Transparency
At the registrar constituency meeting earlier today, there was a good deal of discussion about the ICANN Board conference calls. No transcript is prepared of these calls, and minutes have been slow in coming out. When the Board votes, a transcript of the voting discussion is made, and Board members can make statements “on the record.”
At the in-person meetings, the public Board meetings are public. There's a transcript, there's a webcast, and there are minutes.
Several registrars found this lack of transparency for Board conference calls troubling. The responses to these concerns had to do with language issues and chilling effects.
I'd like to say, “for the record,” that I think we'd quickly get used to having transcripts prepared of Board meetings by conference call — we'd have to get much better at queues, so that people who are slow to speak up would be called on in a stately way, and we'd have to stop the transcript when we were working on personnel or other confidential matters. But the rest of it should be public.
There are many different views on this question on the Board, and the Chair called for suggestions for how we should be more transparent. No resolution on this yet, and there may not be a resolution for some time.
But it was a public meeting, and many Board members made their views emphatically known. A free and frank exchange of views.
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