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ICANN to review reviews after review review request fails

Kevin Murphy, July 14, 2025, 18:25:29 (UTC), Domain Policy

An effort by ICANN’s At-Large community to force the Org to stick to its bylaws commitments to periodically review its accountability and transparency has failed after nobody else supported it.

As I reported last month, ALAC petitioned its Empowered Community co-members to get ICANN to overturn its decision to delay Accountability and Transparency Review Team 4, which is already more than a year late.

The other EC members — Government Advisory Committee, the Address Supporting Organization, the Country Code Names Supporting Organization and the Generic Names Supporting Organization — had until July 10 to file their letters of support or objection.

But it received no support and the ccNSO actively objected. The threshold for the petition to go ahead was three votes in favor and no more than one vote against.

The ccNSO pointed out that the current cycle of constantly reviewing itself is broken and getting worse over time. It instead called for a fundamental change in how ICANN reviews itself:

We strongly believe that breaking this vicious cycle can only be achieved if the community pauses and critically assesses the current review system. Specifically, the community should evaluate the breadth and number of reviews by looking at purpose, scope, frequency and associated workload of all ICANN Bylaw mandated reviews (a review of reviews), before embarking again on an Accountability and Transparency Review, or any other Bylaw mandated review.

The GNSO Council had a motion on its table last week that would have expressed non-support for the ALAC’s petition, but a vote was deferred until August, by which point it will be moot anyway.

The ASO and GAC do not appear to have publicly expressed an opinion.

It was the first time any community group has attempted to get the Empowered Community to flex its powers over ICANN. Since Org’s split from the US government nine years ago, the EC has been essentially ICANN’s sovereign body.

The petition being thrown out enables either, depending on your point of view: a) a horrifying, bylaws-defying power grab by Org that threatens transparency and accountability or b) a common-sense step away from an interminable, soul-crushing, resource-sapping cycle of endless navel-gazing.

What it means is that ICANN is going to conduct a meta-review, reviewing how it conducts reviews, and then will fiddle with its bylaws to implement a new renew regime.

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Comments (1)

  1. avri doria says:
    July 18, 2025 at 2:32 pm

    Bylaws? What Bylaws.

    ICANN is becoming an organization dedicated to whimsy and ad hoc process.

    Also seems to have entered an age where it is the SOAC leaders and the Board in bilateral relationship acting, instead of the community according to Bylaws’ established procedures. Is this new variation ICANN 3.0, the Bilateral age?

    Remember the precedent, next time a Bylaw gets in the way of your group’s agenda, raise a fuss, prevent progress with a bit of obstruction, and get ICANN to create the Counter Bylaw.

    Reviews could have been reviewed & repaired by ATRT4, that would have been one of its jobs, but that was not the point. The point was that a review cannot be controlled from outside the review, and this was about power.

    Welcome to advent of ICANN 3.0?

    Reply

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