Prioritization Framework

In November 2020, the ICANN Board approved a recommendation from ATRT3 to create a Prioritization Framework to integrate community, board, and org priorities into annual strategic & budget planning. The prioritization framework was intended to "achiev[e] an agreed upon definition of what it would mean for the prioritization process to “operate by consensus of the individual SO/ACs, Board, and org members that are participating in the prioritization process.”

History

ICANN's Multistakeholder Model provides for the development of consensus-driven, bottom-up policy and recommendations from the community of stakeholders in the ICANN ecosystem. Over time, the generation of policy proposals, consensus advice, and recommendations has outstripped the ICANN board and orginization's ability to implement such proposals. This has resulted in bottlenecks at the board and org levels around policy implementation: the attention of the board is strained by the number of inputs from constituent bodies; and within the organization, resource limitations make it challenging to respond to all of the mandates generated by board approval of recommendations. The

The Third Accountability and Transparency Review made several recommendations regarding the transparency of ICANN's decision-making process, as well as the creation of engagement processes for community-wide concerns. These included a proposed holistic review of ICANN's constituent organizations and re-factoring of existing Organizational Reviews into continuous improvement processes. In addition, the review team proposed the creation of a "consensus model" for prioritizing the work of ICANN org and the recommendations derived from policy development processes, cross-community working groups, organizational and specific reviews, and other sources.

Project Timeline

The prioritization project anticipates running a pilot within the planning process for fiscal year 2023. The pilot will be used to assess the process design and identify improvements. The current plan, subject to process design and consultation, is for the prioritization process to be inserted into the early phases of the strategic and budget planning arc. The Briefing Paper and the Pilot will both present opportunities for public comment on the process. During ICANN 73's Prep Week, the Planning & Prioritization update reported that the briefing paper would be delivered by the end of February 2022. This was later than the initial proposed timeline. The timing of the pilot program timing remained the same.