Page History

Purpose

Electronic resource/E-tool, "Welcome Package" is a guide for new and existing members of the At-Large community, which accumulates and gives in a convenient understandable form (texts, infographics, videos, links, names, application forms) complete information on how best to start working in At-Large and take more than 1 role (PDP, organisation, finance & budget, CPWG, reviews, analytics, communications etc).

The amount of work is significant, the next financial year may be devoted to this project, but the result will be used for many years ahead (it will only be necessary to make updates occasionally).

Alignment

The project is fully consistent with the ICANN mission and current strategic plan, because it helps to involve into the At-Large/ICANN activities interested professionals (including technical specialists) from around the world, and this will help:

• strengthening the security of the domain name system and the DNS root server system;
• improving the effectiveness of the ICANN multi-stakeholder management model;
• Addressing geopolitical issues affecting ICANN's mission to provide a single, globally interoperable Internet;

The implementation of the project is clearly related to ongoing political, advisory or technical work: we will help to attract more professional members of the community to work (PDP, organisation, finance & budget, CPWG, reviews, analytics, communications etc), mobilize the existing community, ensuring that people navigate directly first to the knowledge base, then to processes, working groups and mentors who will help get started.

Details of the "Welcome package" multilingual E-tool:

It is a guide book for new community members (Individuals or ALS members), as well as for those who  just have applied for participation. This Guide book will help to get the useful understandable information:

- to understand the place, role and purpose of the At-Large Advisory Committee in the ICANN structure.

- to find the set of required information for learning how to start the interacting and get involved in the work process

- to start to navigate all open web resources of ICANN and At-Large.

- to get to know the key people of the local European ICANN, IG community, to understand the wide spectrum of the community members` expertise  in order to establish the interaction, to ask substantive questions, and to identify the opportunities for mentoring support.

- to follow the ICANN, At-Large, RALOs news on all communication channels

- to find mentors within At-Large/ICANN

- to find exact expertise (At-Large member with needed professional knowlege related ICANN issues, Technical IG or IG)

-  links to forms for applications to all RALOs, Associations of individuals.

- to use as excellent open knowledge base - there are links to Capacity Building webinars, online courses, videos, infographics and other learning resources offered here.

(Apparently it might be an accessible e-tool hosted on additional external resource - landing page). If the question arises - are we duplicating the At-Large website? no. We are creating a separate usability tool that will be easy to use and understand for any beginner.

Audience

All regions without restrictions.

Age - from 25 years.old

Gender - all

Members of organisations and non affiliated  individual members representing the interests of internet users worldwide. (prof areas: IT, IG, diplomacy, academia, research, human rights, legal/regulatory, IoT, Cybersec etc)

Outcomes

Raising knowledge for mobilizing community and a new inflow of professional experienced active members to work in all areas of the At-large, ALAC mandate and their possible moving to all ICANN constituencies.

Total Support being requested: $25,000 USD

Purpose

A dedicated Zoom Room to be managed by each RALO leadership and used to help ALSes and individual mobilisation and preparation calls for RALOs.
It will be used all the year long (and if working well could be a recurant request).

Alignment

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Audience

RALO ALS and individual members

Outcomes

Help the  ALS and individual members to be more involved in RALO, At-Large and ICANN activities.

Total Support being requested: $1,000 USD

Purpose

The purpose of this project is to begin to use this as a pilot project to build the technical competence on the subject matter of UA first in T&T and then at the university level then materials for this can be used as template for a Roadshow to other regions in the region. to build innovation  and awareness on the area of US among students at universities in Trinidad and Tobago who are studying Computer Engineering, Computer Science or Information Technology.

Alignment

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Category

• Training

Audience 

In person training would be provided to persons between the ages of 18 to 35, who are enrolled at one of the recognized universities in the country.

Outcomes

Age : 18 – 35

Gender; All

Region: Caribbean

Sector: Education

Skills: Computer science, programming, software engineering

Total Support being requested: 20,000 USD

Purpose

The pandemic has caused many Caribbean governments to seek greater online alternatives to face-to-face interaction. The effect of the pandemic on the Caribbean was for it to activate online schooling from Primary to Secondary Education level utilizing G Suite for Education. Schools, for example in Barbados, have a domain of the form <abbreviation-of-school>.school.edu.bb.

Government departments began to publish contact telephone numbers and email addresses via their websites, as well as those of the Government Information Service. Those email addresses and websites were on the domain gov.XX (gov.ccTLD).  Examples include gov.bb, gov,tt, gov.jm.

Caribbean governments continue to pursue online services more aggressively understanding that this is a component of national digital transformation and critical to their socio-economic development.

However, what of the domain name space foundation on which this all is predicated? Is it reliable, well designed, trouble-free, monitored, incident free? What does live experience teach us about our national domain name space foundation?

The purpose of this project is to review the “health” of these domains in what will be a precursor to the establishment of a Caribbean DNS Observatory and Research Centre to assist regional stakeholders in better management of the DNS and promote best practices and adherence to global standards.

Alignment

The ICANN strategic plan identifies security of the DNS as a priority, aiming to “improve the shared responsibility for upholding the security and stability of the DNS by strengthening DNS coordination in partnership with relevant stakeholders.”  It also aims to Identify and mitigate security threats to the DNS through greater engagement with relevant hardware, software, and service vendors.

DNS abuse is also one of the priority areas for ICANN and this work will go a long way in helping to inform ICANN’s policies and policy development process in this regard.

Category

• Research

Objectives

Provide a report to regional stakeholders on DNS issues relating to the 2^nd level government domains in the Caribbean, given the move towards more online critical government servcies.  At the moment there is not a well established DNS observatory for the Caribbean which can help to provide research and support that is useful to regional governments.

This will allow for information sharing and development of best pracices and ensure complaince with global internet standards.

It will also provide and analytics platform that gives a dashboard view on the DNS, particulalry those systems providing critical public services.

Audience

Governments in the Caribbean. Specifically those that are the top 5 highest ranking on the UN e-Government Global Development Index.  This will include but not be limited to Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Bahamas and others depending on availability of resources.

Outcomes

This project is a stepping stone towards the establishment of a Caribbean DNS observatory and research centre and can be expanded beyond the initial focus on governments.  The initial focus on governments is based on the critical services that  they provide such as education, health care, business licenses, national IDs, etc.   If the DNS is not being effectively managed then it can lead to disruption of these critical services, not necessarily as a result of abuse or attacks but because of misconfigurations, lack of real-time monitoring , poor operations and lack of adherence to global standards.  The effect can be as devastating as a cyber threat. 

In the past for example  there have been outages due to non-payment of fees.  This will help to mitigate  these challenges with better research and monitoring tools, informed by the outcomes of this project.

 It is proposed that the findings be presented within regional forums at the conclusion of the research.  This includes Caribnog (Caribbean Network Operators Group), CTU ICT Week  - ICT Collaboration Forum, Caribbean Peering Internet Forum  (CarPIF), and direct presentations  as needed or requested by regional governments.

Total Support being requested: 47,500 USD

Purpose

The main objective of LAC Digital is to facilitate inclusive and productive debates on public policy issues related to the Internet from a general perspective, keeping these 3 segments “Civil society”, Governments” and “Academia” involved within the wide range of possibilities that the multi-stakeholder model has to offer. LAC Digital has among its goals the interaction of Civil Society, Governments and Academia to ensure that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and the Internet support and help implement the "2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development" (Resolution approved by the United Nations General Assembly on September 25, 2015).

Alignment

During the activity we will address issues related to Internet Governance and what issues impact us in the lives of users. We will address issues related to geopolitics, Internationalized Domain Name (IDN), Whois-GDPR, regional update on Universal Acceptance, as well as workshops on the gender perspective in ICTs and the participation of women and gender diversity.

Category

• Outreach to invite chambers, legislators, etc
• Training on issues related with data protection, whois, gdpr, gender-tics
• Travel Support for Speakers and regional leadership
• Capacity Building for Regional ALSes and newcomers

Audience

Members of the accredited regional community who are experts on the topics currently being discussed in Icann's PDPs and working groups will also be participating as speakers.

Outcomes

We will be involving new groups of students, researchers, academics and legislators to the different Icann working groups. The regional technical community will be summoned to the activity to take the message of Icann's IDN, UA and PDPs to new spaces where it has not been discussed.

After the activity, a Dossier will be published with the contributions of the presenters and the discussion on the proposed topics in order to be a basis for monitoring each researcher in the different LAC subregions.

Total Support being requested: 19,000 USD