The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability's (CCWG-Accountability) consensus at ICANN's Dublin meeting last week on several important provisions in its proposed set of changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms “marked an important step in developing a mechanism that will effectively empower business and other stakeholders to hold ICANN accountable,” said U.S. Council for International Business (USCIB) Vice President-Information and Communications Technology Policy Barbara Wanner in a news release Monday. “We have repeatedly said that accountability mechanisms must be in place before the IANA transition takes place.” CCWG-Accountability agreed in part to proceed with a sole designator model as its mechanism for enforcing proposed new ICANN community powers (see 1510220053). “What I think we can take away from this week is the wonderful and amazing way in which we have brought together in the same room people from different [stakeholder] groups to work in a collaborative manner -- and that makes a difference and brings progress,” said CCWG-Accountability co-Chairman Mathieu Weill in the USCIB news release.
The co-chairmen of ICANN's Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN's Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) reported Wednesday that there continues to be “some disagreement” among the group's members on how to proceed on several key proposed changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms ahead of ICANN's planned meeting in Dublin, which is set to run from Saturday through Oct. 22. Areas of disagreement center on proposals for a mechanism for enforcing proposed new ICANN community powers and a proposal to amend ICANN's bylaws to require the ICANN board to find a “mutually acceptable solution” when the Governmental Advisory Committee provides advice that’s supported by GAC member consensus, the CCWG-Accountability co-chairmen said in a blog post. Those issues were among several that remained unresolved following CCWG-Accountability's two-day meeting last month in Los Angeles (see 1509280056) and subsequent teleconferences. A significant number of other provisions in the CCWG-Accountability proposal also need further revisions “but we are confident that these refinements can be provided shortly to meet stakeholder expectations,” the group's co-chairmen said. CCWG-Accountability is investigating whether a two-phase plan for implementing “community empowerment” would be feasible, as such a plan “could help accommodate” concerns with the existing proposal, the co-chairmen said. CCWG-Accountability is “committed to make great strides during the Dublin meeting,” the co-chairmen said. “We are aware that the finalization of our recommendations is the last missing piece in the IANA Stewardship Transition puzzle and we take this responsibility very seriously.”
ICANN extended to Oct. 30 the public comment period on its preliminary report on future new generic top level domain (gTLD) procedures. The report, prepared in response to questions raised by the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council, urged GNSO to proceed with policy development for subsequent rounds of new gTLD rollouts. Policy developments may include reevaluating the $185,000 fee for applying to be a registry for a new gTLD and ICANN’s outreach on gTLDs, ICANN said. ICANN said it believes extending the deadline on the GNSO report would give the community more time to consider the report and will mean the deadline no longer occurs before the start of ICANN’s planned Oct. 18-22 meeting in Dublin. Setting the comment deadline after the end of the Dublin meeting means “discussions about the report can occur during the meeting while the public comment period remains open,” ICANN said.
The ICANN community should consider requiring registrants to input WHOIS registration data only in the languages and scripts they are skilled at, and require that data elements be tagged with languages and scripts in use, the Expert Working Group on Internationalized Registration Data (IRD) said Friday in a report. ICANN had asked the IRD working group to determine submission and display requirements for IRD and to produce an IRD data model that would match those requirements. Internationalizing registration data should focus on the capabilities of the data-submitting user and use of existing standards, and should be able to be easily extended to “tailor to the evolution of data elements displayed by directory services for various TLD registries and registrars,” the IRD working group said. ICANN should now ask the Generic Names Supporting Organization to follow up on the IRD report, the working group said.
ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) has decided to “continue advancing” its IANA transition proposal “as planned, aiming to make as much progress as possible” by the time ICANN stakeholders meet in Dublin Oct. 18-22, ICG leaders said Tuesday in a blog post. ICG found that a majority of public comments submitted through Sept. 8 (see 1509090053) support the proposal, though “in some cases that support was qualified by suggestions, questions, and criticism that the ICG is working hard to synthesize and address as appropriate,” the group's leaders said. ICG's decision to adhere to its planned timeline “as much as possible without sacrificing quality for speed is notable in light of indications” that the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN's Accountability's (CCWG-Accountability) work on its proposal for changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms is likely to be delayed, ICG leaders said. The group said it's “closely following the work of [CCWG-Accountability] and expects to have more clarity about the trajectory of [its] work after that group meets at the end of this week.”
ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker clarified the board’s position on the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability’s (CCWG-Accountability) second draft proposal, after a heated conversation Wednesday (see 1509030025). “We are in agreement on key concepts set forward in the CCWG’s proposal,” he wrote. He cited accord on things like fundamental bylaws; specific requirements for empowering the community into the bylaws adoption process; internal review panel enhancements; board and director removal; ICANN’s mission and core values; strengthening requirements for empowering the community in the budget, operational and strategic planning process; incorporating the affirmation of commitments reviews into ICANN bylaws; and allowing the community to enforce the accountability mechanisms in the bylaws, in a blog post Thursday. “Where the current proposal still warrants much detail” is what mechanisms should be used to deliver community enforceability, Crocker said. The board has suggestions on how these could be operationalized, he said. “It is critical that we work together to build enhanced accountability for ICANN and continue to refine and flesh out details of the impressive work already done by the community and complete the IANA Stewardship Transition.”
The IANA Coordination Group’s (ICG) proposal to transition stewardship of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority functions from the U.S. government to the global multistakeholder community meets the principles set forth by NTIA and presents a workable proposal for the continued stability of the IANA functions, the Internet Society (ISOC) commented Thursday to ICG. The comment deadline is Tuesday. The complexity of the proposal, its implementation and its dependency on the ICANN accountability proposal is of concern to the ISOC, CEO Kathryn Brown wrote in a blog post Thursday. ISOC welcomes NTIA’s decision to extend the transition until next September to “allow the global Internet community to continue its hard work on addressing these outstanding issues,” Brown said. “We encourage the communities to continue deliberating how these implementation details can be addressed in a timely manner and how, in addressing them, all the communities can remain equally involved.”
NTIA plans to continue to “closely monitor” the ICANN community’s work on an Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plan and a related set of proposed changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, the federal agency said Friday in its Q3 report to Congress. NTIA is required under the FY 2015 Department of Commerce budget to report on the IANA transition process on a quarterly basis. NTIA said it wants to ensure the IANA transition plan “fully meets” the criteria that the agency established, including “that the proposal must support and enhance the multistakeholder model of Internet governance, i.e., it should be developed by the multistakeholder community and have broad community support. We will not accept a transition proposal that replaces the NTIA role with a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution.” NTIA had said it intends to extend its current contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions until Sept. 30, 2016, to give ICANN additional time to plan the IANA transition and implement requisite accountability changes (see 1508180068). The specifics of NTIA’s planned review of ICANN’s IANA transition plan “will depend in part on the thoroughness of the processes the community uses to develop and review its proposal,” NTIA said. “For example, if the community ‘stress tests’ any new process or structures included in the proposal prior to submission, well-documented results may facilitate NTIA’s review.”
The ICANN board is preparing comments on the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability’s (CCWG-Accountability) revised proposal for changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker said Wednesday in a blog post. CCWG-Accountability released its revised ICANN accountability proposal earlier this month for public comment. Comments are due Sept. 12 (see 1508040058). ICANN board members and staff have been meeting in Washington “to further consider the CCWG proposal and commence a review of an impact analysis from ICANN's external counsel,” Crocker said. The board plans to release its impact analysis on the CCWG-Accountability proposal comments forum and plans a teleconference with the working group next week to “help inform the Board's development of its comments,” he said. CCWG-Accountability should also hold a public meeting in Los Angeles in late September on the proposal “to continue the dialogue” with the ICANN board, Crocker said.
ICANN has “every expectation” it will be able to complete the ongoing Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition process before its contract with NTIA expires Sept. 30, 2016, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé said Thursday during a conference call. NTIA said Monday that it intends to extend its contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions a full year beyond the existing Sept. 30, 2015, contract deadline to allow additional time to plan and execute the transition. That extension provides some additional breathing room for the IANA transition but doesn’t leave much time for additional delays, stakeholders told us (see 1508190064). Any further extension beyond Sept. 30, 2016, would be problematic because it would cause uncertainty among ICANN stakeholders about the IANA transition’s future, given that the extended deadline will occur so close to the 2016 presidential election, Chehadé said. The election itself shouldn’t “have a direct impact” on the IANA transition because of the “almost complete consensus” among members of Congress about the transition’s value, he said.