closed Standard Bylaws Amendment – Transition Article on Specific Reviews

Outcome

The comments submitted from across the ICANN community identified some key changes that will be incorporated into an updated text for the Bylaws Transition Article on Specific Reviews, as well as items that are recommended to be addressed in the Board’s resolution or rationale if it approves the updated text. Specifically, the updated text will address the community’s call for regular reporting during the status of the pause, streamlining of the basis for a needed extension, and building in additional safeguards into the schedule to restart the reviews to avoid overlap in reviews.

The community’s contributions raised clear and actionable items that will improve the Transition Article and uphold the goal of establishing a more effective reviews program. We appreciate the community’s time and effort in addressing this extraordinary situation.

What We Received Input On

While the ICANN community has joined together to discuss how ICANN’s reviews can evolve, through the Review of Reviews Cross Community Group, many voices across the ICANN community asked the Board to consider how to update ICANN’s obligations at Article 4, Section 4.6 of the ICANN Bylaws to initiate Specific Reviews until an updated course of reviews is defined. To date, ICANN has addressed the pending obligations to initiate Specific Reviews through Board resolutions deferring their initiation, taken after conversation with the community. ICANN is now seeking community input on a proposal to formalize in the Bylaws the need to pause the Specific Reviews. The ICANN Board initiated a Standard Bylaws Amendment Process to seek formal Public Comment on the proposed path.

The Transition Article presented is drafted to do achieve several goals:

• It does not alter in any way the current text of Article 4, Section 4.6 of the Bylaws.
• It allows 12 months of progress on the community dialogue before ICANN’s obligation to conduct Specific Reviews is reinstated.
• It defines parameters for how ICANN’s obligations can be paused for additional time if the community dialogue is progressing but not yet completed, with a maximum total pause of 24 months.
• If no updates to the Bylaws result from the current community effort and ICANN’s obligations to conduct Specific Reviews are renewed, it sets a workable schedule for reviews to be restarted in a manner that will not replicate the overlap of reviews that led in part to the issues ICANN currently experiences with reviews.

While commenters might have a range of feedback to provide, some prompting questions include:

• Do you support the use of the proposed Transition Article as a way to clarify ICANN’s obligations to run Specific Reviews at this time?
• Are there elements you believe should be addressed differently?
• Are there other factors that ICANN should consider in the timing of restarting the reviews, if needed in the future?

Background

Under the ICANN Bylaws, Article 4, Section 4.6, ICANN is required to conduct three of the four Specific Reviews – Accountability and Transparency (ATR), Security, Stability, and Resiliency (SSR), and Registration Directory System (RDS) – every five years, measured from the convening of the prior cycle’s review team. The challenges posed by this schedule have been well documented, including issues of community overload in overlapping reviews, as well as the lack of sufficient time to implement the recommendations between review cycles. Today, ICANN is not in compliance with its obligations under the Bylaws. It was supposed to convene the fourth Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT4) in 2023, and has subsequently deferred the initiation twice, including in May 2025, to allow a community dialogue to focus on the future of reviews. The third iterations of the SSR and RDS reviews are also both deferred from their Bylaws-mandated starts, as there is a pending ATRT3 recommendation that the ATRT4 should evaluate the timing and future of each of those reviews. While most of the ICANN community understands the challenges in moving forward with Specific Reviews and accepts the need for the deferrals to date, the community is concerned that ICANN is out of compliance with its Bylaws obligations and wants ICANN to come back into compliance as quickly as possible.

In the community conversations in response to the Board’s May 2025 resolution on the deferral of ATR4 and convening a community dialogue on reviews, parts of the community pushed ICANN to consider a Bylaws amendment that would recognize the deferral of the Specific Reviews pending the community conversation. The Board, at the end of January 2026, initiated a Standard Bylaws Amendment Process in order to receive Public Comment on a proposal to insert a Transition Article into the Bylaws that would addresses the community concerns.

The community dialogue is happening today through the Review of Reviews Cross Community Group (Reviews CCG). The Bylaws proposal does not specifically reference the Reviews CCG as a matter of simplicity and good governance, to avoid introducing definitions of one-time processes into the Bylaws. The Board is engaged in the Reviews CCG effort alongside the ICANN community and organization (org), with two Board members serving as members and contributing to deliberations.

Schedule for Restarted Specific Reviews, If Needed

In the event the community cannot reach recommendations that result in changes to the Bylaws on reviews, or the current definition of Specific Reviews appears to be the best solution, ICANN is proposing a timeline to responsibly initiate the next cycle of Specific Reviews. This timeline would allow for one Specific Review to proceed at a time, instead of obligating ICANN to initiate and maintain three Specific Reviews at one time. The rationale for the proposed order of the Specific Reviews is to have ATRT4 proceed first, including consideration of recommendations from ATRT3 on the future of the SSR and RDS reviews. If ATRT4 recommends modifications to or removal of either of these reviews, that could alter whether they proceed.

As it relates to the second Competition, Consumer Trust, and Consumer Choice (CCT) Review, the proposal for the restarting states, “The timing for the [CCT] pursuant to Article 4, Section 4.6(d) shall be initiated when the next round of new gTLDs has been in operation for two years, such operation being measured from the time that 500 gTLD applied for within that round have been delegated into the root zone.” The Bylaws currently state that the CCT Review should proceed after the a new gTLD round has been in operation for a year. The proposed deviation from the time frame currently in the Bylaws is based on two things: 1. ATRT3 recommended a two-year window for the initiation of the next CCT Review and 2. given the concerns about the availability of meaningful data to support a CCT Review Team’s deliberations, ICANN org staff propose that waiting for a more significant sample of new gTLDs to be delegated is more likely to enable a meaningful, data-based review.