I wish I could find my prediction, made around 1999 on the Boston Working Group list (I think) that given 10 years ICANN would become as large as the ITU. The reason I enjoy saying "I told you so" in this case is that I recall a very strong reaction of disbelief and ridicule at the time. People thought I was crazy to say that.

On the other hand, we can't ask ICANN to perform better without strengthened capacity, which can mean a growth in budget. Accountability, transparency, and representation are costly, not free goods.

The GNSO Secretariat (Glen) is hard working and competent. Likewise, the recent addition of competent staff people to support GNSO policy development has been a plus (which is not to overlook the existence of some truly awful staff "support" prior to that).

The root of the issue is that it doesn't matter a whole lot in terms of efficiency whether its a governmental or a private organization. There's no market choice, they can't lose customers, so their incentives are always going to be essentially political.

If you're looking for fat, it wouldn't be hard to find, look to the consultants they hire to do reports, to politically-inspired travel, to "walking around money" like the proposed "restricted funds" and other ways of buying support around the world. A lot of the "policy" staff doesn't support policy development from the bottom up, it supports staff-directed politicking and policy development.

The At Large Advisory Committee (ALAC) is an example of how odd incentives lead to high expenses. ICANN *should* be willing to support a democratic mechanism for individual voting and participation. But ICANN's managers fear real democracy. So ALAC's bizarre organizational structure asks individual users to devote half of their lives to building organizations that designate representatives who have an entirely indirect and minimal influence on ICANN policy. This is costly. It's interesting to me that the Noncommercial Users Constituency, with an annual budget of about $10,000, raised completely independently of ICANN, has about the same level of membership and participation as ALAC, which consumes about $150,000 of ICANN's budget and is supported by a full-time staff.