This year, a central focus of the ICANN organization is supporting community work to improve how different ICANN Reviews are organized, carried out, and implemented. One area of this important work focuses on evolving Organizational Reviews that examine the community structures that make up ICANN's multistakeholder model. Historically, these Reviews have been conducted by an independent examiner; however, the last Accountability and Transparency Review (ATRT3) recommended that Organizational Reviews should be evolved into a Continuous Improvement Program (CIP) led by the ICANN community. The Board made the decision to defer upcoming Organizational Reviews until 2025 so that this recommendation and others from ATRT3 could be implemented.
To champion the work to evolve Organizational Reviews, the Continuous Improvement Program Community Coordination Group (CIP-CCG) was launched in January 2024. With 21 out of 22 community groups across ICANN represented in the coordination group, it is clear that the ICANN community is very interested in this effort. We are grateful to these community volunteers for their enthusiasm and commitment. The volunteers have an important role to engage regularly with their community groups throughout 2024 and to solicit feedback on the important work in progress.
At the ICANN79 Community Forum in Puerto Rico, CIP-CCG volunteers held their first hybrid working meeting. During this meeting, the group made substantial progress toward developing common principles for the ICANN CIP. These principles stem from Article 4.4 of the ICANN Bylaws that describe the objectives for Organizational Reviews and will provide a common base for the assessment of the different ICANN community structures. The group's next steps will be to use the principles to build out the draft CIP Framework for Public Comment later this year.
The goal of this work is to provide a new framework by the start of calendar year 2025 for ICANN's Supporting Organizations, Advisory Committees, and the Nominating Committee that could replace Organizational Reviews with a more flexible methodology to measure a structure's impact and effectiveness, while allowing groups to focus on improvements that are relevant to their specific purpose and stakeholders. The CIP-CCG meeting held during ICANN79 was positive and productive in laying a solid foundation for the CIP-CCG to advance this mission.
We look forward to supporting the work of the ICANN community in this significant task and encourage the community to follow the work on the CIP and provide input to their respective representatives as work progresses.
Related: ICANN Launches the Continuous Improvement Program Community Coordination Group (January 2024)
