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ICANN Process Documentation Initiative (Community Feedback Requested)

16 June 2017
By
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

In addition to the U.N. six languages, this content is also available in

During ICANN58, Göran Marby talked about starting an effort to describe and document several key processes where the ICANN organization and community interact through recommendations and advice. We've already made some progress, as those of you at the GDD Summit [PDF, 2.3 MB] saw, and wanted to update you before our session at ICANN59.

So far, this effort has resulted in a series of draft flowcharts that visually depict processes, roles and responsibilities, and when applicable, areas where confusion or impasses may arise, starting with:

Community Feedback Requested

As we said, these flowcharts are drafts, and we look forward to working together to determine what we've done right in crafting these, what could be improved and what is missing. Below are a few areas we have identified for discussion and input.

Situations where the Board receives conflicting recommendations or advice from different groups.

  • In preparing recommendations, what mechanism can assist the process to avoid situations where advice goes against recommendations or a policy PDP?

Situations where there is ambiguity in the recommendations or advice, which creates uncertainty in the implementation phase.

  • What steps could be taken to ensure recommendations/advice are clear and implementable, and that implementation is consistent with the intent of the recommendation/advice?
  • After recommendations are sent to the Board, and the team authoring those recommendations has disbanded, what happens when, during implementation efforts, there is ambiguity, confusion or concern regarding the intent or feasibility of the recommendation? The GNSO has a defined process to resolve situations, but how should the ICANN organization and the community resolve those issues in cases where there is no defined process?

What should happen if Reviews result in recommendations that are already topics under discussion in a PDP?

  • How can a process help identify and capture interdependencies between review processes and policy development, and make sure those are flagged early?
  • What processes are needed for review teams to address situations where review team recommendations are intended to direct a PDP effort, or essentially dictate what a policy recommendation should be? What if the PDP group does not agree or does not wish to address the review team's recommendations?

Are there other topics not reflected here that should be included? Do you have any thoughts or feedback to share on the drafts?

During ICANN59, we will be exhibiting the current drafts all week in the main gallery area and holding a session on Thursday, June 29th at 0800 local time in Ballroom 3, to give the community an opportunity to discuss the progress and provide feedback. I encourage you to join this session, in person or via remote participation. We will be discussing the areas above, along with areas of potential confusion or impasse, and this dialogue will help provide further clarity on these processes. If you cannot attend, please submit any feedback on the processes via processdocumentation@icann.org before 30 July 2017.

Next Steps

Feedback on these initial flowchart versions will be gathered through July, with the goal of developing updated versions that incorporate this feedback by ICANN60 in November. The process flowcharts will be maintained online, and a mechanism will be put into place to consistently reflect additional input or clarity to the processes. Beyond that, what happens next will be determined in large part by the input you provide, whether it's at our upcoming session, or via email, as well as the feedback we received from those of you who contributed to the session at the May 2017 GDD Summit. We look forward to working together to finalize this process documentation initiative.

Authors

Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy
Theresa Swinehart

Theresa Swinehart

SVP, Global Domains & Strategy

Theresa Swinehart is the Senior Vice President of Global Domains and Strategy. In this role, she works with the community, contracted parties, stakeholders, and policymakers to ensure broad and inclusive engagement, consensus-based policymaking through ICANN’s multistakeholder model, and effective, accountable policy implementation. Her responsibilities include policy implementation, review operation, and cross-functional strategic initiatives such as ICANN’s compliance with the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. An expert in global Internet governance, Theresa also serves as co-deputy to the President and CEO. Her extensive industry experience, including nearly 20 years as a key contributor to ICANN’s growth and development, gives her a valuable perspective on how ICANN organization can work efficiently and collaboratively to better serve the global Internet community.

Theresa rejoined ICANN after three years as Executive Director of Global Internet Policy at Verizon Communications, where she specialized in emerging issues as well as stakeholder and policy engagement. Prior to this, she served as ICANN’s Vice President of Global and Strategic Partnerships, leading a team responsible for partnership reform, global engagement and outreach, and the participation in international forums. Before ICANN, Theresa was Director of Global E-Commerce at MCI, where she was responsible for such issues as Internet service provider liability, data protection, and participation in Internet-related forums, including the formation of ICANN. 

Theresa has a bachelor’s degree in international relations from the University of California, Davis, a graduate degree in international studies from the University of Vienna, Austria, and a juris doctorate from American University. She served on the Internet Society’s Board of Trustees and Internet Governance Forum’s Multistakeholder Advisory Committee. Theresa began her career in international human rights. She is fluent in German and is conversant in French.

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