Review and Assessment of ICANN's CCWG Recommendations

In 2014, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration of the United States Department of Commerce (NTIA) announced its intent to transition its stewardship of key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community, provided that certain conditions were met. To meet the NTIA’s conditions for the transition, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) facilitated the formation of multiple working groups, each focused on a different element of the transition proposal. One of those groups was the Cross-Community Working Group on Accountability (CCWG), which developed a series of recommendations for strengthening and enhancing ICANN’s accountability. Prior to finalizing the transition, the NTIA conducted a detailed assessment of whether the proposed reforms satisfied its conditions.  As one input to that assessment, the NTIA asked the Berkman Center, along with legal scholars from the Columbia and Brooklyn Law Schools, to conduct an independent review of the CCWG Recommendations in order to determine the extent to which they comply with good governance principles.  This expert panel brought to bear expertise in corporate, nonprofit, and multistakeholder governance models to both identify a good governance framework, and determine the extent to which the CCWG Recommendations complied with those good governance principles.

The expert panel report was part of the NTIA's complete assessment "IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal Assessment Report," and was released in June 2016.