About ten days ago, members of the Registry Stakeholder Group (RySG) and the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC) submitted a document entitled, “Joint Recommendations for ICANN Compliance.” A few months into my new role leading Contractual Compliance and Consumer Safeguards, I appreciated the constructive input from these two constituencies.
At a session at the Non-Contracted Parties House Intercessional 2017 in Reykjavik, in sessions at the ICANN58 Community Forum with the At-Large Community, the Registry Stakeholder Group, the Registrar Stakeholder Group, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, the Business Constituency, the Intellectual Property Committee, and the Governmental Advisory Committee in Copenhagen, and during formal and informal calls with community members, there were lively discussions regarding the need for improvements in Contractual Compliance.
To help us succeed in making desired changes, I asked for examples of where we could do better, as well as specific and concrete recommendations that we could implement. I was specifically asking for more than general statements such as “ICANN isn’t transparent” or “ICANN is bad at compliance”. The RySG-IPC Joint submission, which I understand was underway before these recent discussions, includes recommendations that are clear and specific and can be assessed for feasibility, cost and effort. And that’s just what we in Contractual Compliance will do.
There is another effort underway that also recommends improvements to Contractual Compliance. In the “Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review Team Draft Report of Recommendations for New gTLDs,” the Review Team seeks input on recommendations related to Contractual Compliance. In particular, Recommendation 23 urges ICANN to “Include more detailed information on the subject matter of complaints in ICANN publicly available compliance reports.” The draft recommendations are now out for public comment. This is an excellent opportunity for community members to provide input just as RySG and IPC representatives have done. (Full disclosure – I am a member of the CCT-RT).
If you have examples of where Contractual Compliance could improve, especially on its commitment to transparency, and specific and concrete recommendations on how to improve ICANN’s Contractual Compliance function, please consider submitting them to the CCT-RT Public Comment forum. Alternatively, please submit them by email to me at jamie.hedlund at icann.org. Once the public comment period on the CCT-RT’s closes, we will review all of the input we receive and provide a report on changes that we will undertake as well as a rationale for not undertaking others. Please send us your good ideas!
