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Affirmation of Commitments Accountability and Transparency Review: Independent Expert – Request for Proposals – Extension of Deadline

13 July 2013

Deadline: 19 July 2013

The Affirmation of Commitments (AOC) signed by ICANN establishes ongoing reviews of ICANN's Accountability and Transparency - http://www.icann.org/en/about/agreements/aoc/affirmation-of-commitments-30sep09-en.htm. Review of ICANN's execution of core tasks is undertaken by "review teams." The second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2) is examining ICANN's activities to ensure they are accountable, transparent, and undertaken consistent with the public interest.1

The ATRT2's activities are focused on paragraph 9.1 of the AoC where ICANN commits to maintain and improve robust mechanisms for public input, accountability, and transparency so as to ensure that the outcomes of its decision-making will reflect the public interest and be accountable to all stakeholders. The ATRT2 will make recommendations, as needed, to the ICANN Board for improvements by December 31, 2013.

As part of its review effort, the ATRT 2 issued a Request for Proposals [PDF, 93 KB] (RfP) on 2 July 2013 in order to appoint an independent expert. The purpose of this assignment is to assess the effectiveness of ICANN Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Policy Development Process (PDP) and whether the current GNSO PDP process satisfies the needs of the multi stakeholder model and Internet users.

On 2 July, interested parties were invited to provide relevant background material, written methodology for execution of this task, views on the tentative timeline, a proposed budget, resumes, references and financial information about the party by 15 July 2013 -23:59 UTC to Alice E. Jansen, ICANN, Strategic Initiatives Manager at alice.jansen@icann.org. To provide bidders with sufficient time to prepare and compile their responses, the Review Team now extends the response deadline to 19 July 2013 – 23:59 UTC.

The ATRT 2 will conduct conference calls with candidates on 25-26 July 2013 and expects to make its final selection of the independent expert on 26 July 2013.

In its examination of ICANN's activities, the ATRT 2 recently published Questions to the Community for Public Comment. The questions and the responses are available at http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment/atrt2-02apr13-en.htm


1 For information on the membership of ATRT and its activities including meeting schedules, agendas, minutes, etc. see https://community.icann.org/x/mQllAg.