ICANN Accountability Working Group Reports Broad Consensus on Enforcement Mechanism
The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) believes it reached a high-level consensus on enough key parts of its proposed package of changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms that it will be able to present a final proposal to the ICANN board by late January, CCWG-Accountability co-Chairman Leon Sanchez told stakeholders Thursday. ICANN leaders and stakeholders had been meeting in Dublin since Sunday on a wide range of Internet governance and domain name issues, but negotiations on a compromise on the CCWG-Accountability proposal had been widely seen as dominating the conference (see 1510160058). A January submission of the CCWG-Accountability proposal to the ICANN board could result in ICANN approval of the plan during its March 5-10 meeting in Marrakesh, Morocco, but that's highly dependent on the new draft not requiring further major changes, stakeholders told us.
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CCWG-Accountability members agreed to proceed with the sole designator model as the mechanism for enforcing proposed community powers in an expected third-draft proposal, though additional issues with the mechanism will require additional tweaks in the weeks ahead, Sanchez said. The sole designator model had recently emerged as a compromise enforcement mechanism between CCWG-Accountability's previous proposal to use the single member model and the ICANN board's proposed Multistakeholder Enforcement Mechanism (see 1510190068). CCWG-Accountability expects to submit a high-level version of the third draft proposal for public comment Nov. 15, with comments due Dec. 20, Sanchez said. A full version of the new draft is likely to be ready for consultation about halfway through the comment period, he said.
CCWG-Accountability has been able to move most provisions in its proposal into a refinement stage, including making some progress on defining a decision-making model that includes community consultation, Sanchez said. CCWG-Accountability has also confirmed its support for its proposed set of changes to the Independent Review Process (IRP), Sanchez said. A subgroup will now work on operating procedures for the enhanced IRP, he said. CCWG-Accountability also has confirmed its support for separate processes for recalling ICANN board members based on whether they were nominated by ICANN's nominating committee or by an advisory committee or supporting organization.
There was no consensus on moving forward with 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. GAC, which has raised concerns with the proposed amendment, said Wednesday it has “agreed to further work” on considering the proposed amendment as CCWG-Accountability moves forward on its third draft. But GAC repeated its long-stated argument that any CCWG-Accountability proposal “must preserve the current role of governments in ICANN.” CCWG-Accountability co-Chairman Mathieu Weill cautioned during a working group session Thursday that GAC should ensure any further feedback it provides on the proposed amendment gets to CCWG-Accountability by Dec. 20 in order to not further delay the working group's timeline.
CCWG-Accountability's ability to coalesce around the sole designator model is a positive development, “but we're only getting the broad brushstrokes at this point” about what the working group's third draft proposal will look like, said Phil Corwin, principal of e-commerce and IP law consultancy Virtualaw, in an interview. “We're moving forward but we're nowhere near the finish line.” The full contours of the third CCWG-Accountability proposal will be important to continuing the working group's momentum post-Dublin since that will demonstrate whether there's consensus on a deeper level, he said. One of the challenges CCWG-Accountability will face going forward is that the group will need to provide a “much more succinct” explanation of its third draft proposal for the ICANN community while also creating a detailed version for NTIA review, Corwin said.
Even with the progress CCWG-Accountability has made in Dublin, “there's still going to be some significant questions left unanswered” amid a shrinking timeline for completing the IANA transition and parts of the CCWG-Accountability proposal seen as crucial to the transition moving forward, said FairWinds Partners CEO Nao Matsukata. Progress on the CCWG-Accountability proposal has been driven in part by views from a wide range of stakeholders that ICANN needs to reduce the “uncertainty that's been created” by continuing delays in planning the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, Matsukata told us. “For people who are in the domain names business, for people who are trying to take advantage of the new [generic top level domains (gTLDs)] and other things that have happened, this uncertainty has not been a good development.”
Stakes at the Dublin meeting were generally “higher that they've been in the past” for gTLD stakeholders, Matsukata said. “We're a couple years into the program now and we're getting to the point where tangible achievements are desperately needed to keep people moving forward,” Matsukata said. “On the business side, people are starting to expect some returns on their investments. On the governance side they want to see more movement forward on structure and accountability.”