strategic-plan-2010-2013-01dec09-en.pdf
Draft APRALO Comments
ICANN manages the coordination of the Domain Name System and Internet addressing for the benefit of Internet users around the globe.
> ICANN's core function is the management of Domain Names and Internet Addressing Systems. The focus of the strategic plans ought to be on its core functions. Other functions related to Internet Governance may be defined as peripheral functions in which ICANN would play a significant but participatory and contributory role. Those who do not fully understand the Internet and Internet Governance tend to perceive ICANN (which happens to be the Elephant in the room) as a central organization in matters related to Internet Governance. The staff and community participants of ICANN shouldn't lose sight of ICANN's core functions but have the inclination to participate and contribute to the further evolution and stability of the Internet, the Internet Governance process.
ICANN stands for a single, interoperable global Internet. ICANN is a multi-stakeholder private sector, non-profit organization that administers the Internet’s naming and numbering system with our partners.
> ICANN's muti-stakeholder model is a pioneering model that has inspired the multi-stakeholder model of the Internet Governance Forum. The community participation model of ICANN is beginning to be emulated even by Governments. ICANN should do everything possible to strengthen this model within.
> Who are ICANN's partners? Does ICANN have formal arrangements with its partners and does it have the roles of respective partners well-defined? Also, if there are adversary organizations who threaten to capture ICANN and its functions, has ICANN drawn up strategies, at least among its core management team?
We provide a key forum for global Internet governance, involving thousands of companies, individuals and government participants.
> No, ICANN is not a key forum for global Internet governance. It is an exaggeration to say that ICANN involves thousands of companies. ICANN's business participants largely come from a single business class – the Domain name industry. Internet Service Providers would be another business class and most of the rest of its business participants would be related to businesses that would derive direct revenue from Internet. Its individual participants are also from a typical group, not representative of the universe of Internet users. So we require caution in assessing the constitution of participants and in determining our role in Internet Governance.
Although our work is mostly unseen by the 1.5 billion Internet users, our small, centralized service is essential to the unity of the Internet.
> ICANN's strategic plan has to include an action item to connect to the users better, possibly by a global outreach program that includes Advertising strategies.
We have 140 employees and annual funding of $64 million
> ICANN need not feel content of this level of revenues or feel 'shy' of striving for better revenues. US $64 million represents merely a fraction of the sum total of industry revenues in the business of domain names and numbers. Over the next few years ICANN may examine ways of enhancing its revenues in a manner that the end-user is not burdened.
In five years, we hope that ICANN’s work is virtually invisible because we have built up high levels of trust in our stewardship of names, numbers and protocol parameters..
> ??? There is no relationship between ICANN's stewardship of names and its lack of visibility.
ICANN manages the coordination of the Domain Name System and Internet addressing for the global public benefit of Internet users. We have four areas of focus:
Preserve DNS stability and security
> This is a core area. Preservation of DNS stability and security requires to stretch beyond the security of DNS infrastructure traditionally considered as within the scope of ICANN's functions. This project should include ALL infrastructure related to DNS, whether or not within the scope of ICANN, for instance the DNS cache servers, IBP and ISP infrastructure, equipments in Internet exchange points and all other infrastructure technically related to the security and stability of the DNS. Measures to ensure Security and Stability have to be total and complete without leaving 'weak links' as seen at present.
Promote competition, trust, choice and innovation
> One of the erroneous arguments in this area is that it requires new gTLDs, geoTLDs and IDNs to promote competition. Newer domains do provide choice, but it may not be argued that a plethora of domain names are required to promote competition. What is required is intra-industy competition, and not necessarily inter-domain competition
Excel in IANA and other core operations
> Strengthening International Operations and Presences, as a project, needs to be prioritized and defined as a more significant and central Strategic Project. Another core strategic project is to do further work related to RAA and other channel related improvements.
Contribute to shaping a healthy Internet eco-system
- All stakeholders have a voice at the table
- Improved Accountability and transparency
> These two appear vague as strategic objectives.
One Unified Global Internet
> ICANN's position requires ICANN to be an important and significant part in preserving and further building the Internet as One Unified, Global Internet. Another important strategic objective that ICANN should endeavor to achieve together with its co-participants is to work to create appropriate, user-centric Internet governance mechanisms on the multi-stakeholder model. To this end ICANN may also commit significant monetary resources to strengthen the Internet Governance Forum.
For the 2010-2013 planning period, this means:
Preserve DNS stability and security
Strategic objectives
•100% DNS uptime
•Lower DNS abuse
•More secure TLD operations
> If “TLD” here refers to gTLDs, then this objective needs to be expanded to embrace ccTLDs. ICANN has to constantly strive to stay better connected to ccTLD operations as well and not consider ccTLDs as beyond its scope of operations or beyond its sphere of responsibilities. It is not right on the part of ICANN to stay detached to ccTLDs
•Improved DNS resilience to attacks
Community Work
•DNSSEC
•Whois/ International Registration Data
•Registration abuse
>> The community can undertake projects, for instance, to assess and contain Registration Abuse and ICANN may allocate funds to empower the Community / Project Groups with the required funds to handle such tasks effectively. This would enhance community participation onto areas beyond participation in meetings and 'email working groups'.This would be to ICANN's advantage as the overall cost of enabling community to undertake projects would be much lower than the costs incurred in engaing external consultants.
Strategic projects
•DNSSEC implementation
•DNS CERT concept development
Staff work
•Contingency planning
> Even contingency plans need to stem from the Community, but staff may have the required flexibility to modify / alter the contingency plans or create new measures as necessary under the circumstances.
•Training for ccTLDs
> Training for ccTLDs can also form part of community work to make use of the knowledge of the community participants. The community could be involved so as to enhance its role and extent of participation in the ICANN process
•Collaborative response
Promote competition, trust, choice and innovation
Strategic Objectives
•Increased TLD options in all languages
> TLD and ccTLD 'options' in various languages have to be implemented with the caution that language is uncharted territory for ICANN. ICANN needs to ensure that content generated in one language does not remain arcane to and closed within the community that speaks that language. At the same time, any community should not suffer the disadvantage of content from other languages being shut off from its reach. CcTLDs in all languages and gTLDs in some languages are likely to be fully or partially outside the generic names management system, so prone to multiple national policies. ICANN needs to pay attention to the evolution of language TLDs in a manner that the Internet's oneness and unified nature does not get threatened orcompromised.
•Lower registration abuse
•Increased industry competition
•Increase valid registrations
> All registrations have to be valid and ICANN needs to evolve strategies and devise action plans to ensure that all registrations are valid registrations.
•Everyone connected
> ICANN has to work on this strategic objective with particular attention to how language territories evolve on the Internet due to progress in multi-bilingualism and IDN TLDs
Community work
•IDNs
•New gTLDs
> IDN, gTLD and geoTLD decisions and programs have to evolve by even more balanced community participation rather than be swayed or rushed out of invisible dominance of business or governmental interests.
•IPv4/ IPv6 work
> This very much forms part of ICANN's core functions and it is a time sensitive priority.
•Registrar Accreditation
•Registrant Rights Charter
> Registrar Accreditation Agreement improvements and work on Registrant Rights are core areas that are a priority for ICANN. On Trade Mark related tasks, ICANN may not reinvent its practices only to make it unmanageably complicated.
Strategic Projects
Implement IDNs
> It is recommended that ICANN enables the IDN registries to allot an English domain name as a redundant domain name for all registered IDN names. For instance,ICANN may facilitate a dot idn domain name to be registered free of cost for every IDN registered anywhere. Such a system of an English domain name as a redundant or referral English domain name for an IDN would in general make it easier for most external communities to identity any IDN website which may otherwise be unintelligible to those outside the community.
> Some of the possible technical challenges and complications related to IDN TLDs may still be unknown and the possible non-technical problems in the socio-political realm are completely unknown. (For example, the socio-political issues arising out of India's decision to have linguistic regions even after fifty years of such a decision. ) The ICANN community may look into such scenarios, debate a little more and consider various possible and appropriate measures of caution in IDN implementation so as to ensure that there are no undesirable fallouts.
•Implement new TLDs
> What mechanisms does ICANN have in place to ensure the continuity of operations of a new gTLD that has gone operational and later found unviable for the Registry to continue? How would ICANN ensure the interests of the Registrants who have opted to register the new gTLD and have the necessity to maintain the name taken even in the event of discontinuation of operations by the Registry?
•IPv4 monitoring/IPv6 leadership
> It would be a priority to ensure that the situation is not exploited by unethical market practices and equally a priority to work on adoption of Ipv6 worldwide.
•Improve policy processes
Staff Work
•Compliance
•Supporting Organisation and Advisory Committee support
Excel in IANA and other core operations*
Strategic Objectives
•Flawless IANA operations
•Improved resilience
•High levels of customer satisfaction
Community Work
•Monitoring of performance
•Root scaling study
Strategic Projects
•IANA infrastructure upgrade
•Monitor Root scaling
•Strengthen International operations and presences
Staff Work
•IANA
•Board support
•Financial operations
•L Root operations
•Support services
Contribute to shaping a healthy Internet eco-system*
Strategic Objectives
•All stakeholders have a voice at the table
•Improved accountability and transparency
•One unified, global Internet
Community Work
•Increasing participation
•Contributing to international forums
•Reviews of SOs and ACs
Strategic Projects
•Implement Community Reviews
•Implement impact reporting
•Participate in Internet governance discussions
•Successful participation in ITU Plenipot 2010 and IGF
Staff Work
•Thought leadership
> Thought leadership has to arise from the community, not from the staff. The role of staff is to support the community's efforts and staff have to remain free of opinions and preferences.
•Participation in international forums
•Strengthen partnerships across the eco-system
•Strengthen regional engagement
> Staff have to do all this and carry out every other administrative task related to all the Strategic Projects of the ICANN community in a supportive role.
Links to comments from all RALOs
AFRALO African Regional at-Large Organization
APRALO Asia Pacific Regional at-Large Organization
EURALO European Regional at-Large Organization
LACRALO Latin America and Caribbean at-Large Organization
NARALO North American Regional at-Large Organization
Background
As the next element of consultation on the Strategic Plan, ICANN invites comments from the community on a first draft of the plan based on material presented to the community at the Seoul meeting. In particular, ICANN is seeking the views of the community on the following issues:
- What should be the three to five year high level strategic objectives for each of the four areas of work?
- What would be the specific metrics for each of the four areas of work?
The draft Strategic Plan for 2010- 2013 has been posted on the ICANN website at http://www.icann.org/en/strategic-plan/strategic-plan-2010-2013-01dec09-en.pdf
The four areas of work mentioned in the plan are as follows:
- Preserve DNS stability and security
- Promote competition, trust, choice and innovation
- Excel in IANA and other core operations
- Contribute to shaping a healthy Internet eco-syste
Comments:
Hi, I made the comments on ICANN's interpretation and translation policy at the last call, scheduled at AP-friendly time-
May I suggest we add a paragraph to encourage ICANN to continue to improve its interpretation and translation policy in consideration of both the users' demand and language diversity.
I went to the Doodle of this call and only found that none of the timeslots listed would not be harmful to my health. I've no choice but to give it up.
Wish you all enjoy it.
Hong
(submitted to the APAC-Discuss list on 10 January 2010)
contributed by heidi.ullrich@icann.org on 2010-01-14 22:39:17 GMT
—
This is a paragraph I suggest added to the the part on Multilingualism.
ICANN should continute to improve its translation and interpretation policy for more effective participation from this extremely lingualistically-diversified region. Although written translation of ICANN policy douments is very important for outreaching to the community, live interpretation is more useful for non-English people to input to the policy comfortably and confidently in their own language. We hope ICANN could seriously consider, in addition to French and Spanish, providing interpretation services for a variety of widely spoken languages at f-2-f meetings or conference calls.
contributed by guest@socialtext.net on 2010-01-26 04:57:03 GMT
