ICANN is opening this public comment forum to receive comment on revisions to the Board Conflicts of Interest Policy, Code of Conduct and Expected Standards of Behavior as well as a proposed Corporate Governance Guidelines prepared as part of ICANN’s ongoing review of its Conflicts of Interest and Ethics practices.
These documents were prepared after a review of ICANN’s corporate governance documents to make recommendations of how those could be improved in light of best practices in corporate governance, while still reflecting the needs of ICANN.
This work has been conducted in coordination with the Board Governance Committee, and represents just the beginning of the items that will be presented as part of the review of Conflicts of Interest and Ethics practices.
Over the year, heightened attention and scrutiny has been placed on how the ICANN Board addresses conflicts of interest, and on enhancing ICANN’s ethical culture. While ICANN has a robust conflict of interest policy and code of conduct in place, work has been ongoing with the community and experts to determine how these can be improved.
ICANN engaged two sets of outside counsel – one that is familiar with ICANN to perform a holistic review of our policies to make identifications of how they can be improved; and another set that is not familiar with ICANN to provide a review and recommendations for improvement. The documents provided for comment today arise out of one of those reviews.
ICANN has also engaged a team of international ethics experts to provide recommendations for the enhancement of ICANN’s ethical culture, drawing on international sources, including practices in other not-for-profit organizations.
As another facet of this work, the ICANN Board has already finalized and announced rules on how Directors with interests in specific New gTLD applications may participate in New gTLD-related discussions. In addition ICANN announced stringent communication rules for its staff regarding communications with potential new gTLD applicants.
This announcement was sourced from :
http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-2-11mar12-en.htm
