Summary

  • ICANN’s 6 August 2026 update says six of eight participating community structures have launched Continuous Improvement Program work; ALAC has reached the improvements phase, while the ASO has deferred and the Nominating Committee has not formally started.
  • The update reports programme states, not performance findings. ICANN’s framework distinguishes process indicators, such as meetings or reports, from performance indicators tied to effectiveness and desired outcomes.
  • The framework combines five common principles and standard survey questions with criteria, indicators and targets tailored by each structure. That permits local fit, but comparable accountability will depend on how clearly the eventual reports crosswalk those different measures.
  • The Board has deferred the next independent Organizational Reviews until the first CIP cycle is complete. The first public CIP reports will therefore carry evidence that the Board may use when it considers the future of those reviews.

Six starts, one second phase and two unfinished entries

ICANN published its first year-in-review table for the Continuous Improvement Program on 6 August. The programme began in July 2025 after a community coordination group completed a common framework for Supporting Organizations, Advisory Committees and the Nominating Committee.

The table gives a precise but limited picture. Six of eight participating structures have launched work. The At-Large Advisory Committee is the only group in phase two, where prioritized improvements are implemented. The ccNSO and GNSO have developed criteria and indicators and are planning data collection. The GAC is considering its approach. RSSAC aims to begin assessment work before the end of 2026, and SSAC plans to finalize draft indicators at its September workshop.

The Address Supporting Organization is marked deferred. It wants to wait for agreement with ICANN on the ICP-2 review and says it aims to begin in early 2027, subject to bandwidth. The Nominating Committee is marked “not yet started”; it has created a liaison role and is preparing for formal implementation.

Those labels answer an important operational question: has each institution formed a process and where is it in the cycle? They do not answer the question that gives the programme its constitutional weight: is the institution fulfilling its purpose, operating effectively and efficiently, remaining accountable to its stakeholders and collaborating in service of ICANN’s mission?

The distinction is not an external standard imposed on the update. It is written into the CIP Framework itself.

Activity and performance are different evidence

The framework establishes five principles shared by every participating structure: fulfil purpose; maintain effective structures; operate efficiently; remain accountable internally and externally; and collaborate to advance ICANN’s mission and bottom-up model. Each group then develops at least three to five criteria and its own SMART indicators.

Crucially, the framework distinguishes two kinds of indicator. Process indicators describe the scope or quality of activity—how many meetings were held, for example, or what share of reports arrived on time. Performance indicators measure progress toward results or effectiveness, such as the share of goals achieved or a change in stakeholder satisfaction.

The August table is mainly a process-level artifact. “Launched,” “phase one,” “phase two,” “deferred” and “not yet started” show motion through the programme. They cannot show whether accountability improved because most structures have not yet collected and compared actual values against targets. The ccNSO entry is especially clear: it plans to test two principles, collect baseline data and set thresholds before its first operational assessment begins in mid-2027. The GNSO is still confirming the assessment plan that will guide initial data gathering.

That is not a defect in an early progress report. A baseline has to precede a measured change. The error would come later if evidence of programme activity were presented as evidence of institutional performance, or if the absence of an outcome today were reported as a failure before the framework’s own reporting date.

A common spine does not guarantee comparable findings

The CIP is not eight wholly unrelated self-reviews. Its designers deliberately combined commonality with customization. Every structure uses the same five principles. ICANN org is to develop a set of standard survey questions, while allowing light tailoring. The framework also supplies a common assessment-plan form that can record a target value, actual value, source, collection method, timeframe and responsible party.

Those elements can produce a legible system. Readers should be able to see, for example, whether two structures used different indicators to test the same accountability principle, what audiences they surveyed, whether a target was set before data arrived and where actual performance fell short.

But comparability is not automatic. Each structure selects its criteria, indicators, targets, relevant audience and much of its evidence. A satisfaction result from one group may describe active members; another may survey a wider constituency. One structure may measure the timely publication of documents, while another tests whether stakeholders believe their input changed a decision. Both can be valid, yet they do not prove the same thing.

The framework anticipates this problem. It calls documentation of tailored criteria and indicators essential to transparency and accountability. It expects systematic, transparent analysis, comparison of actual values with targets, and a record of which targets were met, exceeded or missed. It also asks groups to publish phase-one outputs and makes a Progress Report the one required reporting milestone by the end of the third year of a cycle.

The decisive artifact will therefore not be a coloured status cell. It will be a report that lets an outsider reconstruct the measurement: what was promised, what was observed, who owned the data, what failed, what changed and what remains unresolved.

Self-assessment now carries work once assigned to independent examiners

Article 4.4 of ICANN’s Bylaws requires periodic reviews of the performance and operation of Supporting Organizations, their councils, Advisory Committees other than the GAC, and the Nominating Committee. Those reviews are to be conducted by entities independent of the organization under review. Their purpose includes testing continuing relevance, desirable structural or operational change, and accountability to constituencies and stakeholders.

The CIP changes the method without discarding those stated objectives. The framework says the process moves from Organizational Reviews led by independent examiners to a Continuous Improvement Program led by the ICANN community. Participating structures lead their own assessments; ICANN org can help develop surveys, clean and compile data, and provide analysis support.

The Board has also changed the timing of the external check. On 19 May 2025, it confirmed that the CIP should proceed and that Organizational Reviews would remain deferred until the first cycle is complete. It resolved to consider the future of those reviews after that cycle. ICANN’s March 2026 implementation report estimated completion in the third quarter of 2028.

This does not make self-assessment illegitimate. The people inside a structure understand its work, constraints and institutional memory better than an occasional examiner. Continuous feedback can identify problems earlier than a five-year review and can connect findings directly to an improvement workplan.

It does, however, change the evidence relationship. The institution chooses many of the measures by which it will describe itself while the previously scheduled independent review waits. A well-designed common framework can discipline that choice; it cannot make the choice independent. The public report, public comment and the Board’s later response must carry the accountability that the sequencing places on them.

The progress report is the actual governance deadline

The framework requires one Progress Report by the end of the third year of a CIP cycle. It should record targets and collected data, describe the areas assessed, identify improvements, report implementation progress, and reflect on resources, successes, barriers and next steps. The report is to be published for Public Comment.

That design gives the August update a fair interpretation. ICANN has shown that most structures have begun the work and has disclosed the two that have not. It has not claimed that a launch status proves effectiveness. The next accountability question is whether the inputs that make later judgment possible are published early enough: tailored criteria, indicators, target values, baseline data, collection methods, audiences and responsible parties.

Lu Heng’s agency-problem critique is useful here as an incentive test rather than a verdict. Institutions tend to optimize what they can measure and retain. A committee may rationally count meetings, documents and participation because those outputs are visible and within its control, even when stakeholders ultimately care about clearer decisions, lower participation friction, implementation quality or meaningful influence. The remedy is not to dismiss process data. It is to connect process measures to outcomes borne by the people the institution is meant to serve.

For CIP, that connection should be visible in four steps: a target set before the result; an actual value supported by an identified source; an explanation for a miss; and a corrective action with an owner and date. If each group supplies that chain, customization can coexist with accountability. If the chain stops at “work launched” or “activity completed,” the programme will have documented effort without establishing effect.

A milestone worth recording, not a result worth pre-awarding

The 6 August table deserves to be recorded as a milestone. It shows differentiated progress rather than pretending that all eight structures are synchronized. It names the ASO’s dependency on the ICP-2 process and the NomCom’s preparatory state. It also shows where the first substantive evidence may appear: ALAC’s improvement work, ccNSO’s baseline test and GNSO’s data-gathering plan.

The disciplined reading is neither celebratory nor dismissive. Six launches are evidence that the programme exists in practice. They are not six findings of improved accountability. A second-phase label means a group is implementing selected work; it does not reveal whether the selection was correct or the work had its intended effect.

ICANN will have a stronger review system if it preserves those distinctions through the first cycle. The CIP can prove its value by producing more frequent, usable evidence and faster correction than periodic reviews produced. The Board can then decide what independent examination should still test. But that decision should follow results, misses and public scrutiny—not the mere fact that the machinery started.

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