2012: ICANN takes off on 4 ATRT recommendations

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) commenced the year 2012 with resolve to address the four key aspects of its Accountability & Transparency Review Team (ATRT) based on public comment processes.

ICANN said in a public statement made available to ITRealms Online that the public comment process is fundamental to it’s focus on multi-stakeholder, bottom-up, consensus-driven procedure.

This decision, ICANN noted was also the focus of several recommendations made by the Accountability & Transparency Review Team (ATRT), stressing that since the ATRT made its recommendations almost a year ago, the ICANN community has devoted many hours to brainstorming, discuss and consult over how to improve ICANN’s public comment process.

However, ICANN indicated that some new changes have been introduced to improve on the processes over the past six months.

Some of these include; Better Descriptions of Public Comment Topics: In addition to the recently added fields showing purpose, current status and next steps, for each public comment topic that will be opened from 1 January 2012 onwards, a category field will be noted such as Top-Level Domains, Internet Protocol Addressing and Contracted Party Agreements, relating to the public comment topic. 

The intent of the introduction of this new field is to make it easier for readers to determine which Public Comment topics are important for them to respond to.

Also, ICANN  said on comment and reply periods, that each public comment to be opened from 1 January 2012 onwards will have a ‘Comment’ period, lasting a minimum of 21 days, and if comments are received during this period, then a ‘Reply’ period will commence for another minimum 21 days.

These new guidelines, ICANN specified are to be considered ‘minimums’ and that the Comment and/or Reply period could be longer depending on community requests, a particular working group’s preference as they issue a public comment or other factors.

The Internet coordinating agency believes that while the “Comment” periods are to be used by the participants to introduce their comments on the topic, “Reply” periods should be used to address and respond to the previously submitted comments during the Comment period.

ICANN emphasized that the introduction of these new processes and constructs complete the implementation of ATRT recommendations 15, 16, 17 and 21.

Just as these new processes and constructs would be put in place by 1 January 2012, staff is continuing work on a limited community testing of a wiki-based threaded discussion environment for the public comments.

The public statement from ICANN further showed that responding to community calls made by staff and ICANN community leaders, 21 volunteers are contributing this test, which will last through January. Once the test is completed, staff will work towards a technically improved interface if approved by the ICANN Board’s public participation committee (PPC).

Remmy Nweke
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