A curious email appeared in my inbox this morning. It was titled ‘Concerns at ICANN’, was addressed to the Board, signed ‘A Concerned Employee’, and came through an anonymous Hushmail email account.

Broadly, the email provides, in some detail, this person’s concerns about an influx of management at the domain name system overseer ICANN. It lists nine recent additions to the ICANN staff and highlights their connections to the CEO and COO which range from “former co-worker” to “former neighbor”.

It is widely known that the current CEO and COO worked with one another in the same roles at their previous company. Given the extraordinary complex and fast-moving world that ICANN inhabits, this has been seen by the Internet community as a good thing: a strong personal relationship at the top. But the email argues a significant downside.

“The normal checks and balances that exist between a CEO and COO do not exist at ICANN because of the long standing close and personal relationship between Fadi [Chehade, CEO] and Akram [Atallah, COO],” it states.

It goes on to outline a series of concerns: staff are reluctant to take concerns direct to the CEO; senior hires have not gone through a proper interviewing process; loyalty is valued above competency; groupthink is appearing as a problem.

So?

My first thought on reading it was: so, what’s new?

I worked at ICANN for just under three years and the internal culture was the most corrosive I had ever witnessed.

The Human Resources department had undergone a series of disasters, was in complete disarray, and that fed through to everything else. Staff spent more time on internal politics than they did doing their jobs. A constant sense of suspicion and paranoia both internally and with the external “community” led to lots of smart and talented people exhausting themselves into decision paralysis.

My second thought on reading the email was: why is this in my inbox, why has ICANN still not developed a proper internal system for dealing with such issues? And where is the whistleblower policy?

To ICANN’s credit, it recognized it had problems while I was there and a number of efforts were made to fix the problem. I was a staff liaison on the two most significant: a report by the One World Trust into ICANN’s accountability and transparency; and a large consultation exercise called Improving Institutional Confidence overseen by the ‘President’s Strategy Committee’. Both failed to have much impact.

One of the recommendations of the One World Trust report [pdf] in March 2007 was that ICANN introduce a whistleblower’s policy. The internal culture was so political that it was extremely difficult for anyone to make critical observations. At the same time, the organization provided a bare minimum of external information so the Internet community was increasingly concerned that behind-the-scenes deals and manipulation was rampant.

In reality, few decisions were made that weren’t developed from the copious information and opinion provided by the Internet community. But a “bunker mentality” meant that little useful information was ever shared. What little information did appear was subject to immediate and intense scrutiny.

This whole dynamic created a vicious circle that I spent years in my job trying, and largely failing, to break. The lack of a whistleblower policy only made matters worse. The organization absolutely did not want to hear about internal problems and whenever they did erupt, it went to great lengths to hush it up.

The Beckstorm era

I left ICANN in November 2009, just a few months after a new CEO came on board. The two events were not unrelated. Unfortunately for the organization, Rod Beckstrom made it clear from the very beginning that he was planning to build the entire organization around his own (fragile) ego.

There are a number of extraordinary stories about Beckstrom’s three-year tenure that the ICANN community is just starting to share. But one thing that is clear is that resolving internal disputes grew ever more difficult.

Under the previous CEO, “troublemakers” saw their influence diminish or they were intimidated into acquiescence, but under Beckstrom people were fired or publicly embarrassed. It led to an exodus of staff and an influx of yes-men. The HR department went from bad to worse, and there was still no whistleblower policy.

The issue came to a dramatic head at the ICANN San Francisco meeting in March 2011 when former staffer Maria Farrell used the public forum to launch into an extraordinary attack on the organization.

“There’s a climate of fear stalking the ICANN staff,” she told a packed room. “People are afraid to speak frankly internally in a way to speak unpalatable truths behind closed doors, the sorts of things that need to be discussed to allow the organization to function efficiently. People are afraid of losing their jobs by doing their jobs.” Farrell was met by sustained applause and it marked the end of Rod Beckstrom’s time as CEO.

But why did it take an external person using a public forum to get the issue heard? And where was the whistleblower policy that ICANN had said it would introduce four years earlier?

The missing policy

If you do a search for “whistleblower policy” on ICANN’s website, you’ll find the first item is a information disclosure request from yours truly.

Following Farrell’s public airing of issues, I asked at the next ICANN meeting in Dakar in October 2011 why the organization still had not introduced a whistleblower policy.

The question came during a session on Ethics, which was the result of controversy surrounding ICANN’s former chairman and during which it became clear there was no system of checks and balances internally for the Board or the staff.

ICANN’s General Counsel said in response to my question that such a policy had been in place for some time and staff were made aware of it regularly (in actual fact, it was hidden deep within the organization’s intranet and staff was only informed about its existence at the end of a standard form email from the HR department sent once a year).

ICANN’s new chair backed up the General Counsel’s point: the policy was in place; the Board has been briefed about it; it had been tested; and “we’re in quite good shape”.

So in a subsequent information request, I asked for four things:

1. Could you please provide a copy of the Whistleblower policy
2. Can you state when that policy was put in place, and when staff were informed about it for the first time
3. Can you provide details for how staff are informed of the Whistleblower policy, and how frequently they are informed
4. Can you please provide statistics for how many times the policy has been used each calendar year since it was introduced.

The response [pdf] failed to provide information on any of those four questions. But it did note that the whistleblower policy was actually called “Reporting of Work-Related Concerns to ICANN’s Anonymous Hotline” and staff was currently assessing whether it was able to make “internal employment policies” public.

Fast-forward nearly two years to March 2013 and the second Accountability and Transparency Review Team is asking ICANN’s chair for a copy of the policy. The chair responds that the organization is still looking at whether it can release the information, but that he believes that, yes, it can provide it to the review team.

As of 16 May 2013, this policy has yet to be published. What has appeared however is the email I received earlier today from an employee who clearly feels that the internal mechanisms through which employees can raise concerns are wholly inadequate.

The first paragraph of the email notes: “I am writing anonymously because there is currently a climate of fear among staff and I fear losing my job for discussing my concerns internally.”

So, what to make of all this?

It is of course worth noting that whenever a new CEO comes into an organization there is always a period of churn and upset.

Anyone that has ever gone through the introduction of a new top man will know this experience (I have personally been through it four times). Many times the new guy is there because it has been decided that the organization needs to change. That was undeniably the case with Chehade.

Chehade had no choice but to bring in a new executive team and to do so rapidly. Naturally, he sought out people he had worked with before and knew their abilities and trusted. It is inevitable that this process will create tension and perceptions of favoritism.

The reality is that, yes, of course those with an established relationship with the COO and the CEO will be in a better position to make things happen and influence the way things move. Unfortunately, that’s just a part of life.

But is there any truth to what this anonymous email says? I don’t have the faintest clue. Even if it is, it’s not really anyone’s business except ICANN’s HR department, its executive team and possibly the Board if it is disrupting the proper functioning of the organization.

So why mention the email at all? Why not, as one former ICANN Board member advised me on Twitter, just “hit the delete key”. The simple answer is ICANN history and the fact that I spend years of my own life trying to fix a problem that should never be there in the first place.

It has now been six years since ICANN was told to introduce a whistleblower policy. It has been asked to publish it several times and still has not done so. Clearly this employee feels whatever is there is not adequate and so has taken the extraordinary step of going public with their concerns.

Do the right thing

Don’t make the mistake incidentally of thinking that going public is cowardly. It takes much more courage that simply saying nothing. It is a virtual certainty that this person will now be the focus of an internal investigation and if ICANN’s history is anything to go by, it will not be a very pleasant experience.

Moreover, in a properly functioning organization, these sorts of issues simply do not blow up. There is a very long history of internal dispute resolution and a key job of a human resource department in the modern era is to ensure that internal disputes never reach this point.

The simple reality is that the Human Resources department at ICANN needs a complete overhaul in the same way that many of its other departments have been renewed and refreshed as the organization has grown.

What is the public interest in washing ICANN’s dirty laundry in public? As the organization’s 990 tax form highlighted earlier this week, ICANN is now the recipient of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Internet infrastructure industry.

It is also an organization that is opening up offices across the world, and one that will be overseeing the contracts of hundreds of new companies in just the next year, including many of the largest companies in the world. The organization is about to enter a whole new world of international scrutiny and as it does so it will come under enormous strain internally.

To do that without imploding, ICANN needs a full functioning human resources department; it needs a whistleblower policy that staff is not afraid to use; and most importantly, it needs to view today’s email as a warning sign rather than an attack.

And if it doesn’t

There is a salutary lesson in the Internet world over how things can go wrong if internal systems do not function properly during a period of high pressure.

Nominet is the registry for dot-uk and yesterday the organization was in the courts suing one of its members for defamation. The member in question made and posted a number of videos using quotes from the organization’s CEO, said at a employment tribunal, to highlight contradictions and argue that she should be fired.

That employment tribunal was brought – and won – by Nominet’s former general counsel and head of policy after she was ousted during a very difficult period for the organization.

Under stress and with significant external pressure, the organization’s internal dispute resolution systems broke down and it entered a vicious internal battle in which several Board members resigned, the IT director and Director of policy were pushed out, and the organization was forced through a series of make-or-break votes to radically restructure itself, all the while being threatened with takeover from the UK government.

No one at Nominet will tell you anything other than it was a hugely damaging experience for everyone. Under threat, it lashed out and has now somehow ended up in the position where it is suing a critic for defamation. That may not even be the end of it: other members have commissioned an independent legal opinion and wish to challenge Board members’ positions.

So back to ICANN…

ICANN’s first instinct will be to dismiss the email externally as nothing, and track down the sender internally.

The right thing to do is however to make a big deal of it, use it as an opportunity to address staff concerns and let the outside world know that this is an organization that cares about its people.

And make no effort to track down the sender. In the long history of the world, shooting the messenger has yet to work.

Last week, I received a highly unusual email claiming that an article on my personal website was libellous and insisting I take it down within a week.

Even more unusually, the article was from 2002 – yes nearly a decade ago – it is called “Domain scam merchants get legs sucked by toothless OFT” and it tells how the same man had had his knuckles rapped by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the UK having been caught trying to sell domains for top-level domains that do not exist. Examples were dot-brit, dot-sex, dot-scot.

The OFT had failed to do anything until the two people at the heart of the story crossed the line in the United States by using 9/11 as a way of advertising “patriotic” dot-usa domains (which also do not exist). The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was not at all amused and got a temporary restraining order against them, even putting out a news release on the matter. There were a series of other news releases as the FTC fought them, winning “as much as $300,000 for consumer redress”. Clearly selling non-existent domain names can be a profitable business done right.

The final judgement [pdf] in the case is what is interesting though. It is best summarized with this excerpt:

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that in connection with the advertising, promotion, offering for sale, or sale of domain names, Defendants are hereby permanently restrained and enjoined from failing to disclose, clearly and conspicuously, any material limitation or condition on the usability or functionality of those domain names.

Of course it is theoretically possible for the dot-usa top-level domain to exist. There is nothing to stop you setting up a private network with whatever endings you wish. However, only the IANA database holds the Internet extensions that are readily available on what we all think of as “the Internet”. And so the FTC constrained them from the sale or advertising of any domain name that didn’t require a special workaround to get them to resolve in your browser.

The very big difference in 2012 is that these top-level domains – and many thousands like them – are just about to become a reality under the new gTLD program run by ICANN. In fact, in just over a week, the full list of extensions applied for is due to be announced, and industry insiders are expecting between 1,000 and 1,500.

Under these circumstances, suddenly the constraints under which the people in question have been held for a decade will be lifted – because these domains will be on a path to existing on the broader Internet. There is nothing to suggest that they intend to repeat their previous behaviour, but it is a strong indicator that some unscrupulous individuals will seek to use the inevitable consumer confusion to scam people.

Libel claims

As for the libel claims, unfortunately due to the uncertain libel rules that continue to exist in the UK (they are being reformed as we speak), and thanks to a UK government that continues to believe that putting pressure on ISPs is a possible solution to the various issues that the Internet continues to throw out, even though his claims appear baseless, he has had some success in having his name taken offline in connection with the story.

The Register pulled the original article after it was approached recently. It was a ten-year-old article receiving no hits and so the company seemingly decided that it was easier just to pull the article that argue about it. The person complaining claims the article was pulled because the article contained libellous material; there is no evidence of that assertion.

The OFT actually redacted their names on its press release from 2002. I asked them why. They responded: “We felt that continued publication of personal details was no longer necessary, particular in light of our obligations under the Data Protection Act.”

He also approached the hosting company (Heart Internet) for my personal site (not this one, my kierenmccarthy.me.uk site) and told them the article was libellous. He claimed that the assertion that theys had been investigated in 1997 and 1998 for another scam was simply not true. Here’s what the original article states:

…the same two brothers, at the same address, except this time under the name TBS Industries were investigated by the OFT in 1997 and 1998 for deceptive marketing.

Which is true – with one exception which the person complaining appears to claim is libellous. That the other party is in fact his father, not his brother. We fear that here, he may be absolutely right — Well, right in the fact that he is his father (and frankly, he’s likely to know better than we are); not that it is libellous to suggest otherwise.

Regardless of the fact that there is not a good reason to pull the article, Heart Internet – at the moment at least – is going the safe route until it has reviewed the situation and has removed public access to the article on my site.

Anyway, as a measure of good faith, we have offered them a right to reply to the original article – which you can find on this website here – which we hope he will take up.

In the meantime, we hope that the action shown by the OFT in the UK and the FTC in the US is sufficient to warn off potential domain name scammers as the ICANN process puts out hundreds of new Internet extensions in the next year. We fear, as many others do, that it may not.

Resources

• Final FTC judgment
• FTC caselist
• OFT press release (2002)
• Original Register article

It is going to be a particularly crazy year in terms of Internet policy and governance, maybe even more than so than 2005, when the World Summit on the Information Society happened.

NPR used the launch of the new gTLD program last week to cover the other big issue – actual governance of the Internet. The slow build up of pressure to again try to bring the Internet under United Nations control is going to let out another big blast of steam this December in Dubai at the WCIT meeting when governments – and only governments – try to rewrite the ITU’s International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) to incorporate the Internet. It will be a big fight and I’ll be heading over there to shine as big a spotlight on the weird world of inter-governmental politics as possible.

Anyway, I was interviewed as was Super Rod of ICANN and David Gross – who was the US’ main man in charge during the WSIS negotiations. You can read the piece online, but it was designed for radio, so listening is much better in this case.

Download MP3 of NPR piece on Net governance

It’s a good piece considering the complexity of the subject and the length of time available.

Which reminds me – I *really* need to write a couple of pieces about what is going on with WCIT. It’s vital that something akin to the outcry over SOPA – albeit much more diplomatic – is generated to try to protect the Internet as it exists today, and keep it out of the hands of government representatives who view lack of control as something inherently dangerous.

Quick update: Ha! I see that the bad journalist posing as an academic, Milton Mueller, has taken huge exception to the fact it wasn’t him interviewed for the NPR piece and has written a rambling, bitter post about it. Internet governance is a very silly little world sometimes.

I wrote an extensive review of the dot-jobs saga earlier this week on .Nxt called: The case study that could kill ICANN.

This afternoon, I saw the Stephane van Gelder had referenced it in a blog post: What ICANN is doing wrong.

I wrote a lengthy response to Stephane’s post, but for some reason it repeatedly could not get past his anti-spam mechanisms. Having spent a little bit of time writing a response, I figured I would post it here instead. It’s below:

————

I think you’re being a little unfair to me. It is relatively easy to follow the article, even though the process itself was a little convoluted.

But anyway, this is the real problem: a very large number of people now know exactly what has happened and how bad it is. But what will happen? How will anyone be held to account? Will anyone even admit publicly that this is an example of poor governance?

Even if you were to raise it as GNSO Chair at the next ICANN meeting, you would likely be shouted down or told it is not in the GNSO’s remit, or be put under enormous peer pressure to keep it out of the public sphere. You’d probably be offered a private briefing. Anything to prevent the taboo being broken.

The best anyone can expect is that some Board members will dig into the issue.

And in response they will be told by the staff that some of the criticisms are valid, but they are old news and have already been dealt with. We have already moved on.

Then they’ll be told that there are inaccuracies in the article (but won’t go into too much detail over what they are because they’ll be very minor). And let’s not forget this was written by Kieren McCarthy [insert some slur].

Some weak reason will be given for the delays and the redactions and there will be a promise to do a review, or point to an ongoing review, or some kind of related delay tactic.

And then it will be pointed out that this is really a minor issue and ICANN is dealing with so much at the moment that some things are bound to slip through the cracks…

If a Board member continues to push, they will find themselves under pressure by other Board members: why are you pushing this so hard? Their motives will be impugned and they will find themselves given the cold shoulder by staff. They will find themselves being briefed against on the Board and in the community (and there are a few Board members that can testify to this).

Basically, everything will be thrown at the issue in order to avoid hard questions being asked, and real explanations being extracted.

Once it has then become far too big an issue, the Board members will get their secret apologies and promises to improve and be made to feel as if they have done their job.

But at that stage, they certainly won’t want to embarrass the staff or ICANN: that would only aid the organization’s enemies, and it would only encourage people to do-down the organization. So no one will say anything publicly.

And then you’ll find that absolutely nothing changes.

And when no one follows up on the lack of change (because it was never written down or made public), the impact will be to reinforce the reality that there is no actual accountability.

Now, the staff are not *bad people* – I worked there for years and have a lot of respect for them and the job they do: they work hard, deal with a lot of stress in a complex situation and they keep a smiling public face despite it all.

However, over time the wrong culture has developed and it is *that* which is demonstrated time and again in this dot-jobs issue. When you add up all the small, wrong decisions being made for the wrong (self-serving) reasons, you are left with a pretty poorly functioning organization.

This is why the calls for improved transparency and accountability continue to cry out, again and again, year after year. You can’t *make* ICANN do anything. And those that have been there the longest know that.

So they continue to do what they think is best, and they develop a raft of defense mechanisms for when people tell them they have got it wrong.

Until ICANN is forced to admit it is wrong on occasion. Until someone is publicly disgraced to set as an example for what is not acceptable. And until ICANN recognizes that the longer it keeps screw-ups ‘in the family’, the more this damaging culture will be reinforced, nothing will change.

That change can only come with a new CEO. And whoever takes over in July will have to constantly focus on the culture issue if they are to impact it because it is so entrenched in key people. Will they have the time and energy to fight that battle when there is so much else going on? Probably not.

So how do you fix an institutional problem? It’s not that hard in reality.

First, you stop making excuses and acknowledge that there is a problem.

And then you hold a proper public review of yourself where the truth, warts an’ all, is allowed to come out.

That is what happens in properly functioning democracies – the unpleasant truths are pulled out in public. And things are always better off as a result.

I’m not holding my breath though.

We’re heading to the UK for Christmas. I’ve been meaning to try out this online video/picture tool at Animoto for work reasons. The two combined…

I need your help. And I am counting on you and the power of the Internet to fix an issue dear to my heart.

I have a gorgeous 1966 split-screen VW camper van. And rather cruelly I have left it on its own for basically a year at my mother-in-law’s house because the practicality of having it in the heart of San Francisco is not great (plus we never use our other car anyway).

To cut a long story short, I was starting up the van every few weeks, and asking my mother-in-law’s husband to do the same. But, inevitably, the frequent start-ups lapsed for about three months and when I next tried to start her up, she refused. I thought it was the battery, so I got a man from AAA out to start her up – he said the battery was fine and drove off. The van hasn’t started since.

So today – finally – I decided to have a big stab at getting the van started. I bought some petrol/gasoline to top up the tank (it was low); I connected my portable jumpstarter to the battery to get it to kick in; I even give the top of the carburetor a tap in case the float valve was stuck. To no avail, the van won’t start.

I recall once when this happened when I was living in LA, a wise old mechanic turned up and told me about a trick to add a small amount of gasoline to the top of the engine (where, I don’t know) and that would help it kickstart itself. I have searched online for this tip and found nothing.

This is where you come in. I recorded my efforts to start the van. And I’ve posted the file here. What you can hear is me turning it on next to the engine, leaving the device (my iPhone), going to the van, starting it up, turning it off, starting it up, turning it off, a car driving by and me returning to the engine.

I just know that there are plenty of people out there that will know *exactly* what this sounds means. And I am trying to find just one of them. So please help me out and link, post, whatever this to anyone who has some VW know-how. And you will get a very appreciative Kieren.

Why not just go to a garage?

1. I’ve got to get the van there
2. Most garages these days have no idea about old vehicles like this
3. I want to fix the issue myself – a big part of why I have the van in the first place

So come on social media / Internet / humankind – help me out.

You can download the MP3 here.

I am both happy and depressed to see a public comment period open at ICANN talking about making changes to ICANN’s public comment period process.

With appalling inevitability, everything about the comment period highlights the problems that exist with the public comment period process. No one really knows about it, and it’s not being promoted anywhere. The text talking about it is indecipherable. The main thing it is about comes as a hefty PDF report that no one will read. The report itself was put together by a small group of people who didn’t engage is any useful effort to dig into any data, evidence or information.

Very few people will respond. Those that do will not have their comments listened to. There will be no follow-up. And the end result will be that ICANN convinces itself that actually the comment period process isn’t that bad after all.

I was working on this issue *five years ago*. And the only thing that has changed is that the comment period page is now in pastel colours.

But…

I swallowed all that frustration and just sent in a comment (the first but hopefully not the only one) in a pathetic attempt to actually help. It is, I think, positive and helpful. I expect it to be partially read and then ignored. And for the complaints about the process to start up all over again in two years’ time. Still, you’ve got to try.

Here’s what I sent:

Some thoughts on improving public comment periods

Hello,

I’m pleased to see some progress being made with respect to improving the public comments process – something that has been a bone of contention for all stakeholder groups for a number of years now.

I read the Focus Group report with interest and I have a few responses which I hope ICANN will reflect on and consider.

I have been a follower and observer of ICANN for many years and have spent a lot of time considering how to involve people more in the organisation’s processes, particular in my role as general manager of public participation for ICANN for nearly three years.

1. The current suggestions look unlikely to solve many of the problems that sparked this review in the first place. You may well find that months of hard work amount to only a small incremental improvement and continued complaints if you don’t reflect on the underlying issues that have led to suggested specific changes.
2. The suggested topic categories are a good example. They are all extremely ICANN-focussed and are focussed on issues that are current ICANN priorities.

   Those priorities will change in just a few years, necessitating the need for more categories, and causing some categories to fall into disrepair.

   The categories also act as a barrier to engagement – they are too precise. Someone who isn’t already highly versed in the ICANNese is unlikely to browse them, or understand what they mean. You are making it less likely that people will comment.

   The idea of specific or exclusive categories is also likely to be a problem, especially when there is a crossover on a subject – which happens frequently.

   I would strongly suggest that ICANN consider the use of GENERIC TAGS to help identify different comment periods. Tags would enable you to flag a given comment period as being relevant in one or more areas. And using more generic subject areas will help with a broader understanding and identification of what a particular comment period is about.

   This approach will work better, mean more and last longer that the current category suggestions. Here is a suggested list that would cover just every about comment period ICANN produces:

   • Top-level domains
   • Second-level domains
   • Security
   • IP addressing
   • Internet governance
   • Reviews & Reports
   • Policy processes
   • Internal issues
   • Legal issues
   • Events & Conferences
   • Openness, Accountability and Transparency
   • Finances
3. It is very disappointing to see the issue of prioritization raised and then rapidly dismissed as “being too subjective”.

   This is a dangerous way of making improvements to a system – to put out a specific suggestion and then walked away from it if there isn’t agreement.

   What that approach fundamentally misses is the *reason* why the idea of prioritization cropped up in the first place. It is because everyone has a difficult time seeing and understanding the relevance of a particular comment period to them.

   People just see a list of comment periods, and then even if they dig into each one, it is hard to tell how important it really is. Or at what stage in the process it is. Or if this is the best time to comment (are people still looking for new ideas, or comments on specific ideas?)

   The simple fact is that some comment periods are of greater relevance to a larger group than others. And some comment periods have significant implications that can be easily overlooked. Until there is a determined effort to address that, the problem will keep coming up again and again.

   Yes, rankings may be subjective but that doesn’t mean they aren’t enormously helpful. Something can often be better than nothing.

   And if you went through a list of current comment periods, it’s likely that nearly everyone would agree with the level of importance for any given comment period – except in special cases when people would also be able to say “well, this one is of particular interest to me because…”

   There are other options too. Some suggestions:

   • Put an initial rating of importance on a comment period and then allow community members to add their own rankings. That way the community decides its own level of importance.
   • Use stars rather than words (low, high etc)
   • Use highlighting tags e.g. if a “G” is added it means it is of particular importance to a General audience. If an “Ry” appears, it is of particular interest to a Registry, and so on.
4. The same problem appears with the Reply Cycle idea – don’t get bogged down in finding problems with every possible configuration. And try not to look at it through the eyes of the current system. If you do that – and there is plenty of evidence in the report that that is exactly what happened – then you’ll never made any useful progress.

   What needs to be looked at is the fact that the comment periods are unnecessarily static. A document is posted. Comments are sent in. A summary is produced. Changes are made. A new document is put out.

   In the Internet era we are all used to jumping in with comments and interacting in near real time on particular issues. The ATRT suggested a reply cycle because it was the simplest method of introducing a concept – that comment periods need to be more interactive.

   The most important aspect with this Reply Cycle idea is to make sure that what you end up with does *not* include in it arbitrary rules. The idea is to allow people to go back-and-forth a little bit; not to force people to respond in the correct way at the correct time, or to create a one-size-fits-all solution.

5. Re: technical improvements to the software/approach. Some good thoughts here. But beware the use of wikis.

   There are those who think wikis are wonderful. And those who will have nothing to do with them. I think you should experiment for some months before going any particular direction to avoid future arguments.

   As a sidenote: the report says: “Due to the fact that a threaded discussion environment has never been deployed at ICANN for Public Comments…”

   In fact I ran a successful test of a dynamic forum for ICANN which broke a comment period out into different components and had threaded conversations about each part. Ask the ICANN tech team what the software was called. Ultimately, it proved popular and looked promising but no one followed through with the idea.

   Part of the reason for that – and this is what I am warning about in general here – was that people were quick to think up and run through potential and future concerns about changing the current system. This is especially common in the ICANN environment.

   It is very easy to weigh a list of possible problems too heavily against all the future benefits that will accrue. And it is all too easy to overlook significant shortcomings in the existing system just because people have grown used to it.

   Especially in something as moving and transitory as a comment period, it is an ideal opportunity to try out different things. Unless you manage to create a system that actively prevents people from commenting, then you have already hit the current comment period baseline and while people may gripe about changes, they will be able to achieve exactly the same, so don’t let fear of change guide efforts to improve the system.

   One suggestion – you need to find a way to allow people to note they have commented with one click (this is now extremely common with software and posts on Twitter and Facebook). This would draw in others. And there needs to be a quick and easy way to see what others have said.

6. What is missing from the work done so far is any changes to how comment periods are actually run by staff.

   At the moment, staff – who usually have the broadest knowledge of the issue that is out for public comment – have a very passive role. They post the document, then summarise comments at the end, and then try to figure out how to make changes to the document as a result.

   Seeing as public comment is *the* key point where work and ideas start to gain broader acceptance and awareness, it will most likely be in everyone’s interests if staff took on more of a facilitator role wrt public comments.

   It is not hard to drum up interest. Staff (and the GM of Public Participation) could easily use email, Twitter, Facebook etc to highlight that a comment period will soon be opening, and highlight aspects of that comment period that would spark interest.

   You could give a particular comment period its own hashtag – that would spark debate. You could run a discussion forum on the ICANN Facebook page – everyone already understands how that software works and won’t blame ICANN for it. Think positive engagement. Staff could email and actively engage the people that they know and meet at ICANN meetings.

   Staff could also elicit questions and provide answers while the comment period is going. And encourage people who are focussed on the same point to go away and come back with a short summary of their discussions before the comment period closes.

   This facilitation role would have a huge positive impact on any comment period. But it does need to be an active consideration. Having a slightly improved comment period system will not tackle the root problem – which is that people are busy and they aren’t sufficiently encouraged or enthused to bother to comment on every ICANN document.

   This would be a huge – but positive! – shift in staff behaviour so it would need to be carefully and professionally introduced as it would inevitably be met with suspicion and defensiveness. But I have no doubt whatsoever that the rewards would be enormous.

7. Another thing that ICANN really needs to consider is explicitly giving greater priority to particular respondents. Or at least breaking out different respondents.

   It really is a no-brainer that if a supporting organization or advisory committee sends in a response then it should be taken more seriously. This is for the simple reason that these are the structures of ICANN itself that are designed to filter and raise issues.

   Likewise, a party that is directly impacted by a decision can expect greater consideration than a party which is not.

   If someone posts anonymously, that is fine, but they should also generally expect it to be given less weight than someone who is prepared to state who they are and who they work for. ICANN is deciding policy rules, not holding a music festival.

   As to the obvious concern that good material or intelligent responses may be lost through this process (which they already are being through the current system); again, a simple system of community rating – allowing the community to identify its own priorities and valued responses – would not only help flag up particular posts but it may also people to reach a general consensus in public and through a comment period – which is what the whole point of comment periods should be in the first place.

I hope this feedback helps. And I hope you will start making positive changes straight away by responding to this comment period response and/or explaining where and when the ideas were considered and accepted (or not accepted) and the reasons why either way.

That would make me feel that my efforts had been worthwhile and it would encourage me to respond more in future. If you set up a system that does that for every poster before you know it, people may get some real value from commenting on ICANN’s work.

Thanks

Kieren McCarthy

One of the more bizarre situations I have found myself in while covering domain name system overseer ICANN, both outside and inside the organization, was at the Vancouver meeting in December 2005.

It was a particularly difficult meeting. For one, ICANN was under intense scrutiny because it was about to sign an extension to the dot-com contract and literally no one outside Verisign and the ICANN Board liked it. But secondly, it had come to light that the US government, under pressure from right-wing Christian groups, had pushed the Board very hard to *not* approve the dot-xxx contract.

The Board was planning to approve dot-xxx on the last day of the meeting, but had a sudden change of mind and put it off until the next Board meeting. There was all manner of behind-the-scenes shenanigans as the very worst of ICANN came out and it made important decisions in secret, and then spent huge amounts of time and effort trying to make it look like it hadn’t. No one bought it and there was a lot of anger.

Rumours

In the middle of all this, I heard a rumour that the ICANN Board had been receiving threatening emails and faxes over dot-xxx, so I started digging into it. Whereupon I discovered that someone had been faxing the venue hotel with threats. And soon after managed to get hold of a copy of a fax sent from one Grahame Darcy in Florida which specifically focussed on Board member Mike Palage (who, for some reason Mr Darcy thought was called Michael Palach).

Mike Palage had been a consultant for the dot-xxx application in the first round of gTLD expansion, when it failed. He had also been instrumental in bringing on board Stuart Lawley who then carried over the dot-xxx application to the second round and who, incredibly, finally managed to get it approved five years later in March 2011.

Stuart Lawley was there in Vancouver and just to add to whole thing, had just received a large pile of FOIA requests from the US government over the dot-xxx application and was sifting through them.

Among the most damaging revelations were emails that showed: ICANN CEO Paul Twomey colluding with GAC chair Sharil Tarmizi to encourage the GAC to say ‘No’ to dot-xxx; meetings at the White House between right-wing Christian groups and member of the Bush Administration over dot-xxx; pressure from the White House to the Department of Commerce; pressure from the Department of Commerce to the ICANN Board; and what appeared to be members of the Bush Administration providing personal contact details to the Christian groups of the ICANN Board members.

I wrote up most of a story outlining how the ICANN Board was not only under pressure from the US government but was also received threats from US Christian nuts, and how those nuts may have been given their contact details by Bush Administration officials. And then I asked ICANN for comment before I published.

Odd meeting

Whereupon, shortly after in the press room at the Westin in Vancouver, I was confronted by ICANN chairman Vint Cerf, General Counsel John Jeffrey and Board member Mike Palage who sat down and started trying to pressure me not to publish the story.

In fact, for reasons I never fully understood, Mike gave me what were, frankly, juicy details that would bring the story to life. He told me that not only had he and the others received the fax that I had but that a man had hand-delivered a copy of it to his wife and child at his home address in Florida and, to be honest, he was a bit freaked out by it.

I wished I had recorded the meeting because my recollection of it is faded and I have no doubt the others would remember it differently. But here is what I remember:

I basically outlined the story I had half-written, whereupon Cerf’s and Jeffrey’s faces grew darker and darker. I then asked if they had any comment or if there was any element of it that they felt wasn’t true.

I got a pretty angry response questioning my motives and my professionalism and was told it wasn’t a story. Whereupon, I said whether it was a story or not was pretty much up to me, and if it wasn’t a story how come they were all in the room? Vint calmed down and then asked me to consider whether publishing the story would only give publicity to people who were making threats.

I recall I said I would consider it, at which point he turned to John Jeffrey and said angrily: “I told you it would be a waste of time talking to him.” I decided, perhaps unwisely, that this was the best time to ask if he was aware that the Bush Administration officials had been providing his contact details to right-wing Christian groups. Vint reacted by flicking his Google card at me across the table and exclaiming that his contact details were all over the Internet.

And with that I said I would consider their plea not to publish the story, and they walked out in a grumpy mood.

Decision and message

So my final decision was not to publish the story. And I had a look for it this morning to see if it had survived the three laptops since then – it hadn’t. What I do have though is the original fax sent to the Westin from Grahame Darcy, so I’ve transcribed it and posted it below.

Why didn’t I run with the story?

Because, frankly, I *didn’t* want to give the people who were sending threatening emails and faxes any publicity. Especially when they were turning up at people’s homes and intimidating someone’s wife and child.

Was the story in the public interest? Not really. And this wasn’t a really big story. ICANN is, and remains, a little niche world and I was used to dealing with topics that had far wider and more important impact on the world.

The atmosphere was also so oppressive already that I thought it would only serve to make it unbearable – and all for the sake of a story. And of course the truth was that I had a rack of about another five stories ready to go, all of which would cause me far less hassle, take less time and so earn me more money (I had flown from the UK and had a hefty pile of expenses I needed to cover before I even made a profit).

What is interesting on re-reading the fax five years later is that it doesn’t seem that threatening. It is clearly a bit mental, but could easily be from one of the many, shall we say ‘passionate’ members of the Internet community. In the atmosphere at the time though, combined with the fact that I had found out that Grahame Darcy was one of the right-wing Christians that was hounding ICANN, rather than just an over zealous member of the community, I decided against it.

I’m still in two minds as to whether it was the right decision.

Anyway, now that dot-xxx actually exists in the root I figured it was a good time to put this little piece of history out there. Below is the fax. It was sent from a Kinko’s in Florida. I did track down the exact address but I don’t recall it now.

To: Michael Palach

Cc: Vint Cerf, Paul Twomey, Suzan Crawford, Mouhamet Diop, Hualin Qian, Thomas Niles, John Jeffrey, Diane Shrouder

Subject: Michael Palach, taking his baggage to Vancouver

I have become increasingly aware of a growing concern in the community regarding your alleged involvement with .XXX. I believe there have been questions in the past about your on-going relationship with AFlLIAS but your alleged jnvolvement with .XXX brings your credibility into the permanent spotlight this time.

As a Board member of ICANN do you think the “Consulting” to .XXX and its associated companies or even advising its directors and major stake holders is appropriate behavior for an ICANN Board member?

Could it be that these associations could bring the Board into disrepute?

You appear to come across as a family man with strong family values, so why the association with the .XXX movement?

By appearing to have a foot in both camps, your motivations are questionable.
Part of ICANN’s charter is to promote fairness and transparency; this does not appear to be your mantra.

Now you have left the warmth of Florida and traveled to your winter meeting in Vancouver I suggest you ponder these questions and respond. The community eagerly awaits a full explanation.

Could I be forgiven for assuming that you’re traveling on an .XXX ticket to Vancouver and not that of ICANN?

Regards

Grahame Darcy

Sorry to always be harping on about ICANN; it’s the not exactly the most important organisation in the world. But it is the one bureaucracy I have come to know really well and so just can’t help but rail against all the things that infuriate people the world over when they come up against unthinking bureaucracies.

I just saw a tweet from some bloke talking about outreach efforts by the GNSO. Since it was my job for a number of years to engage people in the ICANN processes (often despite those already involved), it was intriguing to see that a report has been produced that is now out for public comment about exactly how to do this. This might be one of the those times where ICANN actually impresses.

The work began in January 2009, so they have had over two years to get this right. And the result is… absolutely horrifying.

How do you engage people? Well, the first thing you *don’t* do is begin the document with a long explanation about the process you followed to get to the report. And fill it full of acronyms. This is, literally, the first paragraph:

The ICANN Board Governance Committee (BGC) created a working group (the BGC WG) to consider the results of the reviews and recommend a comprehensive proposal to improve the effectiveness of the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), including its policy activities, structure, operations and communications. This BGC WG produced a comprehensive set of recommendations: the “Report of the Board Governance Committee GNSO Review Working Group on GNSO Improvements” (hereinafter the BGC Report) that were approved by the full Board in July 2008.

If you ever wondered why there was a need for outreach in the first place, it is rather neatly encapsulated in this opening paragraph: who the hell would want to get involved in an organisation that promotes its own lingo and processes above all else – even when a report’s entire focus is on reaching out to others.

That’s just the start. But I won’t go on because, frankly, what’s the point? It’s a complete dog’s dinner full of management speak, vague nice-to-haves, and plans for action that could have been drawn up on a bar napkin in five minutes 24 months ago. But here is the most stark reminder that the people inside of a bureaucracy are the absolute worst at recognising what they need to do to pull in outsiders:

The report has two sections of recommendations. Just two. Both stress, heavily, that language – particularly the almost exclusive use of English – is a major factor in excluding people. Here are the descriptions of the two sections:

• Section 2.1: Recommendations for a global outreach strategy to relevant members of the public, particularly non-English speakers and those from developing countries/regions; and
• Section 2.2: Recommendations for development of global outreach programs aimed at increasing participation both from current members of the ICANN community as well as potential members, particularly non-English speakers.

And yet:

• The announcement is available in English only
• The paper [pdf] is available in English only
• The public comment period is in English only

And it’s not even as if ICANN’s doesn’t have the translation capabilities to deal with this. I know because I set them up. And they have been hugely expanded and professionalized by Christina Rodriguez. Did it honestly not occur to anyone to translate this document and the accompanying announcement before publishing it? Because I think herein you, the GNSO, have located the answer to your problems: YOU!

The [bang!]s in the title of this blog post are me smacking my head against my desk. Please wake me up when the nightmare is over.

The first preparatory meeting for the 2011 Internet Governance Forum has ended with a significant degree of uncertainty thanks to ongoing bureaucratic delays.

Over two days, representatives from business, government, civil society and the technical community met in Geneva in order to decide the path forward for the sixth annual meeting of the Forum, dedicated to discussing global governance issues for the Internet and due to be held in Nairobi toward the end of the year.

Those plans have been hamstrung by the United Nations in New York, which continues to delay crucial decisions about the event dates and the event’s key decision-makers.

Closing the meeting, Kenya’s representative and meeting chair Alice Munyua repeatedly asked for others’ indulgence as she explained she did not have final dates for the event – it will be somewhere between September and December, she said – nor had dates been finalised for the second preparatory meeting in May.

On top of that, there is still no replacement for the main meeting organizer, Markus Kummer, who left the United Nations in December, with a representative from the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) telling attendees that they were still finalising the job description, which will then be put through the usual UN recruitment process.

And to make matters all the more surreal, the Multistakeholder Advisory Group (MAG), which was in the room trying to decide the agenda and structure of the next IGF, may not even formally exist.

The MAG has been put together and chaired by former special advisor to the Secretary-General, Nitin Desai, since 2004. Desai was appointed by former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, with whom he shared a good relationship, but ended his term earlier this year.

The new Secretary-General has yet to decide a replacement Special Advisor and only that person can decide on the make-up and structure of the MAG, the UN has decided. In response to questions about this crucial role, a UN representative said he did not know when a decision would be made and refused to even be drawn on the process that will be used to arrive at a decision.

Bureaucratic delay – or something else entirely?

While many would be tempted to write off the destabilising delays as typical United Nations bureaucracy (and a good reason why the organisation should not be given a central role in governing the Internet), the widespread suspicion is that they are deliberate.

The Chinese government in particular has been behind efforts to turn the open and “multistakeholder” IGF – where everyone has an equal say – into a traditional inter-governmental body where decisions are made solely by government representatives.

Those attempts have been consistently stymied by Western governments – as well as business, civil society and the technical community – who wish to maintain the broader form of decision-making that has made the Internet what it is today.

However, with China a rising force in the United Nations under Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the end of the IGF’s initial five-year remit has been used to try to force the IGF onto a different path. The head of UNDESA, Chinese national Sha Zukang, has made various efforts to move the IGF into a more governmental direction.

At the same time, UNDESA is half-competing with another arm of the United Nations, the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), which is in charge of deciding broader changes to the structure of the IGF. The CSTD has also taken a very pro-government approach, most recently causing outrage when it held a last-minute and late-night meeting in December in order to push through a decision that the crucial IGF working group would only be comprised of government representatives.

In this context, delays to deciding the two key posts for the IGF – the Executive Coordinator and the Special Advisor – as well as the continued failure to name actual dates for the meeting (ostensibly in order to fit in with Under-Secretary Sha’s schedule) provide the pro-governmental forces with greater leverage over the process while frustrating efforts by the pro-multistakeholder group to continue on in the same vein as the previous five years.

Pushing on

Nevertheless, attendees in Geneva appeared determined to push on with the business of the Internet Governance Forum – designed to act as a global focal point each year for the world to discuss big issues stemming from the Internet.

In the course of discussions, the theme that has been on the minds of many in recent weeks – the role the Internet has played in the Middle East uprisings – came to the forefront. As topics go, it is likely to be extremely interesting to a very broad group of individual worldwide, although MAG members were at pains to ensure the IGF maintained its traditional neutrality, as well as continued the work from previous years.

The end result was the final title: “Internet as a catalyst for change: Access, development, freedoms and innovation.”

With traditional governments doing everything they can to impose old and outdated structures on the IGF, the irony was far from lost on those in the room.