Some responses to questions about ICANN

Kieren asked some questions, related to ICANN. Here are my answers.

Kieren McCarthey is a British journalist, and is running for the ICANN Board in the 2006 elections. See the exchange we have had on issues relevant to ICANN

Veni: Initially I was thinking of responding Kieren at his blog, but then it turned out a bigger answer, so I want to have it here. I’ve made them sound like a conversation, so that it makes more sense.

Kieren:
ICANN’s processes are not open. You may believe they are because you have ready access to the information and the people with the information. Things are changing but ICANN cannot claim to be open as yet. For instance:
Agenda of Board meetings. For a long time no one had a clue when they were of what was going to be discussed. That is partially solved now, with the agenda and dates going up on the website, but there are still sudden meetings and things are still added to or removed from the agenda at the will of the chairman, sometimes without explanation.

Veni:
– The Agenda is published now in a timely manner. I don’t want to live in history, and go back years ago, and argue how it was long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

Kieren:
Board meeting minutes. We are constantly told that free-ranging and intelligent debate is held during Board meetings. But people don’t buy it when the final decision appears to go against what everyone has been saying. Everyone is simply not willing to accept the word of people within the meeting with the most to gain – and nor should they be. The little that we have seen of Board meetings, appears to demontrate that half the Board gets involved in debate and the other say nothing or contribute nothing – and then vote in the way the chairman wishes them to. That’s how it looks from the outside. If it’s wrong, ICANN needs to prove so.

Veni:
– To say that we vote the way the chairman wants, is simply not right. Take as an example any vote, where there is no full majority. The fact that not all directors speak is correct – and you’ve seen it also during the public Board meetings. But that’s quite normal. Do you think that if all board directors were speaking, that would have made ICANN look better? Are we there to make the organization look better, or to actually make it work better?

Kieren:
If there is a bottom-up consensus, why doesn’t ICANN publish the papers produced by ICANN staff summarising issues? Surely this is just a case of boiling down what people have said if there is a bottom-up process? The problem is, and we all know it, that the ICANN staff frequently provide a one-sided brief to the Board which pushes ICANN staff’s best interests. And the Board has been very weak in bringing this distortion of the decision-making process to account.

Veni
– You say that the papers are produced “in the interest of the staff”? I don’t agree with that. The staff is appointed by the CEO, who is elected by the Board. If the Board thinks that staff uses the papers for their own interest, and not in the interest of the organization, don’t you think the Board would have reacted by now? Or do you believe that the Board directors are people, who are “isolated” and don’t have clear view on the organization? I hope you are not that extreme in your thinking.

Kieren:
It is nigh on impossible to find relevant information. ICANN now recognises that simply posting something to the website (where it can’t be found even if you knew it had gone up) does not justify the constant refrain that “it has been up for public comment”. But that is a very recent development. The black hole of the ICANN website has been carefully used for years to push through changes that ICANN staff know people won’t like.

Veni:
– The web site is already suggested for change. You should send your proposals for improvements, not just complain “it’s difficult to find this file”. Besides, let’s not forget that people tend to use Google for finding anything. That’s not approval of the way the web site looks; it’s just a note to say that the way the web site looked was probably not among the top priorities of the CEO – and it’s perfectly reasonable.

Kieren:
The process that decides who gets what role within ICANN and ICANN constituencies is opaque at best and downright corrupt in some places. The same people have been in the same job – and here I mean mostly committees and constituencies that the process is stale and self-contained. There is an in-crowd to the extent that everyone goes along with bad decisions because they don’t want to incur displeasure. That is a poor way to reaching consensus.

Veni:
– I don’t think that decisions on the Board level are made on the asumption, as you point it, “don’t want to incur displeasure”. Your statement is not based on facts, but on thinking that “it may be that way, so it is that way”.

Kieren:
ICANN pays no attention to public comments made on the website and as a result no one bothers to post any, which is then used as an indication that everything must be fine. Everyone *knows* that is what happens and yet everyone also pretends they don’t.

Veni:
– The public comments are always taken into consideration. That does not mean that the decision should be taken always in accordance with every comment, right? The fact that people don’t post comments only shows what’s their interest in ICANN. It’s not to contribute through the mechanisms that exist, but rather to ride the wave of criticizing ICANN. It’s always easy to criticize, but it’s very difficutl to contribute adequately.

Kieren:
The first instinct within ICANN at the moment is not to give information. It is then referred to an over-burdened legal department in a permanent state of anxiety, slowing the process down even further and causing a culture to be created of just not bothering to provide information.

Veni:
– When you say ICANN’s first instinct is to not give information, what do you mean?

Kieren:
There is no appeals process. It is a phantom. And everybody *knows* it, except everybody pretends not to. That is ridiculous and has caused – and it always has done and always will do – an element of corruption because people ultimately know they can do what they want anyway. It breeds contempt for people that argue whereas in fact what ICANN should be doing is encouraging debate, not stifling it.

Veni:
– Appeal process for what? The Board can always vote again on their decisions, so in a way, one can appeal to the Board. Or to the Ombudsman, in certain cases. If you want to suggest that ICANN needs an appeal body, that requires changes in the by-laws, and some budget, and it will be done, if necessary. But again, the way to suggest this is with proposal, not with criticism.
I am sure that there are more problems, but there is also work behind the scenes, which is being done by ICANN staffers, who are humble, workoholic people. The least we can give them is pay some respect for the work they do. If you want to change thing, you can join the Board – and you want that, or join the staff, and in either ways – help ICANN become better. After all, when ICANN is better, that means the way the Internet is being run, is also better.
People often forget (some don’t know it, some prefer to forget it), that the issue about ICANN is not who is the chair, who is the CEO, but what the organization does. When there are redelegaitons that last long, people complain from IANA. When redelegations take place in weeks, people don’t even mention it. The checks and balances are not working well in the community. One can criticize, but one should also be fair. I am not so sure it works.