Public comment on Ombuds Office

[Sam Lanfranco]

I would like to second/endorse Michael’s concerns about outsourcing some 
of the tasks to outside the Ombudsperson’s Office. In addition to the 
risk that outsourced services will be overly friendly to the 
establishment position, building capital for future services retention, 
there is a high probability that they will not understand the ICANN 
context well enough to either (a) understand the problem in context, or 
(b) offer recommendations that are appropriate for the ICANN context.

While issues may be standard, the purpose of a referral to the 
Ombudsperson’s Office is to both deal with the issue at hand, and to 
incorporate elements of the solution into ICANN internal best practice. 
The advantage to a one-stop Ombudsperson’s Office is that it (should) 
more fully understand the ICANN context. For that to work the 
Ombudsperson’s Office needs independence, accountability and -with 
regard to processes- transparency. It should have limited capacity to 
call on external expertise when dealing with ICANN issues.

It is of course up to the Ombudsperson’s Office to engage in conduct 
that preserves its integrity and independence. That involves deliberate 
policies about how it deals with ICANN constituencies (and constituents) 
in the normal conduct of ICANN business. Judges must do this all the 
time. It is no difficult.

I am not in favor of NCSG support for external expertise. I would rather 
have NCSG maintain a “watching brief” on the activities of the 
Ombudsperson’s Office, reviewing annual reports to insure preservation 
of integrity, than to have to trust the abilities of external “expert” 
service providers who fall woefully short in their understanding of how 
ICANN works and what recommendations might be useful.

Sam L

On 1/7/2018 4:01 PM, Michael Karanicolas wrote:
> 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 
> <mailto: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
>         <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-2dbBMgzwjjxYxl-aHaYIS-iIGpQ/edit?usp=sharing
>         <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LrMcu3zsTTyk1DG-2dbBMgzwjjxYxl-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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