Empowered Community

As an ICANN Supporting Organization (SO), the ASO also plays a role in ICANN’s Empowered Community. The ICANN Empowered Community is the mechanism through which ICANN’s SOs and Advisory Committees (ACs) can organize, under California law, to legally enforce their community powers and hold ICANN accountable for its actions.

Community Powers

The ICANN Empowered Community can exercise the following nine powers to ensure that the ICANN Board and Organization are accountable:

  • Reject ICANN and IANA budgets, and ICANN operating and strategic plans
  • Reject standard Bylaw amendments
  • Reject PTI governance actions
  • Approve fundamental Bylaw and Articles amendments, and asset sales
  • Recall the entire ICANN Board
  • Appoint and remove individual ICANN Board directors (other than the President)
  • Require the ICANN Board to review its rejection of IANA Function Review (IFR),special IFR, Separation Cross-Community Working Group (SCWG) creation,and SCWG recommendation decisions
  • Initiate community reconsideration request, mediation, or Independent Review Process (IRP)
  • The rights of inspection and investigation

Role of the ASO in the ICANN Empowered Community

As an ICANN SO, the ASO participates in the Empowered Community as outlined in the ASO Procedures for Empowered Community Powers. The roles are as follows:

Empowered Community Decisional Participant The Address Supporting Organization (ASO) is the Decisional Participant.
Empowered Community Decisional Participant Representative The current Chair of the Number Resource Organization (NRO), who also acts as Chair of the ASO, acts as the Empowered Community Decisional Participant Representative. The Chair of the NRO/ASO acts only by consensus of all five members of the NRO Executive Council.
The Empowered Community Administration Representative The current Secretary of the Number Resource Organization (NRO) acts as the The Empowered Community Administration Representative. The Chair of the NRO/ASO acts only by consensus of all five members of the NRO Executive Council.


Role of the ASO AC in the ICANN Empowered Community

As per the ASO MoU, the ASO Address Council (AC) define procedures to select individuals to serve on other ICANN bodies, namely in ICANN Board Seats 9 and 10. The Decisional Participant Representative would therefore consult the ASO AC if the Empowered Community exercised the following powers:

  • Recall the entire ICANN Board
  • Appoint and remove individual ICANN Board directors (other than the President)

As the Decisional Participant Representative, the Chair of the NRO EC is legally obliged to act whether or not input from the ASO AC is received in the event of these two community powers being exercised. The Chair of the NRO EC acts only on the basis of consensus of all five NRO EC members.

Last modified on 31/03/2021