Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

Today I have had the honor to provide the keynote speech at the First Annual .ORG Forum hosted by the Public Internet Registry, in Washington DC. The title of this keynote is “The Future of ICANN” and I am making available a copy of this speech (as well as translations in Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Chinese , Russian and German) with this blog.

Thinking about this topic has been a wonderful exercise for me, particularly at the start of 2010. As most will know, 2009 was a milestone year for ICANN with the signing of the Affirmation of Commitments with the US Government which signaled, in large part, that ICANN has become a mature organisation and the multi-stakeholder model that supports our work is successful. The Board’s approval of the implementation plan for the IDN ccTLD Fast Track process was a huge step forward in bringing the Internet to those in the world who do not communicate in English.

So, looking forward to 2010 and what it holds in store for ICANN, from my perspective, is laid out in the attached speech. As world businesses, consumers, education providers, banking institutions and the like come to rely on the Internet for their day-to-day business activities and their day-to-day social networking, it becomes more incumbent on ICANN and our community to leverage our unique multi-stakeholder model to ensure that we preserve the security and stability of this precious and dynamic resource. It is also incumbent on us to protect the true magic of the Internet by ensuring that there is only one.

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As a part of our efforts to provide more information for attendees and potential attendees of the Nairobi ICANN meeting, the staff are pleased to provide the complete details on the pair of teleconferences I blogged about on the 25th.

The teleconferences will be approximately one hour long, depending upon the length of the Q&A, and held as follows:

1. Thursday, 28th January, 0600 UTC (1130 New Delhi, 0900 Nairobi,  1400 Beijing, 1700 Sydney (for the Eastern Hemisphere)

1. Friday, 29th January, 2000 UTC (1200 Los Angeles, 1500 New York, 1700 Buenos Aires, 1800 Sao Paulo (for the Western Hemisphere)

How to Connect to the Call

• Toll-Free (North America Only): +1 (800) 550-6865 / USA Toll: +1 (213) 233-3193
• International Dial-In Numbers: http://www.adigo.com/icann/
• Access Code: 3856
• Adobe Connect: http://icann.na3.acrobat.com/nairobi-logistics/

If a number for your country is not listed, please send an email to support@adigo.com, with a subject line of ‘dial out for ICANN Nairobi Call 1′ for the first call, or ‘dial out for ICANN Nairobi Call 2′ for the second call, providing your name, full telephone number including country code, and your location up to 1 hour before the call you want to attend begins. If you drop from the call or have connection problems, you can send an IM to either adigohelp (skype or AIM).

Agenda

1) Virtual Walk Through of Logistics – Nick Tomasso and Joe Kiragu

Nick Tomasso, ICANN General Manager for Meetings and Conferences, will take attendees through a narrative of the logistical arrangements from the point that attendees disembark from the plane through to arrival at the hotel. Following that our Kenyan hosts will take the participants through the process of moving from their hotel back and forth to the other hotels and the conference site. Requirements on arrival will also be recapped. Joe Kiragu, Board Chairperson, Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC), will add any comments he thinks appropriate.

2) Review of Security Situation and Arrangements

Geoff Bickers, ICANN’s Director of Security, will review security arrangements for attendees. Geoff will also provide an overview of existing security information that has been published with reminders of online links for further information. Board Chairperson, Kenya Network Information Centre (KENIC), will be invited to make any comments he wishes to add.

3) Remote Participation Options

Nick Ashton-Hart will briefly review remote participation arrangements for Nairobi.

Q&A:

Questions and Answers related to the above subjects will be taken from the audience. Members will be asked to raise their hands in the Adobe Connect room (or ask in Adobe Connect chat to be placed into the queue) wherever possible. Nick Ashton-Hart will call on questioners on a first-come, first-served basis. There is no hard close for the call; the presenters are happy to remain online until all questions have been answered; if for some reason a participant drops or must drop and a question arrives for them, this will be passed along so it can be answered.

The agenda and material presented will be identical at each session. Recordings will be posted online for those unable to attend.

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As a part of our efforts to provide more information for attendees and potential attendees of the Nairobi ICANN meeting, the staff are pleased to provide advance notice of an upcoming pair of teleconferences to brief you about about logistical and security arrangements, and allow you to ask questions.

Agenda details will be forthcoming shortly, but we wanted to ensure we got the word out so you could ’save the date’. The teleconferences will be approximately one hour long, depending upon the length of the Q&A, and held as follows:

1. Thursday, 28th January, 0600 UTC (1130 New Delhi, 0900 Nairobi, 1400 Beijing, 1700 Sydney (for the Eastern Hemisphere)
2. Friday, 29th January, 2000 UTC (1200 Los Angeles, 1500 New York, 1700 Buenos Aires, 1800 Sao Paulo (for the Western Hemisphere)

The agenda and material presented will be identical at each session. Freephone access dial-in numbers are available for many countries worldwide, with dial-outs upon request where needed. Information on how to attend will be provided along with the agenda in the next few days. This information is being distributed to community mailing lists too, as we want to ensure the word gets widely distributed.

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We have listened to the community. Many are looking forward to Nairobi, some expressed concerns, particularly in light of the events in downtown Nairobi on January 15. Accordingly, ICANN staff and board have reexamined the security situation

During our re-examination we first explored moving the event out of the downtown Nairobi area to a suburb, but determined that no suitable venue was available.

Second, we reached out to the Kenyan government as well as other nations with operations in Kenya for their risk assessments of the situation. The consistent feedback was that the overall risk assessment of Nairobi had not changed. Accordingly, based on the ICANN CEO’s recommendation, the ICANN Board has approved moving ahead with the ICANN Nairobi meeting.

At the same time, we recognize that many developing country cities have higher ambient levels of street crime and much of the world (the U.S. And Europe included) faces international terrorist threats and attacks. Both are simply facts of life. Also, as with all ICANN events, we will continue to monitor the security situation in case there are any material future changes. For any ICANN community members who do not travel to the event, remote participation will be available for many of the meetings.

Given that ICANN is committed to “One world. One Internet. Everyone connected.” we have engaged and will continue to engage with the whole world.

We greatly appreciate the assistance of Kenya, the host country, and their commitment to address ICANN security concerns. In addition, the ICANN board has approved further security investments by the CEO as necessary for the event, and the CEO will become personally involved in reviewing the security plans.

I love Kenya. I have been to Nairobi six times and greatly look forward to participating in this important ICANN International meeting.

Rod Beckstrom
CEO and President
ICANN
22 January 2010

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The first four IDN ccTLD requests has just been announced as having completed the String Evaulation portion of the Fast Track Process.

These are associated with: Egypt, the Russian Federation, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

See the full announcement here: http://icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-21jan10-en.htm

So what does that mean?

It means that these may now initiate the String Delegation process, which is the last step before the strings are actually in the DNS root zone and hence available for use.

The remaining 12 requests are still being processed and at ICANN we are very much looking forward to completing more requests as well as receiving additional new requests

Overall, the Fast Track Process has three main steps:

1) Preparation (by the requester in the country / territory). Community consensus is built for which IDN ccTLD to apply for, how it is run, and which organization will be running it, along with preparing and gathering all the required supporting documentation.

2) String Evaluation: incoming requests to ICANN in accordance with the criteria described above: the technical and linguistic requirements for the IDN ccTLD string(s). Applications are received through an online system available together with additional material supporting the process at http://www.icann.org/en/topics/idn/fast-track/

3) String Delegation: requests successfully meeting string evaluation criteria are eligible to apply for delegation following the same ICANN IANA process as is used for ASCII based ccTLDs. String delegation requests are submitted to IANA root zone management.

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It is my pleasure to pass along the following message from ICANN’s President and CEO, Rod Beckstrom:

Dear Community:

As you know, I believe that ICANN’s CEO should be accessible to the community, but also to those who may not regularly participate in ICANN’s processes who are interested in the important work we do.

As a part of this effort, I’ve started holding what I call “Meet Ups” where I make myself available in an informal setting when I travel and my schedule allows. To help ensure as many of people as possible are able to attend if they want, we announce these as far in advance as we can.

All you need to bring are your thoughts, ideas, or questions and enough coin to buy your favourite form of refreshment.

Here are all the details:

• Date: 27^th January 2010
• 17:00 to 19:00 local time
• Place: Buffalo Billiards, Victorian Room, 1330 19^th Street, Washington DC 20036
• Map: http://tinyurl.com/yakmr9t

I hope to see you there!

Warmly,

Rod

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We have received a lot of communication concerning the devastation in Haiti, particularly its impact on Internet function and the .HT top-level domain. Here are the basic facts:

• We have been in contact with the administrators of .HT and they are alive and well, although understandably overwhelmed dealing with the tragedy there. Other ICANN fellows in the country have been contacted and accounted for. Regrettably, some have lost their homes and are impacted heavily by the tragedy.

• Some of the name servers for .HT are not reachable from outside Haiti due to significant damage to the local telecommunications infrastructure. Work is underway to re-establish Haiti’s links to the world through the Dominican Republic.

• Despite some of the DNS infrastructure not working as expected, the DNS is a highly resilient protocol, and the .HT domain continues to function through a number of sites located outside of Haiti. Haiti’s name server partners are aware of the situation and also taking additional measures so that should technical reachability of Haiti deteriorate, function of .HT can continue uninterrupted.

Functioning telecommunications can make a real difference in recovering from a major natural disaster. The naming and numbering infrastructure is just a small piece of this, but we want to be sure it continues to function so that it is not the obstacle that prevents people communicating. We’d like to thank all our friends and partners, particularly those in Haiti, who have been working the last couple of days to ensure we can best help the community emerge from this disaster.

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“Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better” — Émile Coué de Châtaigneraie

For the last couple of years the ICANN community and board have set staff a strategic priority of excelling in core operations. In the current draft strategic plan for 2010-2013 the emphasis has focused on the IANA Department, with a headline priority of excelling “in IANA and other core operations”. At the same time, ICANN staff has been working hard on making sure that the IANA functions are delivered to an increasingly high standard.

In 2009 we started working on introducing a framework for ensuring systematic improvements to the way we deliver the IANA functions. We want to make sure that we don’t just get better at what we do: we want to systematically review what we are doing, identify our strengths and areas for improvements, identify a schedule for introducing improvements and then review how successful our improvements projects have been.

We’ve been providing explanations about this work at various community meetings over the last few months, including at the ICANN meeting in Seoul.

We are implementing our systematic improvements using a well-proven framework: EFQM. The European Foundation for Quality Management’s framework is similar to the frameworks used by the Baldrige National Quality Program in the USA and the Deming Prize in Japan. We chose to use the EFQM framework because it’s not just widely used in Europe but also in the Middle East and parts of Africa. It is a very international program, much like ICANN.

As part of this work we’ll be performing a self-assessment later this month. This will give us a baseline against which we can measure ourselves as we work on improvements. Holding the self-assessment in January allows us to make sure that we can incorporate any improvement work into the FY2011 budget planning process.

The self-assessment will result in lots of ideas for how we can improve the way we deliver IANA services but we’ll initially be focusing on a small number of improvement projects. We’ll be reporting on which improvements we choose to start with following the self-assessment later on this quarter and throughout the year.

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Сделан еще один важный шаг к расширению лингвистического разнообразия в Интернете. ЮНЕСКО и корпорация ICANN, занимающаяся регулированием вопросов, связанных с доменными именами пользователей Интернета, подписали соглашение, которое будет содействовать использованию первых многоязычных доменных имен.

Подписание этого соглашения стало возможным благодаря недавно принятому решению Корпорации по присвоению доменных имен и номеров в Интернете (ICANN) о введении многоязычных доменных имен на языках, отличных от английского.

До настоящего времени имена указывались только по-английски (например, .org , .com). С 16 ноября – даты начала первого этапа плана – ICANN стала принимать заявки от представителей всех стран и территорий на новые коды на арабском, русском, китайском и других языках. Пользователи нелатинской письменности получат, таким образом, возможность доступа к адресам на их родном языке.
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