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Who Sets ICANN’s Priorities?
ACIG Notes from Cross Community Session
ICANN 59 Johannesburg
28 June 2017
Background
This was a cross community session proposed by the
Who sets ICANN’s priorities?
Formal processes for setting ICANN priorities are the Five-Year Strategic Plan and Five-Year Operating Plan, supported by the Annual Operating Plan and Budget. These do have some transparency and accountability through the public comment process and the Empowered Community structure. However, the 5-year plans are set at a very high level and do not seem to influence (or be influenced by) workload realities at the SO/AC and individual volunteer levels.
The published list of ICANN Projects was noted (as it was at relevant sessions at ICANN 56) but this does not seem to have any priority-setting role.1
SOs and ACs currently set their own priorities in a variety of ways. Several noted that the
Several participants noted that “not all stakeholders are equal” and the work of
There was agreement that genuinely urgent matters do get dealt with (for example, the IANA transition) but this has not helped individual groups set their own priorities.
It was noted that the problems are multiplied for participants from developing countries with limited resources and capacity.
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1 The projects listed here are under the Strategic Plan reflect the work of ICANN Org, not that of SOs and ACs.
The net result has been multiple parallel processes, work overload, a volunteer base that is not renewing, barriers to participation in ICANN processes and a feeling in many parts of the community that they have no means of
How can priority-setting be improved?
The following suggestions were raised in discussion:
- The ICANN CEO will look at options for some form of SO/AC coordination group and will report back to SO/AC leaders. He also noted that work has started on a new long-term financial planning process that may well affect priorities.
- There was a range of views on a possible role for the ICANN Board. Some felt it was the Board’s responsibility to address a common problem across the community. Others argued that an active role for the Board in setting community priorities would be inconsistent with the Board’s responsibilities as custodian of broader community interests.
- PDPs could seek input from the rest of the community on a more targeted basis rather than put a wide range of questions out for comment as a single process.
- Longer deadlines for comment on issues would help.
- The GNSO will be considering its first strategic plan in early 2018 and there may be opportunities for community input on this.
- A new approach would be to try to allocate the 16 days per year of community face-
toface time to specific areas of agreed common interest (such as the approach taken to geographic names for ICANN 59) rather than trying to deal with multiple issues at once. - “Learning to say ‘No, not right now’ “ should not be in conflict with any ICANN values or processes.
- SOs and ACs could look at ways of getting out of the cycle of responding to draft ICANN budgets and strategic plans and become more pro-actively involved in their formulation.
- A cross-community session at ICANN 60 on lowering barriers to meaningful engagement in ICANN processes should be considered.
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