Improving ICANN's governance and accountability: A policy proposal

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has control over extremely important aspects of the Internet. Yet, its non-profit corporation status, combined with the way that it is funded and governed, make accountability a serious problem. This paper draws on the accountability framework that has been developed by Mueller (2009) to evaluate the structure and governance of ICANN and then compares it to the structure and governance of a number of other organizations that perform a roughly comparable range of coordination and standard-setting functions, to explore what might be applicable to ICANN. Virtually all of these other organizations are governed by their direct users, thereby building accountability into their structures. We suggest that this would be a good model for ICANN as well.

► ICANN's governance and accountability are major issues. ► ICANN has very little accountability, yet controls key aspects of the Internet. ► Other organizations with similar functions are controlled by their direct users. ► We propose that ICANN should be accountable to its direct users. ► For ICANN those direct users are its registries and registrars.