[governance] European Commission 'welcomes improvements in new IANA contract'

[Roland Perry]

In message <4EC11941.70705 at cis-india.org>, at 19:06:01 on Mon, 14 Nov 
2011, Pranesh Prakash <pranesh at cis-india.org> quote Neelie Kroes:

>The Commission has long maintained that a strict conflict of interest
>policy will markedly improve the quality of the decision-making
>processes of the next IANA contractor.

I wonder which IANA decisions those are? They make remarkably few, As 
ICANN put it in a letter to the Department of Commerce in July: "The 
IANA staff does not develop policies, lead policy development processes, 
or make policy decisions in the course of performing the IANA 
functions."

Even cctld redelegations are decided upon by the ICANN board.

>Furthermore, following Commission demands, the draft contract states
>that when introducing new Top-Level Domains (such as dot.museum or
>dot.movie), or modifying existing ones, the next IANA contractor will
>have to provide specific documentation demonstrating how the underlying
>decision-making process was supportive of the public interest.

Their own decision-making, or that of ICANN?

Maybe I'm missing the point, but it seems IANA has to prove that ICANN's 
decision-making process was supportive of the public interest, before 
implementing those ICANN decisions. Presumably they'll have to ask ICANN 
for this evidence, and then evaluate it in some way, to make sure the 
public interest requirement is indeed fulfilled.

The contract seems to force them to add that value. And what if they 
decide there's a flaw in a particular policy - do they submit the 
evidence to DoC to make a final decision, with a note saying "actually, 
we don't think this satisfies the test", or have they the power to tell 
ICANN to reconsider? And who is "they" anyway - IANA's staff in the new 
regime, or some new multi-stakeholder panel they've recruited?
-- 
Roland Perry
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