Background 

ICANN's mission is rooted in the core of Internet technology, and in particular, its unique identifier system. The organization and the community are regularly required to dive into technical issues in support of formal positions and policy statements that are relevant to a resilient and secure management of the Internet’s unique identifiers. While work on standards development takes place at different venues and forums other than ICANN meetings, we have observed from our public engagements that the technical community generally would benefit from a platform within the ICANN ecosystem where it can openly discuss and engage on emerging technical topics related to the Internet Identifier system management. ICANN Strategic Goal (3.2b) calls for, “Mechanisms [to be] established with which ICANN assesses new technologies and, when appropriate, embraces them”. The Special Interest Fora on Technology (SIFT) will constitute one of these mechanisms. It will help monitor trends and engage the community on their impact on the security and stability of the Domain Name System.  

Objectives

The SIFT will provide an ad hoc platform for the technical discussion and contribution by interested technical participants to emerging identifier systems and technology trends.  

The generalized goals of a SIFT are:

  • Knowledge sharing between and among participants on the evolution of Internet identifier technologies.
  • Providing informational presentations (to ICANN staff, ICANN leadership, and/or the ICANN community) on newly-emerging topics that are relevant to ICANN.

Structure and Mode of Operation

Each SIFT will primarily take place on a public mailing list. The overall SIFT mailing list (sift-general@icann.org) will be the catch-all for SIFTs. When the community wants to engage more deeply on a specific topic, a mailing list will be created for that topic (e.g., sift-dns-abuse-measurement@icann.org, sift-secured-dns-best-practices@icann.org, etc ...). Each SIFT and mailing list (hosted by ICANN) will self-run and self-organize with open access to the mailing list archives. SIFTs will also be able to have informal face-to-face meetings during ICANN events if needed. ICANN org will provide necessary logistics support to SIFTs when and where needed (i.e., for teleconferences or public presentations in other venues or virtually). 

Membership

The Membership of a SIFT is open to anyone interested in topics related to the internet unique identifiers system. The participants may include:

  • ICANN Board members
  • ICANN Org staff
  • Technical experts invited by ICANN who have particularized knowledge of the SIFT topic
  • Members of the community who join the SIFT’s mailing list, calls, and/or meetings


ICANN’s Technical Engagement team will provide logistic support to a SIFT as necessary and as appropriate.

Choosing SIFT Topics

The topic of each SIFT will be chosen by participants in cooperation with OCTO.

The Scope of SIFTs

SIFTs are designed to be knowledge sharing and discussion vehicles on Identifiers system evolution and the impact on ICANN’s mission. SIFTs have no unified activities outside of planned meetings. SIFTs do not participate in policy making or policy implementation discussions as a group, though individual members may do so. SIFTs do not take positions for, or on behalf of, any component of the ICANN ecosystem.

The activities and work product of each SIFT are open to the public. 

SIFTs have no formal authority. The effectiveness of a SIFT is limited to the quality of information that is shared among and by the members.

Expected Standards of Behavior

All SIFT participants are required to fully abide by ICANN's published standards of behavior. 

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