By Toby McIntosh
The International Civil Aviation Organization has taken a significant step toward more transparency by publishing summaries of its closed Council meetings.
In addition, the summaries themselves reveal that other transparency advances have been approved, including the publication of key documents after the meetings and the possible live-streaming of some Council meeting.
The summaries of Council meetings appeared, unheralded, late last year. They cover 11 meetings of the 221st Council, held from Oct. 26 to Nov. 13, 2020 .
The summaries describe the matters brought up, digest the discussion without identifying Council members and indicate what decisions were made. See the Council Sessions page.
ICAO also now puts up agendas for meetings of the Council, the 36-person decision-making body. The ICAO Assembly, with representatives from the 193 ICAO member countries, meets every three years.
ICAO communications office officials have not replied to EYE’s request for more information about the new transparency developments.
Agenda List Topics, Documents
The now-posted agendas list the subjects to be discussed and the pertinent documents.
Understanding what the Council will be deliberating remains challenging because the underlying documents referred to in the agendas are not public.
For example, on Jan. 20, 2021, the Council held a virtual meeting. The agenda refers to a proposal “for the inclusion of a supplementary item ‘HRC competencies.’ ” HRC is a reference to the Human Rights Committee.
The agenda says there are six relevant documents, including three emails, from the president of the Council, the chairperson of the Human Resources Committee and the representative from Japan.
The agenda does not describe the “competency” at issue. The best source from the six documents listed would be likely be a summary of the discussions as a Human Rights Committee meeting (nonpublic).
The summary of the Jan. 20 Council meeting had not been posted as of Feb 5. A note says, “Documentation will be posted as it becomes available.”
The timing for posting the agendas and summaries remains a little uncertain, but should be clearer over time as the new polices get implemented.
When agendas get released will be seen as the Council approaches its 222nd Session, from Feb. 22 to March 12.
Summaries Describe Meetings
Reading the summaries requires some familiarity with ICOA’s work, the subject matter and agency acronyms, and is complicated by the short descriptions and no public access to the documents under discussion.
So statements that a proposal was approved are difficult to parse without access to the recommendations they contain.
Names are Council members are not used. About the only noticeable mention of disagreement is mildly referenced, “It was noted that the reservation expressed by a Representative in relation to C-WP/15112 would be reflected in the minutes to this meeting.”
The summaries for the 11 Council meetings held late last year average four pages long.
Descriptions Cast in General Terms
The limiting effect of not seeing the documents under discussion is evident in reading the summaries, but the summaries do describe the Council’s collective viewpoint.
For example at the Council meeting on Oct. 26, 2020, the third item was “Economic impact of COVID-19 on air transport.” The relevant document was from the ICAO Secretary General, the nonpublic “C-WP/15080 Information paper.” Its content is not described in the summary. An “oral report” from the Air Transport Committee is also mentioned.
“Following consideration,” the summary reports the Council “welcomed the information presented….”
More substantively, the Council “took note of the potential increase in the cost of air travel due to decisions taken by Member States and industry, including health-related measures, which might result in increased charges and airfares, and in this connection, invited CART to take into account this aspect of cost implications on consumers and the consequential impact on the economy in the development of additional guidance for Member States and industry.” CART is he Council Aviation Recovery Task Force.
Finally, the council “requested the Secretariat to consider conducting further analysis on the relationship between the economic situation, health impact and air traffic demand.”
ICAO on Jan. 27, 2021, published a series of 125 slides on the effect of Covid-19 on civil aviation.
Summaries Do Not Elaborate
Another example comes from the Oct. 28, 2020, meeting at which the Council considered the annual report (nonpublic) of the work of the Evaluation and Audit Advisory Committee (EAAC).
The summary states that the Council “took note of the concerns outlined in the EAAC report, especially in relation to information security management in the Organization and the deficiencies and ongoing weaknesses that had been identified in that regard, while at the same time noting that the EAAC had subsequent to the issuance of their report, acknowledged that the updated information provided by the Secretariat better reflected the current status….”
The Council “endorsed the recommendations contained in the EAAC report and welcomed the commitment delivered by EAAC to continue to monitor progress being made by the Secretariat in addressing the critical issues that had been identified.”
The actions addressed a controversial episode. Revelations by whistleblowers over the past several years brought to Chinese hacking of ICAO’s computers in 2016 and questions about the adequacy of ICAO’s response.
The United States as of last summer was withholding about $2 million from ICAO because of “continuing concerns” that ICAO is not implementing whistleblower protections and ethics reforms. See July 2020 EYE report.
Further Audit Disclosures Approved
To be disclosed henceforth, will be internal audit and evaluation reports, possibly redacted, the summary of a Nov. 12, 2020, meeting suggests.
The Council considered, on the basis of nonpublic document C-WP/15115, a revised and updated Charter for the Evaluation and Internal Audit Office (EAO), reflecting the recommendations of the recently completed independent external assessments. The nonpublic recommendations were amended and approved.
The Council also approved a “proposed policy on public disclosure as contained in Appendix A of C-WP/15116, subject to the inclusion of the following additional provisions.” The Council also had for consideration an oral report from the Working Group on Governance and Efficiency (C-DEC 221/8 – 4 – 22).
Other Transparency Reforms Endorsed
Other transparency reforms were approved, at the Nov. 13, 2020, meeting, came during a discussion of “Enhancing ICAO communications with industry and with the public,” according to the summary.
“The Council considered this item on the basis of the non-paper circulated by the President of the Council and a joint oral report presented by the Implementation Strategy and Planning Group (ISPG) and the Working Group on Governance and Efficiency (WGGE).” The “non-paper” is nonpublic.
The Council “took note that information on the Council has now been uploaded to the public website, under the “Events” section of the website.” See website here.
The Council also “took note that as from the current session, information related to the Council work programme and Orders of Business of the session are being uploaded to the public website.” This appears to be a reference to the agenda and summaries.
Council Documents to Be Released
In addition, the Council “approved the publication on the public website of decisions taken by the Council (C-DECs), noting that supplementary information may be provided, if required, for clarification of certain decisions, while also taking note of the resource implications of this action and that lessons learned from such publication should be identified on a regular basis.”
EYE could not locate any C-DECs that have been subsequently published.
In addition, the Council agreed to upload for public viewing the photos and biographies of Council Representatives, on the proviso that permission to do so would first be sought from each representative.
Finally, the Council agreed “that on a case-by-case basis, live-streaming of some informal and/or important meetings of the Council could occur, upon assessment of the wide interest to the general public of doing so.”
Open Meetings?
The summaries for most of the meeting are prefaced at the top with the upper-cased, centered words, “OPEN MEETING,” as here for Oct. 26, 2020.
For one meeting, Nov. 12, 2020, the summary states “CLOSED MEETING,” with the words “Not available” below that. The summary then picks up with information on the open portion of the meeting held that day.
Since neither the press nor the public can attend the meetings, the meaning of “open meeting” is unclear.
Requests for elaboration from ICAO have gone unanswered.
