There is just over a week left on the public comment period for ICANN’s operating plan and budget for next year, and we have received only a few comments so far. We encourage you to provide your input on how the organization should spend its money in FY10.
Why should you bother?
Because ICANN is responsible for the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars in the interests of the Internet community and the Internet infrastructure itself.
Many times a year ICANN is asked to explain its spending decisions. Each time we point to the Strategic Plan and Operating Plan processes to explain that the community itself has significant input how ICANN spends its money and on what. For the past two years, we have followed a process that allows over four months for the public to comment on how ICANN spends the budget.
This public comment period that will close on Thursday 30 April is the last time you will be able to provide input that will have a significant impact on next year’s budget. Per ICANN’s bylaws, we will post a draft of the FY10 Budget by 17 May. Then there will also be an opportunity to post your comments on the draft before the final FY10 Operating Plan and Budget is put before the Board for approval at the Sydney meeting in June.
What’s so special about FY2010 for ICANN?
The next year is especially significant for ICANN and the community because it represents the financial plan that has been developed for dealing with the introduction of new generic top-level domains and internationalized domain names.
There has been a significant amount of discussion about the impact that new gTLDs and IDNs may have on ICANN and the Internet itself, and particularly the potential financial impact.
Internally, ICANN has tried to assess what this expansion of the domain space could mean for the organization – and the money received, spent and its allocation is a vital element of that. We will be posting a budget amendment focused purely on the new gTLD rollout several months before the program is launched but the community’s views on where we are currently would be invaluable.
Other significant issues addressed in the Operating Plan and Budget requesting community input include:
- Is the approach to meetings scaling with the ICANN community’s size and diversity, and work style over time? Should ICANN take action in FY10 to reduce or redirect the substantial expense – both directly by ICANN and indirectly by participants – in three meetings around the world?
- As ICANN grows to support application processing for the new gTLD program, what is the best way to staff (hire vs. outsource) and what are the appropriate geographic locations for this effort?
- How does the community want to explicitly prioritize work such that the costs to support additional work don’t just grow?
- How can ICANN better report on and measure the effectiveness of many activities such as outreach and policy development, so as to allow these areas to be tuned/improved?
- What other ideas does the community have for prioritization or cost reduction consistent with the Strategic Plan goals?
If you have views on these or another other parts of the budget, please do review the Operating Plan and Budget and email us your comments within the next 10 days.
All the information you need should be available on the public comment webpage here: http://www.icann.org/en/public-comment/#op-budget-fy2010
Thank you
Kevin Wilson
Chief Financial Officer, ICANN
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
L Sprint 04.23.09 at 3:14 am
Spend your money implementing what anti-spam organizations have been trying to tell ICANN for years.
ENFORCEMENT– Specifically rogue registrars.
You know damn well who they are.
The top ten registrars account for 80% of the SPAM in in boxes.
RADICAL SUGGESTION:
HOW ‘BOUT doing something about it ???????????????????????????
Kazan tatar 04.23.09 at 3:14 pm
I do not know, but money of ICANN should spend on program new gTLDs and IDN (dotCity and others).
Assignor 04.25.09 at 7:02 am
Develop immediate policy and take immediate action to protect owners of gTLDs who are caught in registrars “going down.” I don’t see where ICANN, like many businesses, ever anticipated harsh economic times or other reasons for regisrars to get into trouble. Yet in today’s commerce a person’s/company’s domain name is a valuable asset and often its correct operation seriously affects their daily operation and success. Example: while at this time Australia (AUDA) is taking AU operations away from Bottle Domains and its even more failing subsidiary Domain Central, since late January/early February large numbers of owners (as can be found in forums and blogs) of gTLDs registered through them have had little or no customer service, have been unable to maintain their gTLDs including even in our case renew to prevent expiration, have been unable to successfully transfer away to a new registrar (if you can not get contact you can not get a key), have had security breaches that have compromised, changed, and even redirected their domain names and other issues. A company which now states it has no telephone number, no longer answers chat, and does not respond to email for weeks if ever, AND does not respond to other registrars ! ! ! !
SOLUTION
Immediately spend your money on legal authority to 1. quickly develop strong policy and 2. timely take control of registered domains from businesses “going down” or not providing service , 3. immediately extend any possible expirations that could damage domain owners, 4. temporarily assign their administration to a team of other registrars to administer, and 4. on adjudication either return control to a revitalized registrar or permanently assign them to other registrars by a system.
Good Luck – - remember to protect your consumers and ICANN’s image which can be soiled by registrars.
Stacy Burnette 04.28.09 at 12:27 pm
Thank you for your comment, L Sprint.
We have and continue to take steps to address registrar business conduct that is not compliant with the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA). While spam is a huge concern for ICANN and the entire Internet community, the organization’s mission does not include resolving consumer complaints that fall outside of the RAA, such as spam complaints. These sorts of complaints are best addressed by private sector agencies involved in addressing consumer complaints (i.e. The Better Business Bureau http://www.bbb.org/), by law enforcement agencies or by governmental consumer protection entities (i.e. The International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network http://www.icpen.org/).
The Contractual Compliance team does have systems already in place to address domain name inaccuracy, ranging from issuing breach notices to termination of the registrar’s RAA, in rare instances where the registrar does not satisfactorily remedy the problem. For more information, please go here: http://www.icann.org/en/compliance/.
In addition, the Compliance department has undertaken several Whois activities to increase domain name Whois Accuracy. Please find a listing below.
• A Whois Accuracy Study to Assess the Accuracy of Registrant Data in the Whois Database.
• A Registrar Privacy/Proxy Registration Services Study to Assess the Extent to Which Registrants Are Using Privacy/Proxy Registration Services.
• ICANN’s Whois Data Problem Report System (WDPRS) is Undergoing a Redesign to Improve Functionality and Meet Community Needs.
• Recent Whois-Related Enforcement Action – Notices of Breach
Again, thank you for your comment. Please do get back if you have further questions.
Stacy Burnette, Director of Contractual Compliance
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Kelechi Okorie 05.05.09 at 4:06 pm
Spend more money in developing countries like Nigeria, creating awareness on the importance of the internet. The penetration of the internet here is still nothing to right home about. Let these people know that it can be a tool to even het out of poverty.