Цель проведения Российского форума по управлению Интернетом – объединить все профессиональные точки зрения и организовать дискуссию для поиска консенсуса между государственными органами, профессиональным телекоммуникационным сообществом, бизнесом и гражданским обществом по вопросам дальнейшего развития Интернета в России. Форум станет отправной точкой для активизации участия российских представителей в работе международных организаций, занимающихся вопросами интернет-управления.

К совместной работе в рамках форума приглашены представители Правительства РФ, руководители крупнейших российских компаний, эксперты телекоммуникационного бизнеса, известные общественные деятели, представители зарубежных интернет-организаций

Официальный сайт: russia2010.intgov.net/

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The first Russian Internet Governance forum will take place on May 13 and 14, 2010 at the Moscow Expo Center. It is organized by the .ru ccTLD Coordination Center, with support from the Ministry of Telecom and Mass communications.

The goal of the Russian IGF is to combine all different points of view and organize a discussion in search of consensus between the government, businesses, and civil society in the issues, related to the future development of the Internet in Russia. The Russian IGF is the starting point for active participation of Russian representatives in the work of Russian and foreign organizations, dealing with the questions of Internet governance.

Among the invited guests are representatives of the government of the Russian federation, CEOs and Presidents of the largest Russian companies, telecommunications experts, recognized individuals, representatives of foreign Internet-related organizations.

More details can be found at the official site of the Russian IGF: russia2010.intgov.net/eng/

As a result of discussions surrounding the implementation of the new gTLD policy recommendations, ICANN Staff commissioned an economic review of vertical integration issues relating to new gTLDs in the registry and registrar marketplace. ICANN engaged Steven Salop (Professor of Economics and Law, Georgetown University Law Center) and Joshua Wright (Assistant Professor of Law and Economics, George Mason University) were selected for their notable reputations and diversity of viewpoints in the issue area. They have also participated and presented in an ICANN Meeting forum in Sydney, Australia.

The report is being produced for public consideration as part of the broader dialogue and inputs on the related issues. The ICANN Board assented to the publication of the report during its workshop in Nairobi on 7 March 2010. It is important to note that publication of the report should not be considered as a validation of the information or positions contained therein. Also, it is not offered as the viewpoint of ICANN, the ICANN Board of Directors or ICANN Management, but is being offered to inform the public debate on the topic.

The ICANN meeting in Seoul was my first meeting as CEO, and coincided with the kickoff of the ICANN Strategic planning process, an essential basis for ICANN’s operational and budget planning process. Based on my experience with other organizations and Boards, I was interested in taking the planning processes of past years, and evolving it into an approach that identified key strategic focus areas that captured ICANN’s mission and mandate, namely:

• DNS stability and security;
• Consumer choice, competition and innovation;
• IANA and core operations and
• A healthy Internet eco-system.

These four focus areas were the building blocks used to identify strategic objectives, key strategic projects and perhaps most importantly, the tremendous community and staff work that will be undertaken in the next few years.

Underlying these four strategic areas are key values, or enablers, that cut across all of ICANN’s work. These are essential to ICANN succeeding in all of its challenges, and an important reflection of the principles by which the organization operates. These are:

• Multi-stakeholder;
• Collaborative;
• International;
• Transparent;
• Accountable.

In developing the plan we used the traditional stakeholder engagement processes and also added online survey tools, which allowed community members from around the world to vote on proposed strategic plan items during the live sessions in Seoul.

I would like to personally thank all of you who contributed to this year’s Strategic planning process. Your input and engagement is an important part of ensuring that the organization’s future truly reflects a bottom up, multi-stakeholder process. We look forward to your input to the implementation of the Strategic plan into the operational planning and budget preparations.

Warmly,

Rod

Rod Beckstrom
CEO and President
ICANN
22 February 2010

This is a landmark step in ICANN’s use of the accountability mechanisms built into our bylaws. ICM’s initiation of the Independent Review process marks the first time the process has been used since its creation about six years ago.
 
The Declaration will now be reviewed and considered by the ICANN Board of Directors during its next meeting, pursuant to the ICANN Bylaws, Article IV, section 3.  The Board’s next meeting is scheduled to be held in Nairobi on March 12.

Here are some key points arising from Declaration:

• The panel’s decision is not binding. It advised the ICANN Board to reconsider the .XXX gTLD at its next meeting.
• This rejection of the .XXX gTLD, which generated the Declaration, is an extremely complex issue.
• ICANN’s board voted down the .XXX gTLD on multiple grounds.
• There was considerable public concern expressed against this particular gTLD, which can be found here: http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-comments/.
• After this long history with the .XXX application, it will again land in the hands of the ICANN Board of Directors.

The IRP process was designed to enhance ICANN accountability and was approved by the ICANN board in 2003.  This first use is a testament to the enhanced accountability.  As a result of the IRP, the ICANN board will again consider the proposed .XXX top-level domain, despite the previous considerable stakeholder and public opposition to its approval.

Chronological History of ICM’s Involvement with ICANN [PDF, 93K]

Rod Beckstrom
CEO and President
ICANN
21 February 2010

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.

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.

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.

ICANN views increasing participation across all stakeholder communities as a strategic priority. This means recruiting new participants in our work, and new communities of interests who are not presently involved, but it also to further empower existing volunteer communities so that all feel their time spent with ICANN is increasingly valuable and effective. ICANN’s participation mechanisms, from public comment processes to meetings to publications, should be world-class – and viewed as such by those who use them; Nick’s job is to ensure that we never accept “good enough” and always look to improve.

In the post-Affirmation ICANN, a program of continuous improvement in these areas is a core objective for all of us. For this reason, another key element of this position will be to help design processes and systems that accelerate the organization down the path of becoming even more volunteer-centric in thinking and action. Nick will make sure that the “bottom up” ethos of ICANN processes and decision-making applies equally to his own work in developing participation and engagement efforts.

I hope you’ll join in welcoming Nick to this new and challenging role; I’m confident he will do a great job!

Next week, I’ll be announcing who from ICANN staff will be taking on these responsibilities going forward.

ICANN and the Internet Ecosystem Presentation [PDF, 1,440K]