ICANN's IANA Transition Spending $13.5 Million and Counting
ICANN spent about $13.5 million on transitioning U.S. government oversight of handling some of the Internet's technical guts, showed new disclosures on the still-pending and controversial transfer of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. With the IANA transition not expected until at least Sept. 30, that figure excludes costs during the infancy of the transition and those after September 2015. The nonprofit's disclosure Thursday was called unusual by experts who reviewed the figures. They told us there is little precedent for release not just of U.S. lobbying spending in one aggregated place, as that must be disclosed in quarterly filings available only through document searches online, but also other types of expenditures relating to what some call the influence industry such as law-firm retainers.
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In what experts said is the narrowest definition of U.S. lobbying, ICANN spent $765,829 July 2014-Sept. 30, 2015. That money was spent on Akin Gump, Kountoupes Denham and Mehlman Castagnetti, "which have been engaged on a monthly retainer to help us with all ICANN-related issues. These are the only non-staff related lobbying costs ICANN has incurred," said the group. ICANN also said it has one in-house registered lobbyist: Jamie Hedlund, vice president-strategic programs, Global Domains Division. This is the first time ICANN released all IANA transition spending in one place, outside of annual IRS Form 990s and quarterly House and Senate lobbying disclosure forms, a spokesman emailed us.
The spokesman and experts said the release comes amid calls for transparency from those who volunteer with ICANN or are active with the group on behalf of their employers. “We’re releasing the info because of some queries that came up during the last ICANN meeting in Dublin, during the last quarterly stakeholder call and on a few mailing lists," said the group's representative. Experts also pointed to a Nov. 5 article detailing the extent of the lobbying and naming well-known former government officials from both political parties whose firms received money from ICANN.
The disclosures show that among firms getting $1.1 million for education/engagement (as distinct from lobbying) were Albright Stonebridge Group and RiceHadleyGates. The former's chairwoman is Clinton administration Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, according to its website, while RiceHadley's site shows principals including George W. Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Another $4.81 million went to Adler & Colvin and Sidley Austin for legal advice to an ICANN working-type group or groups. Jones Day got $1.2 million for legal advice to ICANN. Travel and meeting costs were $1.7 million, as were personnel costs, with $200,000 for administration. Language services such as translation were almost $1 million.
Experts who examined the data release said it's a transparency move, even though it came after pressure. "It looks like ICANN is trying to stave off a negative perception by opening up all of their records online itself -- it’s a good move" and "certainly is more transparent than you see other groups trying to be," said Craig Holman, Public Citizen government affairs lobbyist. "One literally will never see this type of disclosure done by any kind of nonprofit organization or association just flat on their website; they’re not being ordered to do so, to my knowledge they are not facing any litigation," he said of the "proactive disclosure."
But the data may not be complete because it's possible even more is spent on what Holman called influence peddling. And once NTIA no longer has oversight over ICANN, Holman said he suspects ICANN may not continue releasing as much data. ICANN will continue updating figures on IANA transition "on a regular basis" as the transition progresses, its spokesman said. NTIA and some consumer and digital rights' advocacy groups didn't comment.
ICANN is spending what it thinks "is an appropriate amount of money to get the IANA function," said Visiting Fellow Shane Tews of the American Enterprise Institute. "It's transparent once they got their hand forced. They didn’t want to give it up." The hiring of "a bunch of people to push the process when the process is supposed to be multistakeholder" is "kind of against the will or good spirit of how ICANN works," said Tews.