[governance] Transparency over oversight function

[David Conrad]

John,

On Jun 23, 2012, at 11:53 PM, John Curran wrote:
>   DoC/NTIA has done a credible job in keeping the oversight role to the minimum 
>   necessary and relatively free of US political concerns.  While we all hope this 
>   wil be the case, there would be no way of knowing if otherwise unless the actual
>   interactions between NTIA and ICANN are open and transparent.  

Interesting that you leave out Verisign, the folks who actually implement changes.

However, in the specific case of root management, I'm curious: given the output from the root management process are (by definition) public, the overall processes by which the requests are handled is public, and even graphs describing the processing queues over time are published, what additional openness/transparency do you feel would be helpful/necessary?

>   I believe that Parminder has a valid point that we should not be complacent with
>   respect to the ability of the USG to unilaterally act in these matters,

I believe this is a source of my confusion over this entire "oversight" discussion.  In my view, oversight ensures good actions are taken and bad actions are prevented.  Unilateral action on the part of the USG as discussed in this thread would not be oversight.  In the context of root management, the USG (currently and historically) has acted in an oversight role with respect to the actions of ICANN (by authorizing root zone changes) and Verisign (through contractual obligations) and as far as I know, has done so in line with existing policies and processes (for good or ill).  The actions Parminder and others have been expressing concern about and you appear to allude to would be those that could be taken by the government of the hosting country for the operational arm of the "international oversight mechanism", regardless of the country. Given national sovereignty, it isn't clear to me how an "international oversight mechanism" would be able to prevent a government (any government, not just the US) from imposing its will on the operational body within its borders that is implementing root zone modification. However, isn't this distinct from the question of "oversight"?

Regards,
-drc


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