[governance] "technical community fails at multistakeholderism". really?

[parminder]

On Wednesday 09 October 2013 01:12 PM, parminder wrote:
> OK, John, we can have the oversight function to be "limited to 
> judging ICANN on its compliance with its declared processes" (and 
> mandate ?) 


although there is a significant catch there - that if ICANN can itself 
change any or all of its processes and mandate, at any time, then it 
really makes no sense for any kind of oversight role, because then all 
and absolute power really still fully resides with ICANN - with no 
seperation of power, as is required. There has to be some 
'constitutional' processes and substantive mandate that is inviolable 
and cannot be changed unilaterally by ICANN with regard to which it 
will  be 'judged' by whoever has the oversight role...


> (which I understand as per its current mandate is also to work as per 
> international law, we may or not make this explicit, which I prefer, 
> but can do without for the present purpose.) As I said, for good 
> measure, in a possible agreed text, we can also add (or not), that we 
> mean here nothing more than the role played by the US government at 
> present.
>
> There is still lack of clarity who would "judge ICANN" in the above 
> regard. Is a global techno-political board with a membership pattern 
> as I proposed, including from RIRs, or some such thing, with a clearly 
> laid out narrow mandate, subject to appeal to International Court of 
> Justice, not acceptable to you. If not, then, who would judge. Pl be 
> clear, Is it just to be the 'community processes' as ICANN claims that 
> it has at present. Do you conflate that with the oversight role?
>
> You have asked, what does performing IANA function mean to me. Well, I 
> am primarily speaking about actually authorising changes in the root, 
> with the ownership over the authoritative root server - whether the 
> function is exercised through a contracted agent or not..... There may 
> be other number resource allocation functions etc, but I aint going 
> into that.
>
> parminder
>
>
> On Wednesday 09 October 2013 12:51 PM, John Curran wrote:
>> On Oct 8, 2013, at 11:50 PM, parminder <parminder at itforchange.net 
>> <mailto:parminder at itforchange.net>> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> On Wednesday 09 October 2013 11:22 AM, John Curran wrote:
>>>> <snip>
>>>>
>>>> Given that the role is oversight, why not make it completely open 
>>>> and transparent?
>>>> i.e. make the organizations that are doing policy development in 
>>>> this model actually
>>>> undergo independent third party audits of their compliance to a set 
>>>> of principles and
>>>> then have the results posted and discussed publicly?   Is there a 
>>>> need for only a
>>>> select community to participate in the oversight?
>>>
>>> 'Openness' has institutional and practical limits. It can easily be 
>>> captured by the powerful (incumbents) to mean what they would like 
>>> it to mean. ICANN can be said to be already subject to such an open 
>>> scrutiny by global constituencies - its various constitutive 
>>> processes and so on... Are you saying that is enough. So then ICANN 
>>> is already globalised and requires no oversight. I cant agree.
>>
>> Nor can I, that was not my statement - some form of oversight role is 
>> definitely necessary.
>> Do you consider oversight to be inseparable from authority?  I 
>> believe that a large number
>> of institutions that claim to adhere to open and transparent 
>> principles of policy development
>> should be subject to review and oversight, but I'm not certain that 
>> such oversight must be
>> inherently tied to any authorizing body.  In fact, we have the 
>> capability with the Internet to
>> have institutions be held accountable for their claims of openness 
>> and transparency to a
>> very large number of parties at once, including and all interested 
>> governments, civil society
>> organizations, and other Internet technical coordination groups.
>>
>>> We need a body with however limited and circumscribed function to 
>>> exercise core oversight function. Such division of executive 
>>> authority (ICANN broad) and oversight role (as governing bodies of 
>>> NGOS for instance do over the executive staff) is very necessary. No 
>>> body can work appropriately without such separation of power and 
>>> responsibilities. And ICANN functions are of two great global 
>>> importance to leave ICANN board will absolute power to do things as, 
>>> more or less, it at present has.
>>
>> Full agreement.
>>
>>> Also, this proposed global Board will also exercise the IANA 
>>> function, which is with the US government at present. This function 
>>> cannot be exercised by an open participative process.
>>
>> "Execise the IANA function"?  Please elaborate what "exercise" means 
>> and why it should
>> be commingled?
>>
>>> BTW, external, third party audits are technical/ professional 
>>> processes that are ancillary to proper oversight, and can never 
>>> constitute actual oversight.  All this is well known and discussed 
>>> in organisational and governance theories, and I would not go into 
>>> deeper details. We all know, we get the 'third party' auditors that 
>>> we want to get - and they can in any case only point to some very 
>>> clearly illegal or extra-legal things - auditors are not there to 
>>> cast political or even substantive governance judgements.
>>
>> Political and "governance judgement" being substituted for actual 
>> open and transparent policy
>> making is exactly my fear, hence the desire that the oversight role 
>> be limited to judging ICANN
>> on its compliance with its declared processes.
>>
>> /John
>>
>

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