GAC Advice

The GAC provides advice to the ICANN Board on policy matters where there may be an interaction between ICANN’s policies and various laws, international agreements and public policy objectives. GAC Advice is communicated to the ICANN Board through either a Communique or a formal piece of Correspondence.

2017-11-01 Enabling inclusive, informed and meaningful participation in ICANN

GAC Advice

Reference No. :

2017-10-01 Enabling inclusive, informed and meaningful participation in ICANN

First Delivered 01 Nov 2017 via :

ICANN60 Abu Dhabi Communique

Consenus:

Consensus met

2017-11-01 Enabling inclusive, informed and meaningful participation in ICANN

The GAC advises the ICANN Board to instruct ICANN Org to:
1. Develop a simple and efficient document management system that allows non-experts to easily and quickly access and identify documents, starting with defining minimal requirements that ensure that every document has a title and a date or reference number, identifies the author and indicates intended recipients, makes reference to the process it belongs to and explains the acronyms used in the document; and

Board Understanding Following Board-GAC Call

The Board understands that the GAC wishes for the ICANN Board to instruct the ICANN Org to:

Develop a document management system that allows non-experts to easily and quickly access and identify documents, starting with defining minimal requirements that ensure that every document has a title and a date or reference number, identifies the author and indicates intended recipients, makes reference to the process it belongs to and explains the acronyms used in the document.

ii. Produce easily understandable executive summaries, key points and synopses (using e.g. infographs, videos and other innovative ways of presenting information) for all relevant issues, processes and activities, so that also non-expert stakeholders will be able to (a) quickly determine if a particular issue is of concern to them and (b) if yes, to participate in the policy process easily and effectively, on equal footing with other stakeholders. This should be done at least, but not only, before putting issues up for public comment. Attention should be paid to using plain English (and if possible translations into other languages) in order to allow non-English native speakers to understand the issues;

Board Understanding Following Board-GAC Call

The Board understands that the GAC wishes for the ICANN Board to instruct the ICANN Org to:

Produce executive summaries, key points and synopses for all relevant issues, processes and activities, so that non-expert stakeholders will be able to determine if an issue is of concern to them, and if so, how to participate in the process. This should be done at least, but not only, before putting issues up for public comment. Attention should be paid to using plain English (and if possible translations into other languages) in order to allow non-English native speakers to understand the issues.

The Board understands that the GAC and ALAC believe it is critical to ICANN’s legitimacy and part of ICANN’s core values to encourage meaningful participation in ICANN’s processes by non-expert stakeholders, and part of ICANN’s responsibility to make their voices, their needs and interests heard.

Rationale

This advice is consistent with a joint statement developed by the GAC and the At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) which will be published separately.

One of ICANN’s core values is to seek and support “broad, informed participation reflecting the functional, geographic, and cultural diversity of the Internet at all levels of policy development and decision-making to ensure that the bottom-up, multistakeholder policy development process is used to ascertain the global public interest and that those processes are accountable and transparent” (Bylaws Section 1.2.c.ii)

In the view of the GAC and the ALAC it is not only among ICANN’s core values but also critical to ICANN’s legitimacy to act in the global public interest to allow non-expert stakeholders to meaningfully participate in ICANN’s processes and make their voices, their needs and interests heard, and duly take them into account in order to act and take decisions that are in fact, in the global public interest. These proposed measures will go some way to address this.

2017-11-01 Enabling inclusive, informed and meaningful participation in ICANN

GAC Advice

2017-10-01 Enabling inclusive, informed and meaningful participation in ICANN

ICANN60 Abu Dhabi Communique

Consensus met

2017-11-01 Enabling inclusive, informed and meaningful participation in ICANN

Rationale

ICANN Board response to the ICANN60 GAC Communique (Board scorecard - 4 February 2018)

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