ICANN | Terms of Reference: Independent Review of ICANN's Accountability and Transparency

Terms of Reference: Independent Review of ICANN's Accountability and Transparency

29 March 2007

As part of its ongoing commitment to improvement, ICANN has engaged the One World Trust (OWT) to provide advice to ICANN on its standards of accountability and transparency with a view to helping ICANN develop an action plan for continued improvement. This action plan will cover all aspects of accountability and transparency in ICANN (including Board, staff, Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees). It will cover the structures and principles that have been put in place through the bylaws and other documents and the actual practice within ICANN.

OWT will examine ICANN’s standards of transparency, participation, evaluation and complaint handling. Under these headings, it will cover issues such as:

Decision making processes
Reporting processes
Accessibility to information
Policy development processes
Evaluation processes
Complaint response processes

In undertaking this project, OWT will:

Review organisational documents and other relevant internal and external materials
Review comments made by the ICANN community during the recent comment period on accountability and transparency
Conduct semi-structured interviews with Board members, members of Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, senior management and other staff
Conduct semi-structured interviews with key external stakeholders

OWT will prepare a suggested action plan for ICANN to build upon its existing accountability and transparency measures based on this research.

The suggested action plan will be used as the basis for further discussion with the ICANN community at the Lisbon meeting.

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