ICANN Blogs

Read ICANN Blogs to stay informed of the latest policymaking activities, regional events, and more.

ATRT3 Review Team Makes Progress at First Face-to-Face Meeting

24 April 2019
By Pat Kane and Cheryl Langdon-Orr

The third Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT3) had its first face-to-face meeting in Los Angeles on 3 – 5 April 2019.

The main objectives of the meeting were to:

  1. Develop and prioritize scope items for our review, as guided by ICANN's Bylaws (see Article 4, Section 4.6);
  2. Agree on our approach to work; and
  3. Make substantive progress towards developing our Terms of Reference and Work Plan.

We successfully met all of these objectives, and we'd like to thank our review team colleagues for their hard work and important contributions. The meeting archive and associated materials are available here.

Our Scope and Approach to Work

After identifying and prioritizing our scope items through a series of brainstorming exercises, the team agreed to conduct our work in four work parties: Board, Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), Reviews, and Community. Each work party will finalize the detailed objectives of their work in the coming weeks. Work party objectives will be guided by ICANN's Bylaws to include, at a high level:

  • Board: Assessing and improving Board governance.
  • GAC: Assessing the role and effectiveness of the GAC's interaction with the Board and with the broader ICANN community.
  • Reviews: Assessing and improving the processes by which ICANN receives public input, and assessment of ICANN's implementation of ATRT2 recommendations.
  • Community: Assessing the extent to which ICANN's decisions are supported and accepted by the Internet community, and assessing the policy development process to facilitate enhanced cross community.

As they are finalized, work party resource requests will be tracked here, where you can also see membership details of each work party.

Next Steps

We are on track to adopt our Terms of Reference and Work Plan by the Board-directed timeline of within 60 days of the face-to-face meeting, i.e. by 5 June 2019. Once adopted, these items will be publicly posted on our wiki, as well as sent to the ICANN Board and Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees.

We plan to socialize our Terms of Reference and scope during ICANN65 in Marrakech, where we will also seek input from the community to help us shape our findings and draft recommendations. Community input is key to the success of this review. Please, do let us know via our mailing list at input-to-atrt3@icann.org (publicly archived) if you would like to set up a consultation with us in Marrakech. We welcome your feedback to this mailing list any time throughout our work.

Become an Observer

All of our meetings are open and available for observers to join. Send a request to mssi-secretariat@icann.org to receive calendar invites to our meetings and to subscribe to our mailing list (read only).

Background

The ATRT review team is mandated by ICANN's Bylaws (Article 4, Section 4.6) to review "ICANN's execution of its commitment to maintain and improve robust mechanisms for public input, accountability, and transparency so as to ensure that the outcomes of its decision-making reflect the public interest and are accountable to the Internet community."

Learn more about ATRT3 here.

Authors

Pat Kane

Cheryl Langdon-Orr

Co-Chair, NomComRIWG