ICANN was established in 1998 to operate a global internet domain name addressing system that would bring greater stability and co-ordination to the internet. The report calls for individual internet users to be better represented on the ICANN board responsible for policy and decision making.
There are currently nineteen members of the ICANN board of directors, of which only five represent the interests of the internet community at large. When they were elected to the board in November 2000, it was hoped that they would improve the accountability and legitimacy of ICANN within the developing on-line community.
The primary aim of the ASCL has been to assess the involvement of the larger on-line community in the formulation of ICANN policies in order to find ways of accommodating the diversity of cultures that influence the growth of the internet. This process requires mechanisms for ensuring ICANN is accountable to individual internet users and channels through which individual views can be brought to the attention of the board.
ALSC chairman Carl Bildt commented:
"The internet needs to be structured to serve users with diverse needs in every country and in a variety of languages, and it needs to be able to accommodate future growth and technical innovations. So too does ICANN."
Also published last week was an ICANN Internet Coordination Policy that reiterated the organisation’s commitment to managing its unique domain name system under policies created through community processes that represent the public interest.