Thanks, Paul, for giving the back story behind the Affirmation of Commitments.  And thanks for the role you played in crafting what has become ICANN’s Constitution.

When the Affirmation was first revealed, I was among those expressing surprise about its unique framework of principles and performance reviews. I was also optimistic that more governments would appreciate how the Affirmation cut ICANN’s “apron strings” to the US Government by broadening ICANN’s accountability to all global stakeholders.

Three years later, how is the Affirmation measuring-up to its aspirations?

The ICANN community is getting more comfortable with conducting the reviews required by the Affirmation, although ICANN management hasn’t figured out how to fully implement all the recommendations coming out of the first review. 

Governments’ engagement with the GAC seems to have improved during the post-Affirmation era.  Though its hard to tell if governments actually see the Affirmation as making ICANN accountable to all global stakeholders. 

Maybe that’s because only the US was the only government who has signed the Affirmation. 

I’d be interested to hear Paul’s view on whether any and all governments should add their signatures to the Affirmation—thereby affirming THEIR commitment to the ICANN model, too.

I am delighted something useful has come out of Rod’s latest attempt to rewrite history in his favor. Glad you got this down Paul.

I think enough time has passed for me to raise what my unrealized concerns were with the draft Affirmation at the time. Both since came true and both concerned membership of the different review teams.

Having been witness to - and in fact part of - some of the previous ICANN attempts at review, I thought it was a mistake to effectively give ICANN staff control of who would be on the committees themselves. Frequently in the past ICANN had decided people it knew it could “rely upon” not to say or doing anything it didn’t like. Or if they did, to be persuadable to let it drop for the greater good.

Under the AoC, ICANN’s chair and the GAC chair get to decide the membership of each review team. But in reality of course this means that ICANN’s staff devises processes to decide on the team and then put them forward in a recommendation to the ICANN chair. Giving the GAC chair a deciding role was one balance although the rationale in elevating the GAC above other SOs and ACs was always a cause for concern in an affirmation that sought to solidify the multistakeholder model.

And the other was the word “relevant” as it appeared next to “representatives of the relevant ICANN Advisory Committees and Supporting Organizations” when it came to the review team. It only opened the possibilities of composition to be messed about with.

So what happened straight off the bat with the ATRT was a ridiculously time-consuming and irrelevant seven-month staff-run process to decide (i.e. try to fix) who would appear on the crucial first review team (four months to devise the system; three months to decide members). That gave the ATRT significantly less time to actually do its work.

The composition was also built on intrinsic biases, affected by the actual people ICANN wanted on the review team at the time. So we have two people from the ccNSO, four from the GAC, four from the GNSO but only one from ALAC and ASO (and none from the tech side).

So my concerns came true - and they could still be used by the organization to have undue influence on the people that actually sit on the review teams.

For the ATRT this issue became far less important because Larry Strickling decided he would invest the time and trouble himself to sit on the team (rather than designate someone else as the GAC chair did). As a result it became extremely difficult for ICANN’s chair to fudge the review results (and my god, he did try).

In fact the ATRT should never have worked but for the determination of Strickling, chair Brian Cute, and a number of other notable insiders deciding that actually here was an opportunity to do some good. And they pushed extremely hard not just during the review but for months afterwards - and even now Strickling is applying pressure, in a speech just last week. Let’s not forget that he even had to explicitly use the IANA contract as a stick to force ICANN to act.

This strong review team has since lent confidence to the other review teams. Emily Taylor stood up to several powerful groups and individuals in creating the Whois report. But she *still* saw the final report treated in an offhand way by ICANN’s new chair Steve Crocker until the FTC and Department of Commerce specifically highlighted it. And ICANN’s legal team has, I believe, *still* not released some simple but important data.

As for the SSR review, I understand the staff tried to pressure review team members to sign a non-disclosure agreement before they could be given any information: a ridiculous idea given that the reviews are supposed to be independent.

Anyway, in summary, and so far, the reviews have worked. But only because of the determination and expertise of most of the review team members. Every team has also faced coordinated opposition from ICANN staff in trying to get hold of information and in implementing subsequent recommendations.

That is why I think your post’s last paragraph (“That basis of truth and sincerity is what should continue to drive the AoC’s ongoing implementation. But it should also drive the corporate memory of its creation”) is so important.

So far the AoC has held up—but only because of the clear memory of where it came from and heavy engagement of high-quality review team members. The independent reviews need time to forge a fierce and untouchable independence. Hopefully that will start to come with the next iteration of the ATRT review, coming very soon.

I really appreciate that you finally told the story. I thought it was a pity that people like Fiona, Theresa, and yourself who were responsible for the grand compromise and the huge step forward represented by the Affirmation were forgotten, obscured, and in some cases displaced by those who took the bows.

Happy to see you back!

From the perspective of someone who was involved with the development of the original JPA in 1999, it’s refreshing to see an effort to maintain an accurate rendition of history, and to see signs of community support for sustained reinvention of ICANN in response to constant change in its environment.

I’m also encouraged to see senior people recently use the word “narrow” in relation to mission, goals and accountability.  As Board Chair Crocker reiterated this week, ICANN is not, and cannot be, the global source of Internet policy.  Any informed view of global Internet politics must acknowledge a myriad of interests, some enlightened and some not.  As with the functioning of the net itself, the policy fabric must be a federated and collaborative one. 

In this connection, those involved with ATRT going forward need to look for areas in which to narrow its scope and focus.  In an arena in which many voices keep arguing that ICANN has the broad mission to govern the Internet, when it clearly does not, there is a tendency to round up on every demonstration of transparency and accountability.  Whatever the causes, including management and staff resistance,  the first round of ATRT diverted enormous amounts of community and staff energy at a time when the organization was faced with major operational challenges.  We need to leaven the second round with a sharp assessment of which review criteria worked and which contributed to needless bureaucratic wasted effort.