As we celebrate ICANN’s tenth year, it is important to note that the ICANN community’s growth, institution building and dedication to an evolving and relevant unique identifier space means that we are doing more work than ever before the culmination of years of technical preparation and policy development in expanding and strengthening IP addressing and the domain name space.

The ICANN community’s bottom-up policy processes have been formulating major policy changes for the operation of the Internet’s unique identifiers. Several major initiatives are being implemented, any one of which would be a major effort for an organization staffed by 100 people. And in line with our goal of becoming a truly global organization, more staff members are working for ICANN in more locations, with offices in Marina del Rey, Brussels, Sydney and Washington, DC, as well as individual staff members all over the world.

New gTLDs are one major initiative that will transform the Internet, making it truly global and allowing openness, change and innovation to thrive worldwide, driven by a more accessible Internet. The first draft new gTLD Applicant Guidebook was posted for public comment in October of this year, and received many comments on the website and at the Cairo meeting in November. Over the course of this first public comment period to date, ICANN received 317 comments through its dedicated online fora. Respondents come from 24 different countries and each of the five global regions.

These comments highlighted several critical issues, including fees, evaluation criteria, protection of rights of others and string contention resolution. It is acknowledged that in addition to comments received about the draft Applicant Guidebook, we received a considerable number of comments that relate more broadly to issues surrounding the introduction of new gTLDs These comments will be analyzed, responded to and incorporated into the next steps for new gTLD planning, including a further draft Applicant Guidebook, which will then go through a another public comment period early next year. We are keen to ensure that all opinions are heard and that all affected parties understand they have much to gain by participating in the development of this new gTLD process.

Hand in hand with new gTLDs is the introduction of Internationalized Domain Names. IDN TLDs have great potential to be the gateway for huge development for the billions of people coming on line whose languages are not based on Latin scripts. Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, and Hebrew are just a few such languages. The draft implementation plan for the IDN ccTLD fast-track process was posted for public comment in October and received many comments which are currently undergoing analysis. The ccNSO and the GAC are taking a leadership role in helping to think through some of the policy and business issues and discussions with the leaders of the IDN ccTLD community, and the issues involved in ensuring that we can implement the fast-track process. In addition, the IDNA protocol for internationalized labels is being revised, and new requirements may be specified.

While we have done much to improve transparency, we can always do more, we can always become more transparent. To enhance transparency and accountability, this year we made financial and other operating information available through a Dashboard accessible from ICANN’s home page on the web, http://icann.org/. This data includes many operating measures, and additional information will continue to be expanded in the future. Details on Operating Plan items and their current status is just one example.

As an organization that ensures the availability of globally unique identifiers that allow the Internet to operate, ICANN prioritizes its work towards ensuring a resilient Internet. ICANN’s overarching information security plan puts this goal into practice. I recently appointed a Chief Internet Security Advisor, who is responsible for technical and physical security. This role will formulate, review and approve ICANN’s information security policy, review the effectiveness of the policy’s implementation, manage responses to and publish reports of significant information security incidents, and provide clear direction and visible management support for security initiatives across the organization.

In September 2009, the Joint Project Agreement will conclude. Our Improving Institutional Confidence initiative is led by the President’s Strategy Committee, and their work on recommendations for strengthening the multistakeholder model is extremely important at this juncture. The PSC will facilitate community discussions and outline a plan for developing a transition framework.

More important are the views of the global Internet community in determining and evaluating the steps needed to embed institutional confidence in ICANN. To ensure the entire community has the opportunity to participate in this critical discussion, a program of external outreach meetings on the work of the PSC is being held around the world. Nine outreach meetings were held between June and December 2008 in Paris, France; Montevideo, Uruguay; Christchurch, New Zealand; Geneva, Switzerland; Dakar, Senegal; Washington, DC; Cairo, Egypt; Mauritius; and Hyderabad, India. All discussion documents were made available in 10 languages simultaneously. Regional discussions were held in English, Spanish and French, with ICANN staff translating and summarizing all input materials for the PSC and for publication on the ICANN website.

Independent of the Improving Institutional Confidence initiative, ICANN will always be a model of continuous evaluation and improvement. Built in to our bylaws is a process of regular independent review of the constituent parts of ICANN. Reviews concluded or in process during 2008 involved the Generic Names Supporting Organization, the ICANN Board of Directors, the At-Large Advisory Committee, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, and the Root Server System Advisory Committee. Reviews of the Address Supporting Organization and the Country Code Names Supporting Organization will commence in the near future. In 2009 we will begin significant work with the community to implement review recommendations that continue to strengthen the ICANN model.

I am proud of this organization and community’s ability to deliver on several major initiatives that are changing the face of the Internet as we know it and maintaining the resilience of the networks the world relies on. But it’s not just what we do that’s important, it’s how we do it. That ICANN continues to achieve all of this through a participatory, global multi-stakeholder model shows that the model works. It should inspire participatory and deliberative decisionmaking on shared resources as both a means to an end and an end in itself.

In the world generally, multi-disciplinary approaches are essential for achieving solutions to many of the globe’s complex problems and opportunities, and global, multi-stakeholder models for dialogue, coordination and standards setting are becoming more essential than ever. ICANN has been a pioneer of this new means of technical coordination in a globalizing world. We will continue to take very seriously our responsibility for the next generations, for the next billion users, to ensure that the issues relating to the Internet’s unique identifier system engage all relevant stakeholders.

Paul Twomey
President and Chief Executive Officer

Download ICANN 2008 Annual Report

PDF format, 3.4MB, 133Pages.

INTERNET CORPORATION FOR ASSIGNED NAMES AND NUMBERS
http://www.icann.org
Marina del Rey Office
4676 Admirality Way, Suite 330
Marina del Rey, California 90292
U.S.A.
tel: +1 310 823 9358
fax: +1 310 823 4649

MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIRMAN
This has been a pivotal year at ICANN. Building on the mandate in the 1998 White Paper which laid out ICANN’s mission to foster choice and competition in the domain name space, we have steadily prepared for the most significant change in the Internet since its early beginnings.

ICANN has developed policies over the past few years to deal with the stable, predictable introduction of new gTLDs, and with Internationalized Domain Names.

In its public meetings in New Delhi, Paris and Cairo, and the many intersessional meetings between, members of the Internet community have worked with ICANN board and staff, in the bottom-up policy development process, to refine these policies to ensure they will be workable, starting in the New Year.

We are now poised to provide the foundation for the Internet of the future.

Just 10 years ago we had 100 million users of the Internet. Today we have 1.4 billion. With the rapid growth of mobile communications networks, and the availability of access to the Internet on their devices, that number is going to increase very quickly. One has only to observe the numerous advertisements on television, the Web and in print to see how consumers worldwide are being presented with an image of a mobile Internet experience. Those users will demand all the products and services the Internet community has come to expect—everything from financial services to healthcare to transportation and navigation to education.

More important, they will expect to do so in their own languages and language scripts. These amazing innovations, which are on the near horizon, will offer a wealth of opportunities but also a myriad of challenges—access, multilingualism, cybersecurity and cybercrime, achieving a balance between privacy and openness, and a smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6.

We are in a period of fundamental transition, and the velocity of change is accelerating— driven by emerging ubiquitous connectivity and greater engagement by users in every sector and region of the globe. The ICANN community has taken some very important steps recently to prepare a secure, stable and scalable foundation for an Internet for everyone, for the next billion users and those thereafter. The future of the Internet is in everyone’s hands. How it will evolve is limited only by the imaginations of its stakeholders, its communities and its users.

The challenges we face in opening the Internet to the world’s population are greater than ever, but the opportunities for participation and involvement are equally great, and the time couldn’t be more exciting. ICANN has responded to these challenges this year, and I record my thanks to the Board, staff and community for its commitment to the ICANN vision of a single, global, interoperable Internet for all.

Peter Dengate Thrush
Chairman of the Board of Directors

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment