The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Jalisco, Mexico, from 5 to 9 December 2016. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to -- I hope everybody is here for Workshop 64, Post IANA Transition ICANN. If you're not, you're still welcome to stay.
So we're going to -- we're going to take a look at the post-transition ICANN and we're going to do it in a way that hopefully it's not an insider look. I've been told by the panelist above all we must avoid acronyms, I'm sure we'll fall into that trap, and we must address this in the way that the non-ICANN person can understand.
The goal is really to give you -- to do a couple things. What we're going to do is give you an update as to where things stand, what happened in the run up to the transition itself and what is happening post-transition, and we'll do that -- we'll have a presentation on that, and then we'll do a review with the panelists that have participated in the transition and the post-transition, all who have watched it from afar, or have been involved to get a diversity of views, and we'll ask them for their personal experiences and their learnings of participating in these processes, and the reason why the learnings are important is because we want to look at this -- these working groups that did this -- the work of the transition and see what we can learn from the two years that we've been involved and see what we can learn from the transition and see how those learnings can be applied outside of the ICANN world.
So the last part of the discussion in today's session will really be about what we're calling the portability of the model, in other words, in what other places can we take this learning process, the ICANN transition process, and apply them in other places as examples of best practice in multistakeholder approaches.
So with that little introduction, my name is Matthew Shears. I'm with the Center for Democracy and Technology, and I'm just going to run through the very lengthy list of panelists who will be speaking today, and when they speak they can introduce themselves more fully.
So we have Farzaneh Badiei, Olga Cavalli, Carolyn Nguyen, Izumi Okutani, Jimson Olufuye, Leon Sanchez, Tatiana Tropina, Lousewies van der Laan, and Sebastian Bellagamba. I ask when you introduce yourself you speak more fully. I think with that, we'll get straight to the update on where things are, a little bit of history on the transition and Leon is going to take us through that. Nigel, I think we -- okay, Leon, over to you.
>> LEON SANCHEZ: (Speaking non-English language)
>> (Off microphone)
>> LEON SANCHEZ: (Speaking non-English language)
>> (Speaking non-English language)
>> LEON SANCHEZ: (Speaking non-English language)
>> NIGEL HICKSON: Try French.
>> LEON SANCHEZ: I'll try Mandarin. Okay. Nigel, do you have the clicker?
>> NIGEL HICKSON: Yes.
>> LEON SANCHEZ: May I use it?
>> NIGEL HICKSON: Of course.
>> LEON SANCHEZ: Thank you. Okay. So sorry for the hiccup. The IANA transition process is a process that took some 18 years to finalize, right? So you can see, barely in this slide, that ICANN was founded in if 1998, then on 2014 the NTIA announces the beginning of the process of the IANA Stewardship Transition, and then in the same 2014, ICANN is in charge of coordinating this process and it forms the ICG, and in 2015, the proposal for the transition is delivered to the NTIA, and finally in 2016, the contract between the NTIA and ICANN expires.
So as I said, this was a short process that only took 18 years to finalize. And what are we talking about when we speak about the IANA Stewardship Transition and the functions? So these are to create registries, to maintain these registries, to assign the resources for numbers in the Internet, and to publish the registries for public use. So those are the IANA functions that were transitioned to the multistakeholder community.
What does this mean to the Internet community? Well, this means that fundamentally, the decisions made to the fundamental part of the Internet go now into the hands of the multistakeholder community, to the global community, so this would eliminate the role that the U.S. government had played for the last 18 years in supervising these functions, these IANA functions.
Now, for this, the NTIA, as I said previously, made an announcement, and it said that it was willing to transition this stewardship but under certain conditions, and some of these conditions were that the proposal that was set up for this transition would have wide support by the community, that this proposal would also foster and enhance the multistakeholder model, that it would maintain or guarantee the security, stability, and resiliency of the Domain Name System, that it would satisfy the expectations of the IANA services clients, and that it would maintain the nature of the Internet as a free and open resource.
So as I said, ICANN was in charge of coordinating this process, and for this it formed the ICG, which was, in turn, constituted by ICANN, by ISOC, by the IETF, by the IAB, and the NRO, which all of these acronyms I was told not to mention.
(Laughter)
So ICANN is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number, ISOC is the Internet Society, the IETF is the Internet Engineering Task Force, the IAB is the Internet Architectural Board, and the NRO is the Numbers Registry Operators, right? Resource Operators, sorry. You know, even us got confused by these acronyms.
So all these communities took part -- had a role in this transition process, and each of these communities were, of course, essential to the process. We had the domain names community, the practicals community, and the numbers community. If we look at how the different proposals were built by each of these communities, we can see that we had the CWG, which is the Cross Community Working Group on the IANA transition for the domain name community, the CRISP, which was the group in charge of building the proposal for the registries, the numbers community, the IANAPLAN Working Group, which is the group in charge of designing this proposal as well from part of the technical community, and the CCWG, which is the Cross-community Working Group on enhancing ICANN's accountability. That acronym I know, and this group was in charge of designing a proposal that would enhance ICANN's accountability towards the multistakeholder community.
So these four players, as I said, built independent proposals which then were submitted to the ICG, and the ICG had the very important task of consolidating these proposals and building a single proposal to be delivered to the NTIA.
So what we have here is the chronological order in which the different proposals were delivered to the ICG, and the first two communities that delivered their proposals were the technical community and the numbers community. Then we had the domain names community proposal, which was delivered by June 2015, and finally, the proposal on enhancing ICANN's accountability, which was delivered in February 2016.
So with these proposals all put together by the ICG, then on March the 10th, 2016, the ICG submitted -- and ICANN submitted the transition proposal to the NTIA for review and eventually for approval by the NTIA.
So what we have next is just a flow of how things happened. The process began by building the working groups. Then each of these working groups designed the proposals that they were meant to design in regard to their respective communities. Then the ICG consolidated these proposals and delivered it to the NTIA, then the NTIA reviewed it and approved this proposal, and finally the transition took place, but regardless of the transition taking place, we still have some work to do.
This is just a graphic of rough numbers of how many hours, how many emails, how many people participated in these efforts of designing the different proposals, and these numbers are only for the domain names community, and I don't think you can see them on the screen, but they're public. They are available on the ICANN website, so if you want to have a little bit more information on this, I would definitely encourage you to access ICANN's website and have the numbers handy.
So what does this transition actually mean to end users, to all the communities that took a role in this transition plan? Well, as far as ICANN concerns, we have an ICANN that has new bylaws. We have a new organization that is in charge of managing the IANA functions. We have new contracts and new expected levels -- levels -- service level expectations, agreements. We have also a new community body, which is the Empowered Community, within ICANN. We have a new -- or a reviewed IRP, Independent Review Process, and we have also new responsibilities for the community, which is very important, like Spider-Man once said, right, with great power comes great responsibility, so this is what we have in hand now. The community has a great responsibility to exercise these powers responsibly.
And as I said, the transition happened. The Internet didn't fall apart. And we still have some work to do, so for these, while we were designing the proposal of accountability, we figured out or we realized that there were some topics that were not essential for the transition to take place, so what we did is in order to focus the Cross Community Working Group on ICANN's accountability work, in those matters that were essential for the transition to happen, we selected these topics and reserved a plan for a second phase of work that encompasses these -- these topics, which are diversity, human rights, jurisdiction, ombudsman, the role of the ombudsman, SO and AC accountability, SO being support organizations, and AC being advisory committees, which are the structures that form ICANN as an organization; staff accountability, transparency, the repeal of the CEP, which is the Collaborative Engagement Process, and also the guides for good faith -- that are presumed to be good-faith conduct when exercising the power of removal of a board member. So these topics are now the work that we need to flesh out, and we need to further research and further develop in order to put reports so that the transition implementation can continue to take place.
So what we are expecting on the next -- on the coming months is that some of the groups, of course, because of the nature of the topics that they're discussing, will end before and some others will end later, and we have -- we have an expectation that by our next meeting -- and when I say our next meeting, I mean the ICANN meeting that will take place in Copenhagen in March next year, we will have some of the groups already delivering their reports, and we also expect that some of the groups, as I said, will take a little bit longer to deliver, and those groups should deliver by the meeting that we are going to hold in mid next year in Johannesburg, so hopefully the second phase of the work of the CCWG, which is commonly known as Work Stream 2, will be ending by June of 2007, so that is what we have in our near future, and, of course, if you want to get involved in the discussion, if you want to contribute to build these -- these second set of proposals, part of Work Stream 2, you can have more information and get engaged by accessing one of the different URLs, which, of course, are so blurred, they are useless on this screen, but I will be sure to circulate this information so that you can be able to subscribe to the mailing lists, have access to the information that has been generated by the different subgroups, and, of course, participate if you feel that you have something to contribute to the work of the CCWG on accountability. Thank you very much.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you, Leon, and fantastic job, given the impossibility of talking about ICANN without having acronyms. Well done. Thank you for that.
(Laughter)
So what I want to do now is I want to turn the conversation over to the panelists, and what we're going to do now is talk about, as I said earlier on, our personal experiences in terms of what was achieved in the IANA transition, both Work Stream 1, as Leon explained, the work that happened before the transition itself, and also in the ongoing Work Stream 2 work, which many of us are involved here.
Before I -- before I turn to the first panelist, though, I just want to note that there's a huge wealth of experience in the ICANN space in the audience as well, and I do urge that they share their experiences as well, so at this point in time, we're just going to get your experiences, the learnings, Work Stream 1, Work Stream 2 . When you introduce yourself, can you give one line about the stakeholder that you represent or participate in this process for, because that will be important so that everybody gets a sense as to the diversity of players. Thanks. I'm going to turn to Farzi first. Thanks.
>> FARZENEH BADIEI: Farzaneh Badiei. I'm from the noncommercial constituency at ICANN, noncommercial users constituency at ICANN. I better get that right.
Okay. So I'm just -- since we have around ten panelists here, I'm just going to be very brief and going to just give you a broad overview of my experience.
So the good thing, when I got engaged and what we have achieved, the good thing about it is that in if the end, we managed to reach consensus among very divergent and different views and interests, and -- which might not happen in a lot of other spaces in policymaking, and our recommendations were implemented, more or less, accurately in the bylaws, which is certainly an achievement in ICANN.
The bad was that we were under a lot of time pressure, so we could not -- but in the end, we did manage to get the work done, but time pressure was certainly -- made us just do the work a little bit faster.
And, of course, some of our concerns were not addressed, but we are now working on them. I'm not going to go through the details of the Work Stream 2. You can ask other people. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Farzi. You're absolutely right, and given the time limitations, we'll make quick interventions by the panelists and go to Q&A, because I suspect there will be quite a bit of that, and then we'll go to the second section after that Q&A.
So next up is Olga, please.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you very much for inviting me to this panel and for allowing me to share my experience. I am the vice chair of the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN, and I represent Argentina in that group.
My participation was in the Cross Community Working Group on accountability. They appointed five representatives to the group, trying to achieve certain regional balance, so there was Argentina, there was the Asia-Pacific, African Union, United States, and Denmark, and also we worked together with many colleagues from the GAC that participated very actively, although they were not formal members of the Cross-Community Working Group. As you know, the GAC works on the consensus basis, so it was not easy to achieve a single opinion about the whole process. We are a 170-plus countries, so we had divergent opinions, so it was not so easy to achieve the same -- the same page, so some countries are not totally in agreement with some final parts of the document, especially stress test 18. They were in the opinion it diminished the role of government, and it was not totally align with the multistakeholder model that we all support.
And also, the relevance of the GAC advice was changing in the future structure of the ICANN -- of ICANN, so these different opinions, we didn't want to stop the process, so what we did was a minority report that you can find in the final document, and it was supported by -- it was prepared by three countries, France, Argentina, and Brazil, and supported by 20-plus countries, so you can see the content there about the process.
A great learning experience. My English, as usual, after an ICANN process got to a higher level. This means that it was intensively English-speaking process, although documents were translated, which is very good, a good effort from ICANN. The conversation, the discussions, and the dialogue was in English and quick, and so that is something to have in mind.
Diversity is always a challenge. We were some participants from some regions, and that was not so balanced, and we see it as a big challenge for the future structure of ICANN. At the time the calls was challenging. I had to wake up very early in the morning sometimes, in the middle of the night, and some of us, we are participating in the Work Stream 2. Some GAC members were in some subworking groups in trying to contribute there. Thank you very much.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Okay. Olga, I'm going to put you on the spot a bit. What about a positive learning? You listed a number of things that were a little bit challenges, but how about what contributed to the success?
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Well, I think it was a very successful process. Also from the perspective of perhaps not as much as diverse as I personally would have expected, it was challenging, and I said it was a very great learning experience, so that's positive. I think we achieved something very important that we wanted to do, but also, we had the opportunity to make the statement that, for us, was important, so we didn't stop the process. We made our voices heard, and we all learned, and I think this puts ICANN in a new stage of higher interaction, and also, it shows that we need to work on the diversity thing.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Olga. The interesting thing I think -- I think one of the interesting takeaways that you'll probably hear around the table is this issue of working together and how in the beginning it was challenging, but as we went through the process, it became easier, and that level of trust, if you want to call it that, began to be established, and I think that's one of the key things as well.
Okay. We're going to go next to Carolyn, please.
>> CAROLYN NGUYEN: Thank you, Matthew, and thank you for enabling me to be -- participate as part of the panel. My name is Carolyn Nguyen. I'm with Microsoft. We are part of the business constituency within ICANN, so we participate to -- to submit input into the process, but I was not one of the people who were directly within the working groups, so -- can you hear me?
>> Can you pull it in a little?
>> CAROLYN NGUYEN: Great. Thank you. Perfect. So about the process itself. I'm going to speak about the process, but also what was going on elsewhere, like who was watching the process.
So in 2015, six -- sorry. In 2015, the other international process that was going on at the same time was the WSIS+10 review process, so from the perspective of the IANA transition, this was a very, very visible confirmation of the value of the multistakeholder process. It was also very apparent in terms of the passion and the commitment of the community to work through whatever issues that was being brought up, and you contrast that with what was going on in terms of the negotiation at the UN, which was determining the fate of the IGF at that point in time, so that contrast for us was really good for the ones who were involved in the WSIS+10 process.
Another part, there was a process that was shared up front, and I think Larry Strickling played a crucial role in his strong and really steadfast endorsement of the process and to guide it along. I think that was really a crucial part.
The development of the stress test was really helpful in terms of focusing on what were the real issues to the community and what were shall I just say red herrings, and again, there's a contrast there between the ICANN process and the UN process that was really useful.
It was clearly an open, bottom-up, and transparent, so we found there were lots of opportunities in terms of during the process that was going on as well as we could participate either through the business constituency or through other constituencies, and we found that to be very helpful as well. So those were all the good things, right?
Another part -- one thing I did want to bring up is that for those who were not involved in the process -- so, for example, the people in this room, the people who were really manipulating what was going on to put out comments about the U.S. relinquishing control or the U.S. maintaining control, there was not sufficient information to share with the broader public about what was going on, not at the level of, you know, the various working groups, but what is the IANA transition without involving the term "DNS" in it, what is the impact, right, and there was no information; whereas, the people who did not want the transition to go through were at least in the U.S. all over the editorials of newspapers, like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and there was no other information available, so what was happening is that in the broader policy stakeholder community, this was being looked at as a geeky, technical conversation that did not impact the broader business community in terms of what was going on, so when everything was happening at the end of September, no one was prepared to counteract that and there was no information ready, so that's one thing that I would want to put out there in terms of suggestions to think about.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Carolyn. I think that's absolutely right. We didn't have a good bumper sticker, and that was a great challenge to us in terms of our communications. Wonderful. Next I'm going go to Izumi. Please remember to introduce yourselves. Thanks.
>> IZUMI OKUTANI: Izumi Okutani. I was involved in the IANA Stewardship Transition process as someone who was leading the proposal for the number of -- number resources component of the IANA Stewardship Transition proposal, and I was also involved in if the enhancing the ICANN part of the proposal as a representative from the number resources community, so it was really interesting to observe two processes.
And as it has been said in many places, there's not been this skill of collaboration happening between communities, which has pretty been independent, and I'm not just talking about the number resources part where we have the protocols, the names and the numbers community, but also even for the -- developing the proposal within the -- within ICANN. I don't think the ASO, the number resources community, have been this committed in getting involved and making a proposal together with many of the stakeholders within ICANN or together with the GAC or I think there was IAB chair being actively involved, so this was really impressive to see.
And I think while there were like, you know, challenges in between the process, one of the reasons I feel it may have -- we may have succeeded in reaching an agreement was that each of the people who represented the group, they did not have predefined position, they had enough trust from each of the communities that they will speak for the community, but they were not, like, aggregated, hey, you should say this on behalf of us, so they had the flexibility of observing the general discussions, and then in case they see anything that may, you know, have concerns from their respective community, then they had the opportunity to raise their concerns.
So I think this actually accommodated a lot of the compromises that was needed in addition to the good spirit of each of the participants.
Another thing is respecting the expertise of each of the communities, so this was happening in the IANA process where it was requested that each of the three operational communities develop the proposal rather than everybody trying to draft everything, and I think something that was similar was also happening in the ICANN accountability part of the proposal where, for example, the ASO drafted the part that affected the ASO, and I think it was pretty much tolerated by the other participants, so that really added to efficiency and respect for the others with expertise really helped move things forward, so these are the positive observations I have about the process.
It was still, like -- some of the challenges, it was still not easy for people who are not, like, English as their first language or not just the language, but they're not used to the culture of having this these discussions real-time. I think it was a bit difficult to join the discussions rather than just making last-minute comment at the public comment.
I think having the tax tool helped a lot, more than just having this opportunity to speak vocally, so I think that's a positive thing, but I hope that there's some kind of like room for improvement in this area.
And I also observed that there was someone who spoke publicly that this person was against the decision of the group after it was all decided and reached consensus, and I think different opinions should be respected, but once the consensus decision is made, I think the -- everybody who's participated in the process should respect the consensus decision, even though you may not necessarily agree with the outcome, so this might be something that's really worth sharing with the participants in the future process.
And what can be applicable to other kind of, I don't know, Internet governance discussions, I think we certainly need a coordination body when different communities get together, so in our case, we had what the group called the ICG for the IANA, for the accountability part we have the chairs and we also had the rapporteurs, so this is definitely needed in making efficient conclusion.
And I think a lot of us were under time pressure, so people not feeling so positively about it, but I think having a set of goal and timelines did actually help us in trying to, you know, come up with solutions and compromise on certain things to move forward, so these are my observations. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Izumi. Sometimes it's the smallest things that we take for granted, so when we met face-to-face, I found those meetings to be the most rewarding and the ones in which we made the most progress, which I think is always something we sometimes underestimate. Wonderful. Thank you.
Okay. If I could just ask the participants just to hold their reflections on where these types of learnings might be taken in the future, we'll get to that in the next -- in the next piece. So if you can just hold those for the moment.
Jimson.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: Thank you very much, Moderator. My name is Jimson Olufuye. I run an IT firm based in Abuja. We are users of the Internet, and we are about to be member of the Africa ICT Alliance that involve ICT companies and associations across Africa, 27 countries are involved right now, so AfICTA is a member of the business constituency, and they play a very, very active role in the entire process. I want to use this opportunity to thank Steve DelBianco, who appointed me to be a representative even in the CCWG and all the other government processes.
And it did something which is very important. There is consistent feedback. We're always were aware what was going on in the community, and I think that is very, very instructional.
And with that as well, I was able to give some confidence to the process because back then, Africa, I met so many people that said, oh, don't mind the Americans, they're not going to relinquish IANA. You are wasting your time. Not one person, not two persons.
In Geneva there are is a working group. Someone once told me America is -- not in this lifetime it will happen, but because I was involved and Steve was always engaging everybody, so I said, no, they're real, it's genuine. We had a big conference. I was the only voice that was saying it was going to work. I know that -- they say I don't believe the business people, that business people is only money. I said, it's not true. Business people are also concerned about the stability and the security of the Internet.
Now that we have achieved the transition, so the maze, perhaps maybe there's still a catch, so that is why we need to keep up the engagement, but it so happens that with the Work Stream 2, I was so much interested in being actively engaged, but I found that because I'm only a volunteer, so the challenge is keeping up with the momentum, so that's why we need to do more outreach, get more people, build more capacity, you know, of many of the people that will engage the process.
So there is providing more stability to our businesses, at least we have assurance that where we're going is predictable, and with that, more investment can come in. So maybe later I could talk about the challenges. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Jimson. I'm going to turn to Leon, please.
>> LEON SANCHEZ: And -- well, as I said, if you want to get involved with Work Stream 2, you definitely can do so by approaching any of us and subscribing to different mailing lists and attending the meetings. You have a -- an excellent representative for the business constituency, and, well, feel free to approach any of us if you want to actually get deeper involved in Work Stream 2.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Any -- as one of the co-chairs, any quick thoughts on what were the success factors, some of the challenges?
>> LEON SANCHEZ: I can think of many of them. Well, being the co-chair of the CCWG and the success factors, I think that in the beginning it was a bit difficult, as someone -- as some have said already, but I think that the -- you know, the progression of the work that we did allowed the different stakeholder groups to begin speaking the same language because when you listen to people speak about different topics and they have different interests in the same topic, you would think that one word will mean the same thing for each and every one of them, but that is not necessarily true, so I think at the beginning some of the discussions might have been a little bit heated on some topics, but then as the crowd -- as the different groups began to understand what the meaning of that specific topic was to their counterparts, then we began doing big progress.
For example, I can tell you one example that has to do with human rights. Human rights has been a very interesting discussion. We discussed this in Work Stream 1. We are continuing to discuss this in Work Stream 2. We have, Tatiana, yourself is part of the human rights subgroup, and I -- honestly, I thought that the human rights group would take a lot of time to get to conclusions in Work Stream 2, but I didn't count that the participants of this subgroup have already learned the language of each other, right?
So the discussions in the human rights subgroup have made a lot of progress, and they have actually delivered their first draft document that will be discussed in the Plenary in our next meeting, so I guess understanding the language of the other stakeholders was a success factor for this.
Another success factor is that, as I've said many times, in ICANN's diversity lies its richness, right? So no matter how entrenched a discussion might seem that the diversity of views from each of the stakeholder groups would always push us forward into finding creative solutions for develop complex problems, very simple solutions to complex problems that would only be possible if you have these diversity in your background and in your DNA, right? And I think that DNA is an acceptable acronym, right, so --
(Laughter)
-- so -- and another positive factor is that we have involvement from, of course, all stakeholders, but also one other piece of the puzzle that was crucial for this effort, and that is the ICANN Board. At the beginning, the ICANN Board had some liaisons, which did an excellent job in liaising between the CCWG and the ICANN Board, but at some point, a deeper involvement of the board was required, and at that point the board was wise enough to recognize the situation, and they actually took the problem in their hands and said, okay, we're going to have a more active participation with each of the different groups that are trying to find solutions to the common problems that we all have.
So I think that it was very positive to have the board which -- as you said, that there was kind of a mistrust in different pieces or different actors in this effort, and I think that one of those actors was the board itself, and what I did in stepping down from what was perceived as their stance and stepping down with the community and working hand on hand with the community to find the solutions was another success factor because when we arrived and we produced the final report from the CCWG, it was already vaccinated by the board, right? The board had taken part in the discussions. The board knew perfectly how the report was being designed, so when they received it, it was already approved, right?
So I think those three -- because I could continue mentioning some more success factors, but I think that I will just mention those three to leave room for others to contribute to this positiveness.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: I'm already seeing a number of people who want to speak, so if you can just hold on, we're going to let the last few panelists have their say, and then we'll go to questions.
I'd also encourage those who have been involved in the process to also let us know what they think the challenges were and what the successes were. So next is Tatiana, please.
>> TATIANA TROPINA: Thanks a lot. I will try and be brief and not repeat what other speakers already mentioned, because I agree with all the liked and happy moments of this process. Just a few things to mention from my perspective, from my background. I'm going from the policymaking and legislative perspective where things get, hey, let's get things agreed and done. I'm coming from the cybersecurity background. You can get Aegis to agree in something in this area. It was amazing to see how community could mobilize itself and adopt different situations, like, for example, when the first proposal was rejected by the board, when we had to work on the human rights when we were able to bring together the differences at the very last moment, and this is what I learned, bridging these differences, bridging these gaps, working together and establishing the channels, and now a bit about challenges. Well, first of all, I'm have a Civil Society background, and what I learned is that Civil Society is very much divided, so sometimes you cannot really rely on the opinions of your aims, goals, of those who are in the same group with you, but the happy moment here and the happy lesson is that when you know how to work with other stakeholders that help can come from where you don't even expect, from business community, from registers and registrars, even from the board with whom sometimes they will antagonize, so this is my lesson. You go outside of your civils and you find a lot of help and cooperation.
And a bit about Work Stream 2, my learnings. Sometimes it is hard, even exhausting because new people are joining. It's an open community, it's a multistakeholder process, and you have to explain what have been agreed upon. You have to explain which deals have been sealed, but you also have hard time to reconsider or not reconsider these deals which have been sealed. You always ask yourself, do I have to reopen this issue for the sake of openness, for the sake of inclusiveness? Do I have to argue again on what have already been decided, and this is a hard question to answer. This is all for me. Thanks a lot.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Tatiana. Lousewies.
>> LOUSEWIES VAN DER LAAN: Thank you very much. Lousewies van der Laan. I'm a member of the ICANN Board. I feel like a cheat because in October of last year I joined the board after almost everything had been done, so it's like jumping on a train about two minutes before it's about to pull into the station and say, look, we arrived.
I said this to Matthew, but I want to give this from the perspective of someone from the outside because I know the session is supposed to be focusing on the non-ICANN crowd, so for those who are non-ICANN, I think my key message is if someone like me coming from the outside can join in this process, then anybody can.
So when you first look at the ICANN community -- and it was completely new to me -- then the first thing that strikes you is it's incredible that this is the way the Internet actually is run. It's something that not many people know, and I have to keep on explaining again and again what is a multistakeholder process, how it's open, how it's inclusive, how everybody can participate, how everything is democratic, how anybody can chime in at any moment in Work Stream 1 and Work Stream 2, anything you want to raise as an issue, you can put on the table, and when I explain this to people who don't know this, you know, first they don't believe it, and when you explain it even more, they say, oh, so it's like a hippy kibbutz that kind of gets along and that's how the Internet works, call it what you want but it works, and people who have been in it since the beginning underestimate how exceptional it is, the way it works, the way communities come together, the way people try to build bridges and understand each other, and I think the whole transition process is an amazing example of that happening, of the relationships being built, of the trust being established, of people, listening, really trying to understand each other.
I saw it, Matthew, in face-to-face meetings. On mailing lists, people can get out of hand and start losing site, even the way you would say some things online that you wouldn't actually say to someone's face, then you meet in meetings, and you meet someone for drinks and you meet someone at the bar and you say, hey, what did you really mean, that makes a huge difference, so I do believe in the power of these face-to-face gatherings.
So on the Work Stream 2, I am the board liaison for diversity. On the last call we only had 20 people, so I'd say, please, everybody, join in because diversity means -- we're talking about age diversity, linguistic, regional, about getting a gender balance. It's really important that people join in, and so if the group on diversity is not diverse, then we have a problem, so please join in.
And I'm also the substitute for Markus Kummer on the Human Rights Working Group, in the Work Stream 2 subgroup, and that's really been an interesting process as well.
So basically my key take it is away is if someone like me as an outsider can feel at home and feel included -- thank you, everyone, especially helping out with all the acronyms. It's great. On one of the first emails there was an acronym I copyright figure out, and I went on ICANN Wiki, and it was SDB. It was Steve DelBianco, so it was on the Wiki. If I can part of this, I would encourage everybody -- as Leon says, with great power comes great responsibility, so the more people that join the responsibility in the new powered community, the more we can keep our Internet open and connected. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Lousewies. Sebastian.
>> SEBASTIAN BELLAGAMBA: Thank you very much. My name is Sebastian Bellagamba. I'm the regional director for the Internet Society for Latin America and the Caribbean. As you know, the Internet Society is not a direct participant in this process but a big supporter of the transition of IANA, so as such, I would like to give you our two takeaways -- I mean, the main outputs that we see from this project. First, obviously, the transition in itself. We applaud that. I mean, we applaud you guys and all the other communities that have been involved for the work well done.
And secondly, I think the most important thing is we scored a victory for the multistakeholder model, and I like to refer a little bit about that because I think I find it quite important.
Multistakeholderism is another -- it's not an acronym, but it's as cryptic as the acronyms that we use, so let's refer to the collaborative model in -- to dealing with policy and technical issues on the Internet.
I mean, so I think we -- since the -- yeah, since the WSIS, I mean, it was from the beginning of the discussion on the multistakeholder model in itself -- since then, we keep talking about the multistakeholder -- a multistakeholder model, but at this transition process, we validated the process in a way that we never did before, so I think the one main thing that we have at our disposal after this process is a set of tools, and they were always there at our disposal but now are evident to us.
This process had a focus goal. It worked on a specific time frame. It worked with a shared vision. It worked with collective responsibility, collaboration. It took very important the stake of the value of consensus, and I left for the last one accountability.
I think it was the first -- I mean, every single community -- Internet-related community, accountability was extremely important, but it was the first time that accountability was discussed at the global level, and I think those are very important things that came out of this process, and we have to realize what we've done because it's a big achievement for what we call the Internet model or the multistakeholder model, and we are not probably, most of us, realizing how important it was. Thank you very much.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Sebastian.
Okay. So we're going to go to questions. I'm going to take questions for about five, seven minutes, not longer than that, so we can turn to the last section, which is about how do we take these learnings into other spaces and other processes.
So so far I have Steve. Do you want to go ahead?
>> STEVE DELBIANCO: Thank you, Matt. It's Steve DelBianco with the business constituency and also a group called NetChoice. I'll share three quick points about why I believe we succeeded. The first is that it was the community that gave rise to this entire accountability plan. It was not part of NTIA's imagination of how they would transition the contract, and it wasn't in the board and ICANN management's view: Instead, the community determined that this opportunity was our last best hope to give the community accountability powers over ICANN, the corporation, and its board because the community, thus far, had no accountability powers, the same way that, say, shareholders would have had over a corporation or members would have had over an association.
And that came to a head at the London meeting of 2014. Keith Drazek led a group of us, multistakeholder stakeholder group to the microphone to tell the board of ICANN that you cannot do this transition until and unless we, the community, have designed accountability powers that we've never had before. I wouldn't necessarily say, like Leon did, that the board embraced that and management team. They didn't embrace that. They resisted for a while but then got on with the program, so the first critical success factor was that we invented this program. It wasn't a top-down initiative.
The second that it was important. It was vitally important because what we would come up with would really matter for the management of the DNS.
Third, we had a deadline. It was a political deadline, not a technical one, the political deadline of getting it done by the end of the Obama administration in 2016. Those three factors, I think, helped make it a success.
And now that it's done, the transition, we still have nine things left, nine projects. You've heard about three or four of them tonight. We've called them Work Stream 2. Just to give the rest of the non-ICANN crowd an idea, in the actual transition, we knew we had a deadline, so we said are there any projects, however critical, that were not required to be done before the transition? And if so, let's put them into the second work stream, Work Stream 2, but it wasn't sufficient to just dump them to Work Stream 2. We had to add to the new bylaws implementation imperatives and what do I mean by that? In the bylaws that we adopted in October, we have created a strong mechanism for the community to get consensus on these extra nine Work Stream 2 items, and then we have a significantly greater power to get ICANN to implement the community's recommendations, even if the -- even if the ICANN Board and management wanted to resist them. These are to do with diversity, accountability, human rights. We have a handful of items on this Work Stream 2, and the community, if we have consensus, can pretty well guarantee they're going to be implemented, and that's a greater degree of implementation assurance than we've ever had before. So that's the open invitation to those of you who are perhaps brand-new to ICANN. You can find within these nine Work Stream 2 projects many opportunities to participate now, as we're just baking our proposals and recommendations and putting them forth for full consideration.
There is plenty of time in the next 12 to 16, 18 months to make a real difference on areas that matter most to you in Work Stream 2. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Steve. If people are interested in asking a question, please raise their hands. I'm going to go to Ambassador Benedicto, please.
>> BENEDICTO FONSECA: Thank you. I'd like to raise the point by Olga, and I think that refers to the positive approach that governments in general took to this exercise. I think that this is something that maybe is not fully recognized the -- I would say very positive approach that the government holds to this exercise, because even in the end, in the very final stage of the process, some governments, including my own government, were very much concerned about some of the rules, some of the norms that were being proposed, particularly in regard to the need to have full consensus to trigger some consideration mechanism before the board. Otherwise, any advice coming from the GAC could be more easily dismissed.
This, on top of not being the board, and this also on top of that rule not being applied to any other constituency, plus, in addition to that, to the fact that this is not the usual way governments operate. Consensus is a very important method for decision-making. We are fully in agreement with that, but usually governments in each and every stance have mechanisms to overcome, even if they are minority opinions, so we have come to a situation in which we have a kind of veto power that can be exercised some way, so this is a situation that many countries, including my own, were comfortable, but what is important to highlight is even in the face of some difficulties that are very serious from the part of government, there was a general willingness within the GAC to not object to the process, to let the proposal go forward, and we knew by doing this, we -- it would be approved in a way that would, let’s say, be problematic for some of us, but we took that onboard when we made the decision in respect for the multistakeholder approach that was followed.
I'd like to say that in the case of my delegation, this was very clear. We had very clear sense that some aspects were not to our liking very adequately addressed, but it in respect for the multistakeholder model, we'd like to see not only my -- internally, we were prepared to accept, so I think this is one thing that should be highlighted.
Another thing is that in our perception, the IANA transition has unfolded and was completely implemented. We think this was a huge step forward. We see it very positively; however, we think, as others, including Steve DelBianco has recognized, it is unfinished business because there are very important aspects still being discussed. We think that the same energy, the same resources that were devoted to the first stage should also be allocated to the discussion of those remaining aspects that deal with -- that will allow in our view to elevate the perception of ICANN, the legitimacy, including from the perspective of government. We think it's very important that we pursue in those tracks with the same energy, so we, again -- I think the approach -- and speaking from the part of bra still -- was very positive in regard to the exercise. We think it was a huge step forward, but, however, we'd like to remain engaged in some aspects that are still very important for us. Thank you.
And I think we have that shared interest in making the -- in achieving a situation all those remaining issues that will allow all of us to feel comfortable and to fully embrace ICANN and to be fully prepared to defend the organization and to -- in the face of others that maybe do not share the same sentiment towards this organization. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you. I think as somebody who's lived through the working groups, both the IANA transition group and the Accountability Working Group and participated in those quite extensively, like so many of us, the end game on the accountability side, it was a very interesting time. It must be said because there were -- I think some of the concerns that were lingering in the minds of the different stakeholder groups came to the fore, which is very understandable when you're getting close to coming to that end point, but what was, I think, an incredible achievement was that common goal and that desire to see this through prevailed, and that, at the end of the day, was the most important element, I think, of that particular very somewhat tense at times period in the end game.
Yes, please.
>> CHERINE CHALABY: My name is Cherine Chalaby. I'm a member of the ICANN Board. I wanted to give a perspective from inside the board on a couple of things, particularly what Leon mentioned and what Steve mentioned, Leon said embraced and Steve said resisted, so I'm going to tell you what I -- what really happened from inside.
The transition began at a time when I believe -- and I think you would agree with that -- the trust between the board and the community was stretched, to say the least, and as a result, any action or any statement made by the board was -- had a different connotation, different interpretation, but let me assure you that personally I believe that the process that we went all through it has strengthened the relationship between the board and the community, and today I think the board is in a much stronger position because it is in partnership with the community, it is no longer us and them, so I think the multistakeholder model has prevailed in that instance and has helped tremendously reach -- or sorry, bring together the board with the community in partnership and actually improve the trust between them, and I think as years go forward, we're going to have some challenges in implementing all the new bylaws, but we have to work together in making sure it's not confrontational, but it's a partnership where we're going to sort out problems and move together, so I think to me, the lesson is that trust is so essential for the success of this model between the various constituents. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank you very much. One last question before we go to the next section of the -- of the workshop. Anybody? No. Okay. Wonderful.
So now we get to the fun part, which is how do we take these lessons forward? Where do we take them? What spaces do we believe that the lessons we've learned as a part of this multistakeholder process could benefit from? And I know a couple of the panelists have -- want to share their thoughts on where these -- where this multistakeholder model could be taken, and actually, I'd welcome, given that we're in the last 15 minutes or so, if there are others other than the panelists who wish to jump in here and say this is a model we can take into this space or that space or should be considered, at least, then to please indicate they'd like to speak.
So who would like to go first from among the panelists?. Lousewies.
>> LOUSEWIES VAN DER LAAN: So I come from working in the public sector, so working with governments. I'm used to governments sitting around the table making all the decisions and everybody is standing outside lobbying, and when you're in a company, it's easier to lobby and you get on a delegation or something like that.
To me it's incredible to see everybody sits at the table and governments are one of the equal partners and not the ones who dominate, so I actually think we should do this everywhere. I mean, I think that if we can take it into -- you know, work on climate change, on fighting poverty, I mean, you name it, there is so much knowledge and so much expertise, and sometimes -- and I can say this as a former recovering politician, I like to say, you know, politicians are so out of touch with real people and what their problems are that if you can get more real people actually at the table saying these are the solutions and this is how we do it -- yes, it's going to be -- take a long time, it's going to be expensive, it's going to be very difficult, et cetera, but if the results are better and more sustainable and longer-term, I think it's worth it.
So I think we shouldn't be too modest about what's happening here, and let's face it, the Internet is one of the few global things that works, so it's not like we have a bad track record.
And so in that regard, I would say let's not be shy and take it to other fora.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Lousewies. Leon. Who else -- any hands on -- okay. Thanks. Leon. Go ahead.
>> LEON SANCHEZ: I definitely agree with what Lousewies has said. My idea is to take the multistakeholder model particularly to the negotiations of, for example, free trade agreements. When you think of negotiating free trade agreements, this is something that is only made by the governments today, but the impact that free trade agreements has or have is immense, right? It impacts all sectors of society, economy, and different aspects of our lives, so I think that if countries are going to negotiate free trade agreements or whatever international agreements to be negotiated, then I think that the multistakeholder model could be ported to those -- to that firm, and we wouldn't -- forum, and we wouldn't have anyone wanting to do any huge changes to -- to agreements that have been in place for many years, right?
(Laughter)
>> No names.
(Laughter)
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Leon. Jimson, and then Olga, and then Farzi. Yep.
>> JIMSON OLUFUYE: There's no doubt there is great beauty to the multistakeholder approach, especially bottom-up, as we practice in ICANN. I see some of it happening in the United Nations, like in the Working Group on Enhanced Cooperation and also Working Group on IGF Improvements that concluded maybe some three years back.
Well, the point is even some officials of the United Nations have recognized that you get a lot of ideas, valuable ideas on moving forward when you have a lot of diverse opinions on the table, so I think since we have seen the success in the cooperation in terms of discussion and broadening enlightenment, if it can be expanded to many other organizations, the so-called treaty organizations, like ITU. ITU is doing marvelous work, but I think if we also enhance its governance, it makes a lot of sense. It will have more impact in -- socially and culturally.
And then in Africa, we have recognized that 50 years of African Union, the government has not really impacted much, so we feel that when the AU also comes to the table to discuss, only government, they should bring in stakeholders, hear from the youth, hear from the market women, okay, and with that, we can move faster because everybody's involved in the process.
And finally, in regard to getting into this, it also addresses the challenges, as I mentioned earlier, the need for outreach. We need to do more outreaches at many fora to talk about it. If you don't advertise, nobody will get to know what you're selling, so that is why we need to engage and engage, so we are the ambassadors of this success story, and we need to carry it to the global community. We should celebrate it. It's an endearing development, and we should push it. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Jimson, you raise an interesting point, at the end of the day what we should be selling is the result, not the process. The most important thing is the multistakeholder process, not the fact that it's a multistakeholder process, because if you want that outcome, inevitably you have to bring those stakeholders to the table. I think sometimes we have a communication challenge around multistakeholder, and we have to be careful to the degree in which we use it, and what we should be reflecting on is what's the benefit, what's the outcome, what's the result, and I think in the case of the IANA transition, we've got a very clear result we can point to. Olga.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thank you. I'm not sure if I agree totally with you. I think the process was fine and was worth to have in mind and to repeat, and of course, the outcome. And I would agree with Lousewies. The challenge is to take this process and this idea of multistakeholder discussion and outcome at the national level or regional level, which is not easy.
It is -- there is a long tradition from governments on discussing things about governments, which is good, and also business talking to business, so I think it's challenging, and it's also challenging not forgetting the role of each of the stakeholders. Businesses are good doing businesses, so they have to focus on that, and governments doing public policy and Civil Society and academia and others, so I see it as a real challenge for the future.
So those of us who were lucky and really participant -- active participants in this process should go back and try to actively participate. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Good point. Farzi.
>> FARZENEH BADIEI: I understand the enthusiasm, but I think we should be a bit shy when we want to transplant this amazing multistakeholder approach, and I would call this approach not a model because we don't have one model, we have an -- we have -- we can have different approaches, the institutional design of ICANN might be different than other institutions and also the issue that we work on is the Internet and the issues might be different, so I think we need to be a little bit shy in transplanting it.
And also, we have to think about where we are going, where we want to take it, and it might not be appropriate for everywhere. Thank you.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Farzi. Izumi and then Chris.
>> IZUMI OKUTANI: Thank you. Interesting that Leon said maybe this could be applied in trade agreement because recently around the negotiation of TPP, I had open discussions with our Japanese government and other stakeholder, and when I shared about the community process and the contrast with what happened with the TPP negotiation, this government officer who was involved in the negotiation, he just -- it was really a new idea, and he was really amazed and he took a note, okay, I will take it into consideration, so I don't know if it can be done in exactly the same way that we did for the -- for the accountability proposal, but at least the idea of, hey, you know, having a bit of open consultation with others, this is -- this is something that seems to be eye-opening, which was a surprise to me.
And another thing that I really agree with the observation, we shouldn't be careful that we shouldn't apply exactly the same process in everything, and this kind of collaborative approach may apply to things that needs collaboration rather than negotiation, so for example, in the area of cybersecurity where like, you know, different shareholders will share the same goal of hey, let's know, you know, target and improve the cybersecurity, and each different players have their own -- those kind of like collaboration needed theme is maybe an area that a multistakeholder approach would work effectively compared to negotiation type of things. Thanks.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks. Chris.
>> CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thanks, Matthew. Chris Disspain, ICANN Board. I think I agree with Farzi. I just want to say that ICANN is an example of a multistakeholder model, not the only one. The result is evidence, if you will, that a multistakeholder model can work, you can produce a result, and the process is an example of a process, and that is an example of a process that we've used. We may never use it again. We may find other processes. We may use it again, it depends, so I think it's very important not to get wedded to, A, the process, and B, this is the only way to run a multistakeholder model. There are other ways to do it, but that said, I don't think any of that detracts from the result. Thanks.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thanks, Chris. Tatiana and then Carolyn.
>> TATIANA TROPINA: Thanks a lot. I voiced my concerns about model vs. approaches, that we should not be that optimistic about it. While I do strongly believe in multistakeholder approaches, when we talk about model and when we talk about this particular process, we have to bear in mind three things. First of all, ICANN was born multistakeholder. Many processes we are talking about, like international agreements, like cybersecurity, they're long established power play, which is not easy to share.
Secondly, this process had aim and strict time limitations, so I believe that it can be transported some way, it can be interoperable only in the processes, even in the processes when there are time limitations and the aim that you know what you're going to achieve and you know if you're not going to achieve your aim, you lose maybe not everything but a lot.
So with all these grains of pessimism, I would say even if we cannot transport the model itself, the lessons learned from this process, from this model, from this approach can be taken anywhere, and they are good lessons, and that's what we have to do on the first place.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Carolyn.
>> OLGA CAVALLI: Thanks, Matthew. I do want to reinforce some of the points that have been --
>> CAROLYN NGUYEN: Thanks, Matthew. I think this is more important to emphasize the multistakeholder. There are multistakeholder approaches used wherever, not just in IANA. When we go into a country and embark on a project, in order to make it sustainable, we have to work with governments, we have to work with local organizations, we have to work with Civil Society, so these approaches are being applied in multiple places everywhere, it's actually not new, although this is a very, very particular implementation of that process.
So I want -- I want to go back to the other previous speakers and say, so what are the principles that would -- that should be incorporated, right? One is that there is a very specific problem definition here. Many people said it, that there was a common goal, there was a compassionate community that wanted to really work through the issues, air the issues but work through the issues, and then once a solution had been arrived at to really honor that solution.
And the stress test in terms of airing out what are the priorities in terms of -- in order to address the -- and get to this common goal and also the accountability, so I think that those were some of the principles that would be great to find, okay, so what are the solutions, what are the issues that this can be applied to.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: Thank, Carolyn. Anyone else? Any other comments -- want to make some comments on this? No. Okay.
So we're at the end of the session. I'm going to close it so we can go to the various parties and events that are this evening. Carolyn actually, you kind of did the summary in a way there, which I think what we have is a wonderful example of a significant achievement for the Internet, a significant achievement for the multistakeholder community. I think that the cautions about a particular model are absolute valid, but the characteristics and the principles of multistakeholderism at the end of the day are the things that were through here, and those are the learnings that we need to take into other spaces, as many have said.
So with that, I'll wrap this up. Oh, wait a minute. Nigel's got a comment.
>> NIGEL HICKSON: Yes, thank you. And -- Nigel Hickson, ICANN. Just before Matthew wraps this up, I thank the panel for taking part, but also to note we will be putting the links into the -- into the IGF page for this and also the links to the presentation, so if anyone missed some of the links to the working group.
Also, there's a host of information, of course, on the ICANN website, and if you go into the ICANN website and look for the accountability and the Work Stream 2, all the links to the various subgroups that have been talked about are there, so please, please get involved. Thank you. Back to Matthew.
>> MATTHEW SHEARS: And I will say there were some very interesting learnings from this session, and we will be capturing them in the report and welcome your further feedback when it comes out. With that, round of applause for the panelists and for yourselves, and have a good evening. Thank you.
(Applause)
(Session concluded at 1800)