The Continous Improvement Program is at high risk of failing dramatically the more it is able to call success. The way it is structured and run leads to more bureaucracy, more entrenched positions, more deadlock. ICANN needs to radically review itself from the edge inwards as much as or more than top down and staff-outwards. Independent reviewers not necessarily vetted by SOs and ACs need to be involved with a critical capacity for their recommendations to be followed. Putting the review in the hands of the community sounds musically like the right thing to do until one realizes that this means putting the review in exactly the hands of the people most interested in resisting change. A much tigher time frame must be instituted too. Any observer who sees that the two three-year cycles proposed mean that this is a plan for 2027 and 2030 will laugh at ICANN.

The Continous Improvement Program is at high risk of failing dramatically the more it is able to call success. The way it is structured and run leads to more bureaucracy, more entrenched positions, more deadlock. ICANN needs to radically review itself from the edge inwards as much as or more than top down and staff-outwards. Independent reviewers not necessarily vetted by SOs and ACs need to be involved with a critical capacity for their recommendations to be followed. Putting the review in the hands of the community sounds musically like the right thing to do until one realizes that this means putting the review in exactly the hands of the people most interested in resisting change. A much tigher time frame must be instituted too. Any observer who sees that the two three-year cycles proposed mean that this is a plan for 2027 and 2030 will laugh at ICANN.

(the summary is the same as the submission as it is short and to the point)