Translations:ICANN/192/en

Implementation vs. Policy Development

While a longstanding issue within the ICANN community, the difference and use of implementation procedures and policy development began to reach a noticeable head throughout 2012 and into 2013. Strictly speaking, anything that is "ICANN Policy" needs to go through its various supporting organizations and be approved, while implementation refers to matters adopted by the ICANN Board regardless of any consultation to the rest of the community. ICANN is supposed to be driven by bottom-up, consensus policy development, and this often results in the organization making slow progress. Implementation procedures are necessary to accommodate the practical issues related to organizational effectiveness.