Monday, 10 June 2024
AFRALO Roundtable: Enhancing Internet Infrastructure in Africa
High-Level Notes
Nii Quaynor - Need short and long term plans. The short-term plans need to fit into longer term plans.
Alan Barrett - Suggested more training is needed to reduce scope for human mistakes. It is important to have solid infrastructure. For example, need more than two name-servers.
Mr. Audace Niyonkuru- Protecting the digital economy is important. Most pressing cybersecurity is growing mistrust from end users. It makes changes very hard. What is needed is more capacity building and a space for dialogue for end users and service providers.
Dr. Catherine Adeya - Need for digital literacy and lack of local language content are key factors. There are over 3,000 local African languages. Local content is key.
Bukola Orenti/Dr. Mattagoro - Provided feedback on ALS survey.
Yaovi Atohoun - Discussed the Coalition for Digital Africa.
Questions:
Claire Craig - Commented that the ALS survey was useful for other regions. Also asked to how many people was the survey sent.
Action Items
Conclusion: (which may be useful to add to the AFRALO-AFRICANN statement)
Recommendations to ICANN org
• What can ICANN org and ICANN stakeholders do to improve internet infrastructure?
• ICANN can help policy makes and legislators by building the capacity of legislators so they themselves can explain and bring what we need to do in Africa. ICANN can assist by highlighting policies to assist the private sector.
• Raise awareness, increase root instances and servers, as the next billion users will come from Africa, there will be questions about accessibility and what it means to be connected.
• DNS infrastructure relies heavily on the underlying Internet infrastructure and anything that we can do to improve implement infrastructure will help the DNS, make more exchange points, putting more links between borders between countries , Increase root servers instances and resolvers.
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AFRALO: Building a Multilingual Internet: Opportunities and Challenges
High-Level Notes
Can you share with us some successful examples of domain names and email addresses being used in local languages within Africa?
- Sarmad: There are many languages written in latin script beyond a-z. Many languages are used across the continent, written in local scripts.
- To make the internet accessible to the people who use these languages and scripts it is important to support these in the Domain Name System
- Local language domain names during covid used to disseminate local language health and safety information to local communities
- Domain names using local language to promote local tourism
- Insurance companies using local language domain names to reach local communities
Could you highlight the roadmap for the successful implementation of UA in Africa, emphasizing the impact of these initiatives? How might we replicate these initiatives?
- Prepare future engineers to implement UA principles in Africa
- Develop the computer science curricula in universities
- If not preparing future students, we will not see much increase in UA
- We have the technology, but we are still facing the number of domains created in IDNs.
- It is a multistakeholder effort to be done, academia has a role.
- Bring universities to our meetings so they can see how UA can be implemented
What strategies have been effective in overcoming the challenges associated with adopting UA in your country?
- Catherine: AAU project is twofold: addressing technical gap and collaboration with universities to integrate IDN and teaching UA in curriculum
- ICANN has collaborated with community to organize UA Days
- Encourage others to look at UA website to see what is happening in Africa in UA context
- Nodumo: survey of 421 member universities to find out where they are in their emails and website UA readiness
- We have been focussed on education and training, 1 on 1 technical support to show them how to make websites and emails compliant
- Also awareness raising through UA Days, focus on ensuring education community and young people are involved in those engagements
- There is a lot of enthusiasm.
- Another strategy is piloting a UA curricula and having universities implement and provide feedback
- Incentives and recognition is important, recognizing those universities who go the extra mile
- Requires a lot of monitoring
- Yaovi: Any time we talk about UA, know it is related to domain names and email addresses, not content.
- Community involved in awareness and education, important for roadmap
- Ongoing work to have resources and modules available
- Technical readiness also important
- We have longer domain names and those in other scripts, websites should be ready to receive emails non-ASCII emails we are already using
- Policy focus is also important
- Collaboration and community involvement
Could you share a success story or a particular challenge you faced while promoting UA adoption?
- Amina: in Nigeria second UA Day collaboration
- UA session went smoothly
- One challenge that participants had was difficulty differentiating UA domain names and content. Also confusing UA with universal access
- Many were interested in benefits that come with UA
- Needs to be more awareness, amplified voice, stakeholders coming together
How important are collaborations and partnerships in advancing multilingual capabilities on the Internet? Could you provide an example of a successful partnership?
- Hon. Lydia: when we put our heads together we can achieve UA
- APNIC: we will take this as a priority area, starting with our government websites. Look forward to further collaboration
- Catherine: encourage everyone to play their part in UA in Africa. Look at it from ICANN perspective, community and stakeholders. Capacity building programs. Continue to work with AAU.
What are the next steps for stakeholders in supporting a multilingual landscape in Africa?
- Nodumo: Continue working with universities. We have over 2,000 universities, so this needs to new scaled up so the lessons we learn can ensure others come on board. Make sure not implemented only by specific universities
Action Items
- No Action Items recorded.
At-Large Leadership Welcome Session
High-Level Notes
- The At-Large Community will be focusing on the different sessions taking place at ICANN80.
- A lot of sessions will be on Next Round along with standing topics like DNS abuse.
- Leon Sanchez, ICANN Board Member, provided an update on the Board's recent meeting and other issues of concern. The Board had a workshop had that focused on private contention resolution. No conclusion has been rached so far regarding how the Board will proceed with this. Board is studying options that have been submitted and is inclined to prevent private contention resolution.
- The Board has appointed Hadia Elminiawi as a member of the SSAC.
- The Board is adopting a resolution on GAC advice regarding contention resolution.
- Where are we in terms of the ombuds search?
- The person has been selected and is in the contracting process
- What happened to the resolution on WS2?
- we have failed to comply with this recommendation and several on the board are pushing for this happen as it was recommended by the group.
- Regarding layoffs, how was number selected, was there a framework
- No additional details can be provided at this time as it is an operational issue. The Board was informed that this would happen but the Board was provided with detailed criteria.
- Was anyone within At-Large support impacted?
- No, At-Large support was not impacted.
- Is there anything At-Large can do to help prevent private resolution? Has the Board considered making the auctions be part of the application process?
- No, the Board has not considered this, though it is an interesting solution. The Board believes that the At-Large has contributed and has been helpful with the Next Round.
- Regarding RVCs, Board welcomes RVCs but will stay away from RVCs concerning content.
- The At-Large Policy Subject Matter Experts provide an overview of the policy topics.
- The GNSO council will be discussing the SPIRT Charter at its upcoming meeting. Singular/Plural issue is not on the agenda.
- The At-Large community went over the session reports and made a call for volunteers for rapporteurs.
- The At-Large community discussed the At-Large Campaign Playbook. The playbook is meant to systematize the process for requesting At-Large participation in campaigns.
- Reminder that At-Large sessions are listed on the At-Large Agenda Wiki page. Please reach out to staff with any questions.
Action Items
- Rapporteurs to submit reports to the At-Large wiki page before the At-Large Wrap-Up session on 13 June 2024
Tuesday, 11 June 2024
At-Large, Fellows and NextGen Interaction
High-Level Notes
Ergas Ramaj (ER) noted that it is key to have a level of Return on Investment for the Fellowship and NextGen Programs.
ER noted that defining participation is important. Fellows may participate up to 3 ICANN Public Meetings.
The first public meeting is focused on intent. The second and third Public Meeting is more on participation.
There were two public comments to confirm whether the Fellowship and NextGen programs were fit for purpose.
The SOACs define the target the objectives for diversity. The program support team speak with the SOACs to learn about their diversity targets and needs and wants.
Mentorship programs are key to ensure that the Fellows and New Comer students find their way in the journey.
What is the bridge for Fellows/Next Gen to the SOACs? Is it sufficient? How can it be improved?
Questions and answers covered many issues of the Fellowship and NextGen Programs.
Action Items
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At-Large Collaboration in the New gTLD Program Outreach and Engagement Plan
High-Level Notes
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Joint Session: ALAC & SSAC
High-Level Notes
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Wednesday, 12 June 2024
Joint Session: ALAC & GAC
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At-Large Cross RALO Coordination Session
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Joint AFRALO-AfrICANN Meeting
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Thursday, 13 June 2024
At-Large ISOC Chapter Roundtable
High-Level Notes
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At-Large Leadership Wrap Up Session
High-Level Notes
Action Items
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