The APAC Space Web Conference was attended by 20 participants, including at-large community, governments, registries, and registrars. Theresa Swinehart (Senior Vice-President, Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives, ICANN) introduced the ICANN 5-Year Strategic Planning Process and Draft Strategic Plan. Edmon Chung (CEO, DotAsia) was the APAC Space Community Facilitator for this session.

Key action points following the meeting are:

Links to the meeting recording and presentation slides can be found at the APAC Space Community Wiki webpage at https://community.icann.org/display/GSEAPAC/APAC+Space.

Details of the session are as follows:

Welcome Remarks

Jia-Rong Low, VP of Stakeholder Engagement and Managing Director - Asia Pacific, ICANN, gave his welcome remarks and introduced APAC Space as a space to facilitate discussion amongst the APAC community on ICANN policy-related matters. He invited participants to subscribe to the APAC Space mailing list by emailing subscribe@apacspace.asia and to join the next APAC Space session, which will be a face-to-face meeting during ICANN64 Kobe.

 ICANN 5-Year Strategic Planning

Theresa introduced the Strategic Planning process that ICANN carries out as the initial part of its three-stage planning cycle. The Strategic Planning process conducts an assessment of the current state of the organization and sets long-term goals in line with ICANN’s mission and vision. Notably, changes proposed by the draft Strategic Plan are: a proposed new vision, new strategic objectives and goals, as well as a fully-costed Five-Year Operating Plan based on the Strategic Plan. The Mission as reflected by the ICANN bylaws remain unchanged.

From the Draft Plan, ICANN’s key trend themes with the respective proposed New Strategic Objectives are as follows:

  1. Security – Strengthen the security of the Domain Name System and the DNS Root Server System.
  2. ICANN’s Governance – Improve the effectiveness of ICANN’s multistakeholder model of governance.
  3. Unique Identifier System – Evolve the unique identifier systems to continue to serve the needs of the global Internet user base.
  4. Geopolitics – Address geopolitical issues impacting ICANN’s mission to ensure a single and globally interoperable Internet.
  5. Financials – Ensure ICANN’s long-term financial sustainability.

The key trend themes, which are areas that impact ICANN, were developed from input by the Community, ICANN Board, and ICANN Org. These trend themes guide the proposed new strategic goals to tackle each focus area.

Subsequently in the three-stage planning cycle, Operating and Budget Plans will be created to operationalize the goals, and an evaluation will be conducted through the achievement and progress reporting process. The evaluation findings are fed into the next Strategic Planning round.

The Draft Plan is open for public comments until 11 February 2019 via the following link: https://www.icann.org/public-comments/strategic-plan-2018-12-20-en.

Community Discussion

Following Theresa’s presentation, Edmon led a lively community discussion and Q&A as follows:

  • A community member asked if 3.4 of the Draft Plan (Strategic Goal 3.4— Plan a properly funded, managed, and risk-evaluated new round of gTLDs) assumed that a New gTLD application round will be conducted, or if that would be a separate decision at the operational level. Theresa clarified that the New gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (PDP) and other community dialogue on this topic were still underway, and the Draft Plan was taking reference from this community dialogue. Pam Little (Generic Names Supporting Organization Council Member) highlighted that this question was also raised within the GNSO Council. She explained the decision-making process of the PDP and personally encouraged the community to respect the ongoing PDP. Discussions on implementation for the next round would be premature given that the recommendations for the next round had yet to be submitted to the GNSO Council (and subsequently the ICANN Board).
  • Cheryl Langdon-Orr (New gTLD Subsequent Procedures PDP [Sub Pro] Working Group co-chair) raised that within the Sub Pro Working Group, there were discussions to reconsider giving priority to Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) top-level domains (TLDs) during the subsequent New gTLD application round. She said this in reference to Strategic Goal 3.1 (Encourage readiness for Universal Acceptance, IDN implementation and IPv6 by increasing awareness to enable more end users to use the Internet).
  • In response to Edmon’s question on what some significant changes from the current Plan to the Draft Plan were, Theresa said that the Draft Plan had been created to adapt and operate in a post-IANA stewardship transition environment. Other significant changes include the consideration of technological changes, DNS marketplace changes, and a new emphasis on topics such as Universal Acceptance (UA) and IDNs. These changes reflect the evolution of ICANN’s work and the DNS.
  • Related to the strategic focus area on ‘Governance’, a community member asked how possibly competing values could be balanced, e.g., inclusivity and openness being balanced against efficiency and effectiveness. Community working groups often struggled to balance these values in their work. The Expedited Policy Development Process (EPDP) Team on the Temporary Specification for gTLD Registration Data, which adopted a closed membership system for efficiency and where APAC contracted parties were under-represented, was cited as an example. Theresa answered that such balancing could be operationalized through collaborative dialogue with ICANN community, ICANN Board, and ICANN Org on priorities. She further encouraged that community raise their views as public comments for the draft Strategic Plan and during the community discussion in ICANN64 Kobe.  Edmon added that developing early warning systems such as through ICANN Org’s Legislative/Regulatory Development Reports as mentioned in the Draft Plan may help to reduce the need for EPDPs in the future.  Theresa also said that the Strategic Planning process would allow ICANN to discuss and prioritize activities that align with the new Strategic Goals.
  • Another community member commented that the Draft Plan seemed to depict the multistakeholder model as becoming less effective and more expensive as it grows in scale in response to the increasing needs of community. This was contrary to the At-Large community’s goal of increasing community participation and representation. Furthermore, budget cuts were already being made to community work. Theresa replied that this was a result of feedback from during the trends discussions as observations or concerns that may have future impact on ICANN. She also encouraged the community member to raise this point through the public comment process.


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