[governance] Reinstate the Vote

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Kieren McCarthy [mailto:kierenmccarthy at gmail.com]
> 
> I'll tell you quite bluntly what the problem with public comments are the
> moment: it's a vicious circle. Poor quality comments (for whatever reason)
> means the input isn't valued, which leads to people not bothering, which
> leads to whatever comments are made not being taken seriously.
> 
> I am trying to break this circle by making sure summary/analyses of
> comments are produced and are then explicitly reviewed by the body in 
> question.
>

Actually I agree with much of what Kieren has written in that message and it's good to see that he has some appreciation for the problems of dumping out three or four 120 page policy reports full of acronyms and technical references and then asking for meaningful public comments in 14 days. Even those of us deeply steeped in the ICANN GNSO processes were simply unable to keep up. 

That system can be rationalized, and I trust Kieren to help do that, and I trust ICANN's board members to sincerely address it. 

But that's not really the problem!

The real problem is that there is very little high-level political accountability of the sort that would come from electing Board members or other external checks and balances. 

Look folks, this is not all that difficult to understand. We don't expect millions of ordinary Indians, Brazilians or Americans to keep tabs on the day to day regulatory processes of every specialized federal government agency. This applies in spades to a global agency. We do, however, want the public to have the power to throw the bums out of office, either directly or indirectly, when something goes seriously wrong and the agency makes a decision that has bad consequences. That is what is lacking with respect to ICANN.

After the US Federal Emergency Management Agency, the President and others completely bungled the response to Hurricane Katrina, what was needed was not more "public comment" and not "more public participation in FEMA." What was needed was direct accountability. Thank God we had midterm elections not too long afterwards and the Republicans paid the price for their mistakes by losing control of Congress. 

If ICANN makes a similar mistake what happens? Kieren invites you to spend $3000 traveling to an ICANN meeting and spend the better part of your life fixing the problem? 

If you look at US regulatory agencies, which are required by law to institute notice and comment, there are only a few professional or semi-professional lobbyists who can afford to keep up with everything a specialized regulatory agency does on a weekly basis. The day to day policy machinations of ICANN will increasingly become the province of specialists -- industry vested interests and a few dedicated public interest groups. But there still must be broader public accountability. It is impossible for this accountability to take the form of large numbers of ordinary people directly participating in ICANN processes. It can only take the form of some low cost preference aggregation mechanism such as voting. 
 


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