It's been a good session. And thank you for all the attendees. 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