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Speaking more broadly than simply the ICANN accountability process,
I think some expertise is missing at ICANN. Their response lately
has been to hire folks to fill that gap. I am thinking of the
following areas where I do not frankly see great expertise or
concentrated focus on deliverables either in the staff or
stakeholders:<br>
<ul>
<li>holistic risk management ( I am not talking about security, or
business risk)</li>
<li>privacy implementation <br>
</li>
<li>values and ethics <br>
</li>
<li>public policy <br>
</li>
<li>accountability and external audit and review</li>
</ul>
<p>I think green papers are great, but it is how we get there that
counts. If the board selects a bunch of experts to do a green
paper, the same way they selected a bunch of experts to do the
Whois replacement (ie. the Experts Working Group on directory
services for the new gTLDs, on which I just served) I am not sure
we gain much in transparency and participation. So we need a
process whereby the multistakeholder <b>community</b> decides we
need help, and either does an open call for potential responders,
or reaches agreement in the working group. This basic
accountability and adherence to a multi-stakeholder model appears
to be falling apart on various fronts.<br>
On a more cheerful note, it is very heartening that the
stakeholder groups are working together more, and not at cross
purposes. I am confident, given the tremendous and varied
expertise across the groups, that a cross-community working group
could come up with proposals for expert papers on the matters I
listed above. We of course would have to weigh in to make sure
the experts were not weighted in one direction or the other, but
it could work. I agree whole heartedly with your conclusion,
Seun, the members can do it better.<br>
Cheers<br>
Stephanie Perrin<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2014-08-27, 11:25, Seun Ojedeji
wrote:<br>
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cite="mid:CAD_dc6ix8eC0Ny2_+u5w1yM18_PqGy4VeERLhBR=JFxE0gy5hQ@mail.gmail.com"
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<p dir="ltr">Honestly I am yet to understand why an external
"expert" should be required in the first place and there are 2
reasons for this:<br>
- ICANN fix is from inside: The folks who knows ICANN more are
the ICANN community itself or rather I should say they are the
second set of people (because it's expected that the staff is
first but that is irrelevant since this process is largely
checking on them). So if there is going to be a realistic
accountability, more of the role should rely on the community.<br>
- Who are the experts: That word can be relative because I don't
see how much experience non-icann participating individual will
have to make him/her an expert. The accountability process is
not audit review where there is a general template/rule that
works on different organization. It's rather a process that
improves the strength of an organisation and it's the
organisation members that can do that better. </p>
<p dir="ltr">Cheers!</p>
<p dir="ltr">sent from Google nexus 4<br>
kindly excuse brevity and typos.</p>
<div class="gmail_quote">On 27 Aug 2014 15:33, "Sam Lanfranco"
<<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="mailto:lanfran@yorku.ca">lanfran@yorku.ca</a>>
wrote:<br type="attribution">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0
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<div bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"> <small><font
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big>The Role of
Experts in ICANN deliberations<small>:</small></big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big>This issue
is churning away in the background of various
discussions so here is a contribution to thinking
about how to handle it. </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big>There are
two areas of concern with regard to the role of
experts in ICANN deliberations. The first, of course,
is the selection of appropriate experts for the
issue/task at hand. As everyone involved in policy and
project implementation knows, knowledge and expertise
only have meaning in context, and excellent
credentials applied to the wrong task produces a
double risk. The advice will be out of context, and
there is the risk of legitimating the advice based on
the credentials of the expert, rather than on the
suitability of the advice to the context. In fact,
this is always a problem, no matter how the expert
selection process is undertaken and by whom. </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big>This leads
to the second concern, and one that is present in
ICANN deliberations. That is once the expert opinion
is tabled it is given undue weight in decision making
independent of its actual relevance and strengths.
This has happened with some of the content of recently
retained ICANN expert panels, in particular the one on
enhanced multistakeholder engagement. </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big>There is a
long standing tried and true protection against the
risks associated with both of these concerns. The
British call it the Green Paper process, and it would
be simple to incorporate it into ICANN’s use of
retained expertise to assist in decision making. It is
very much like the terms of reference currently being
used for the IANA stewardship coordination group. An
agreed upon simple statement could be a mandatory part
of the charter, or terms of reference, for any expert
group convened within ICANN. Something like: </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big><b>This
expert group will identify issues and options, and
may suggest recommendations for policy or
implementation, to be used as input into the
subsequent multistakeholder dialogue and
multistakeholder recommendations for action. </b></big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big>While
there will still be differences of opinion as to who
should be retained as experts, such a process reduces
the critical role of expert selection in the ultimate
policy decisions, and allows the stakeholder groups to
insure that subsequent use of advice is based on the
relevance of the advice to the issues at hand. It
focuses on usable outputs and not expert credentials,
and minimizes the extent to which decision making can
selectively pick elements of the advice based on
self-interest. </big></font><br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font></small><br>
Sam L.<br>
<font face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><big> </big></font>
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