An Interesting Choice of Consultants
A United Nations working group is debating potentially radical changes in how the internet is governed. Consideration is being given to having the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), a UN agency, replace ICANN.

A recent news story, “UN favours change in Internet governance,” noted that at the UN’s World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) meeting in Geneva, “[s]ome recommend a new governance structure with heavy involvement from government and an inter-governmental body such as the ITU to coordinate governance of the Internet internationally.”

Unsurprisingly, ICANN is not supportive of the ITU taking over the internet governance function. As ICANNfocus has previously noted, ICANN’s determination to retain their internet governance role is completely in keeping with protecting the interests of diverse internet stakeholders around the world.

Among the concerns expressed about ICANN is that it is too American. Since the WSIS meeting, ICANN has taken a number of steps to increase their international presence and perspective, including opening an office in Brussels.

However, one step ICANN has taken to develop a broader international strategy since the initial WSIS meeting has raised a few eyebrows. Specifically, ICANN has retained the consulting firm of CompassRose International to “develop strategies relating to globalization.”

One reason that ICANN’s retention of CompassRose International is noteworthy is that the company’s founder, President and CEO participates in numerous ITU activities in a leadership capacity. Specifically, according to CompassRose’s website, their President’s ITU activities include:

• Chair of the Private Sector Working Group to the Telecommunications Development Advisory Group (TDAG) of the ITU-D;
• Vice-Chair of TDAG;
• Member of the Programme Committee for the ITU's TELECOM conferences;
• Chair of Africa Telecom 2001;
• Vice Chair of Americas Telecom 2000;
• Founding Member of the Steering Committee of the ITU Gender Issues Task Force and Member of the Steering Committee of the Working Group on Gender Issues;
• Initiator of ITU Youth Forum, Chair of Africa 2001 TELECOM Youth Forum, Asia 2002 TELECOM Youth Forum, and World 2003 TELECOM Youth Forum; Chair of the 2000 SIA/FCC/ITU Satellite Regulatory Symposium; and
• Member of the Board of Directors of the U.S. ITU Association.

Other CompassRose International officials also have substantial ITU-related experience.

There is no question that CompassRose International is well qualified to consult on international telecommunications issues. However, ICANN retaining a firm closely associated with ITU activities at the same time they are trying to prevent being supplanted by the ITU does raise certain questions.

It may well be that there is no conflict of interest or other impropriety associated with ICANN’s retention of CompassRose. Unfortunately, because ICANN provided only extremely limited information about how and why they retained CompassRose, the contract may look more questionable than needed. ICANN provided only a very vague description of the firm’s duties and no public information about how it was selected or how much they are being paid.

ICANN, through its MOU with NTIA, is committed to improving transparency. One important step ICANN could take to increase transparency would be to provide the public with increased information about all of the organization’s consulting contracts. Particularly now that ICANN has proposed a doubling of their budget in one year, the need to assure stakeholders that their funds are being wisely and properly expended is greater than ever.