Public comment on Ombuds Office

[Michael Karanicolas]

Hi,

Great stuff! Thanks very much for taking this forward.

I have added some comments. Mainly, I think we need to do a bit more to
flesh out the recommendation about limiting fraternization/socialization.
These are issues that come up in other contexts - fraternization rules for
officers in the military, socialization/relationship guidelines between
judges and lawyers, etc. However, this is a really challenging boundary to
set, and even more difficult to enforce. I think if we're going to suggest
something as difficult as this, we need to put a bit more substance behind
it and provide some more concrete ideas. If we're not going to do that, I
think we should put the idea in softer terms, and maybe instead of
demanding a hard rule be included we should suggest that the Ombudsman's
office work in consultation with the community to set appropriate
guidelines for socialization/personal conflicts.

I also disagree with the idea that going to an external organization would
necessarily be a better guarantee of independence... Indeed - I think it
could have the opposite effect, since their more tenuous relationship with
their client (ICANN) would create strong incentives not to rock the boat,
or deliver unpopular truths. There's no shortage of examples of where an
institutional oversight/accountability mechanism does the job well, when
sufficient measures are taken to guarantee their independence. I can't
think of many parallel structures where contracted organizations provide
the kind of accountability we want here - though I would be open to
suggestion.

Best,

Michael







On Sun, Jan 7, 2018 at 4:19 PM, Kathy Kleiman <kathy at kathykleiman.com>
wrote:

> Very good comments! Tx Tatiana to you and Farzi for taking the lead on
> this important issue.
>
> Best, Kathy
>
>
>
> On 1/7/2018 2:38 PM, Tatiana Tropina wrote:
>
>> Dear all,
>>
>> Farzaneh and I drafted a comment on the CCWG-Accountability Work Stream 2
>> (WS2) draft recommendations on the ICANN Ombuds Office (IOO).
>>
>> The call for comment and all the documents related to it could be found
>> here:
>> https://www.icann.org/public-comments/ioo-recs-2017-11-10-en.
>>
>> The draft of the public comment can be found here:
>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LrMcu3zsTTyk1DG-2dbBMgzw
>> jjxYxl-aHaYIS-iIGpQ/edit?usp=sharing
>>
>> We would appreciate your comments and suggestion. It is an important
>> piece of work that has been done in the workstream 2, and we propose some
>> amendments to it on behalf of the NCSG.
>>
>> Looking forward to your feedback! Please submit it till 12-13 of January,
>> as we have to finalise it on the NCSG PC level before the submission
>> deadline, which is 14th of January.
>>
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Tatiana
>>
>
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