ICANN's Marrakech Meeting Will Have Major Focus on Accountability Proposal, Policy Officials Say
The main focus of ICANN’s upcoming March 5-10 meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, will be final consideration of the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability’s (CCWG-Accountability) proposal for changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, as expected (see 1602160069), ICANN policy officials said Thursday in a webinar. The CCWG-Accountability proposal has become intertwined with the final proposed Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plan, with the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group saying it would wait to submit its final transition plan to the ICANN board in tandem with the accountability proposal. The ICANN board is expected to consider both the ICG’s transition plan and CCWG-Accountability’s proposal during their public board meeting March 10, ICANN Senior Vice President-Policy Development Support David Olive said.
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CCWG-Accountability was finally able to submit its final proposal to ICANN’s chartering organizations Wednesday after reaching a final consensus on aspects of the proposal related to the Governmental Advisory Committee’s post-IANA transition decision-making role. CCWG-Accountability decided to proceed with a modified version of its earlier proposal to exclude GAC from participating in final consensus discussions when ICANN community members formally object to ICANN board implementation of GAC advice. The modified version of the GAC carve-out would still allow for a community enforcement consensus if three of the remaining four advisory committees (ACs) and supporting organizations (SOs) support enforcement. The normal proposed threshold for community enforcement action would require support from four of five ACs and SOs. However, the reduced threshold wouldn’t apply in situations in which the proposed enforcement action is removal of all ICANN board members and an independent review process found that the board’s action was consistent with ICANN’s bylaws, CCWG-Accountability said in its final report.
GAC and other ICANN chartering organizations will need to determine their final position on the CCWG-Accountability proposal prior to the ICANN board’s March 10 meeting, with GAC’s final opinion on the proposal being viewed as particularly important, an industry lobbyist who partially focuses on Internet governance issues told us. GAC views its consideration of the final CCWG-Accountability proposal as its “highest priority” agenda item during the Marrakech meeting, Senior Director-GAC Relations Olof Nordling said. GAC plans to devote “maximum time” to considering the proposal so it can “straighten out” earlier concerns with the proposal, Nordling said. GAC was unable to reach a final consensus on key aspects of an earlier draft of the CCWG-Accountability proposal, including the working group’s recommendation on a higher vote threshold for the ICANN board to reject GAC advice (see 1601260067). CCWG-Accountability has since changed its earlier proposal for a two-thirds board vote threshold to a 60 percent vote majority.
The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) has also been heavily focused on the IANA transition and the CCWG-Accountability proposal, but is also currently involved in 13 policy development processes, GNSO Team Leader Marika Konings said. The GNSO recently launched a policy development working group to determine possible policy changes for future rounds of ICANN’s new generic top-level domains program, which began meeting this week, Director-Security and Stability Advisory Committee Support Julie Hedlund said. Other current GNSO-led policy development processes include a review of existing rights protection mechanisms that apply to gTLDs and to determine whether the current WHOIS domain registration data framework sufficiently meets the needs of new gTLDs, Hedlund said.
The At-Large Advisory Committee is planning to vote March 6 on whether to support the CCWG-Accountability proposal, Senior Director-At-Large Heidi Ullrich said. The Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) is planning several sessions related to its consideration of the CCWG-Accountability proposal before the ccNSO Council meets, Senior Director-ccNSO Policy Bart Boswinkel said. The ccNSO will also review marketing of country code TLDs and other regional developments, Boswinkel said.