The Board Meeting Minutes and Resolutions page is a great place to see some of initial work ICANN has already done to meet the recommendations of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT). These include:

• Starting with the Brussels Board meeting in June 2010, ICANN has been providing translations into the six UN Languages of the Approved Resolutions reached at ICANN Public Meetings.
• Starting with 25 January 2011 Board meeting, ICANN is now providing translations of Approved Resolutions for all Board meetings.
• The translations of the 18 March 2011 Approved Resolutions were posted within the 21-day timeframe recommended by the ATRT, and ICANN has adopted this timing recommendation as a new standard.

In addition to the Approved Resolutions, ICANN is now providing translations of the Minutes of Board meetings within 21-days of Board approval:

• The translations of the Minutes of the 25 January 2011 Board meeting were posted in early April.

Rationales & Briefing Materials

You may have noticed that the Approved Resolutions and Minutes documents are longer than they used to be. Since the 25 January 2011 Board meeting, ICANN has been posting rationales for nearly all Board actions. While the rationales only become final once the Board approves them as part of the Minutes, the draft rationales are posted along with the Approved Resolutions, and are included in all translation work.

In June 2010, ICANN began posting Board Briefing Materials along with the Minutes of each Board meeting. Through the ATRT recommendations and community input, ICANN heard that the community needed clarification on the timing of these Board Briefing Materials postings, as well as more transparency into the redaction process. This March, ICANN posted Guidelines for the Posting of Board Briefing Materials to better explain this process. As explained in the Guidelines, ICANN is now providing a description of the basis of each redaction, instead of the prior text that simply stated “REDACTED.”

This initial activity – making the work of the Board more accessible to the ICANN community – is an important step in increasing ICANN’s accountability and transparency. ICANN’s commitment to fulfilling its Affirmation of Commitments obligations and advancing its transparency and accountability is demonstrated in a multitude of ways throughout ICANN. To learn more, see our “Accountability & Transparency” webpage.