Credit where credit’s due, the disclosure of Board materials of the organisation that oversees the domain name system, ICANN, has greatly improved since its first and woeful effort.
The materials for a special Board meeting held in September over the “new gTLD” process are clear, organised and understandable. They also help to publicly demonstrate the large amount of professional work that goes on at ICANN. The issues in front of ICANN are clearly and concisely laid out, complete with arguments and recommendations with rationale. ICANN should be rightly proud of this sort of work.
The September materials also show clear improvement over those for the previous meeting in August – which are not as well structured and suffer from many of the same fault as previous months. That said, and despite a clear improvement for September, several significant procedural problems remain with the publication of Board materials, namely:
But back to the positives.
The materials for the new gTLD special meeting are a very useful summary of where we are up to with the process for new Internet extensions. It is encouraging to read the materials and overall they give a much greater sense of confidence in the staff, Board and overall organisation.
It is inevitable that there will be complaints from those who did not get their way – in this case the the Registry Constituency made several requests that the staff makes clear it does not accept. But by publishing the documents, everyone can follow the rationale of staff and – if the Board meeting minutes are improved – see the Board’s thinking as well.
This process – the open, transparent approach that ICANN is supposed to be ideologically wedded to – is what allows ICANN to make difficult decisions. By being open, decisions can become easier, not harder.
Here’s hoping that this improvement in Board materials will continue, tackling some of the remaining issues outlined above, and with luck it is possible that ICANN will start to rediscover its original philosophy and wisdom in being open after many years in the darkness.
Board materials:
September: Part One | Two | Three | Four | Five
August: Part One | Two