It's not quite at News Of The World level, but expect the word "scandal" to be bandied around the ICANN community in the next few days. The news that ex Chairman of the ICANN Board Peter Dengate Thrush (PDT) has joined a new gTLD consultancy firm will no doubt cause a few teeth to grind.
In fact, just hours after it was made public, I was seeing tweets like this "Peter Dengate Thrush votes for new TLDs at #ICANN, then joins a company which sells them..." or this "A clear case of conflict of interest, it does not help #ICANN nor new TLDs."
The bitterness is understandable. PDT was in charge of the industry's regulatory body for most of the implementation phase of the new gTLD program. His drive to get it approved before his term as Chair ended (in Singapore on June 24, just 4 days after the Board approved the new gTLD program) was relentless. Getting there meant upsetting a few people who felt PDT's intransigence left no room for any views but his own.
No doubt those people will now join in a chorus of criticism and smug "oh now we understand why he was in such a hurry to get new gTLDs done!" comments.
Sounds like sour grapes to me. The problem isn't PDT's new job, it's the way the ICANN Board works at the moment. Why shouldn't PDT seek employment? He's just given years of his life working almost non-stop for the Internet community, so domain names must interest him just a little bit. Now that he's free of his ICANN obligations, why shouldn't he get a job in the industry?
If that's a problem, then a clear decision should be made that ICANN Board members must be truly independent, and remain so for a set time after their term ends. That means no getting jobs in the industry that they just spent at least 3 years (the minimum term for the majority of Board seats) regulating for, say, a minimum of 1 year.
But if the ICANN Community wants to request that of its Board members, it also needs to make sure they get something in return. Ask any Board member just how intense an amount of work serving on that Board represents! No sane person would expect anyone to do it for free, and give up any hope of future employment in this industry as well, especially not the kind of talented experts we want and need on the Board.
There are ongoing discussions on whether Board members should be paid and recently, the Board voted to "compensate" its Chair to the tune of $75,000 per annum. Compare that to the close to a million dollars a year the CEO gets, and you may start to question the balance a little.
So my suggestion: unless and until the community decides it wants a truly independent Board and is willing to pay for it, don't criticize those who have served but no longer do for trying to make a living.
