I’ve been surprised at the lack of comments about the US National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) mid-term review of their Joint Project Agreement (JPA) with ICANN. With the political uncertainty of an election year in the US, the NTIA response to its consultation was always going to be cautious. However, it is disappointing that it does’nt really say much at all and gives little guidance on the way forward - but the challenge is there for ICANN: “you’ve heard the comments and concerns, now work out how to address them.”

A lot of the responses to the Notice of Inquiry were about the lack of adequate safeguards, in particular for those who are not well represented in ICANN. This must be addressed. As BITS/Financial Round Table said in its contribution, it is necessary to “ensure the views of organizations that rely on the Internet … are fully considered”. It will be important for ICANN to show how wider business, economic, social and political interests will be safeguarded.

I now believe that it is up to ICANN to respond by defining what the organisation should look like post transition and how effective accountability can be provided.

ICANN has a new Chairman and this provides an excellent opportunity for him to inject new thinking. In my humble opinion (IMHO), Peter Dengate-Thrush needs to respond to this challenge and lead the process. Time is short and we need to start working on clear proposals for what ICANN could look like post transition.

I’m still recovering from the recent ICANN meeting in New Delhi. As well as a hand injury from a fall at the airport (which started off the week well), I managed to catch a nasty cough while I was there that I’m still suffering from and I therefore did’nt really get out of the hotel (for those still under the false impression that international meetings are a complete jolly). I do know we were in India though, as there were some great curries on offer!

There was a very full ICANN agenda, but here is a brief summary of some of the key discussions we were involved in:

Internationalised Domain Names (IDNs)

The introduction of IDNs (domain names in non-Latin scripts) will be one of the biggest changes to the Internet since its inception, so it is not surprising that policy making about IDNs could take a long time. The discussions in Delhi were another step forward on that journey and IDNs were on the agenda for a number of constituency meetings.

The Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and country code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO) representatives met to discuss the issues regarding IDN two letter country code Top Level Domains and this discussion will continue at the next meeting. As part of its communiqué to ICANN, the GAC advised that the public policy principles it previously developed for ccTLDs are relevant also to IDN ccTLDs.

The discussion about a ‘fast-track’ process for introducing IDN ccTLDs in the near-term was also discussed in several meetings. As some will know, I’m not convinced how fast a ‘fast track’ will be able to act, particularly as the key policy decisions will need to be made via the formal (lengthier) policy development process. However, next steps were agreed and the working group will submit its final report to the ICANN board in June 2008.

New generic top level domains (gTLDs)

The process for introducing new generic top level domains (gTLDs) was discussed and there is some pressure from potential applicants who naturally want to know when they can submit bids and how much they will need to pay. There is also some pressure from potential accredited registries who want to become accredited so that they can partner with applicants, but don’t yet know the criteria they will need to meet as these are being developed. Work has been progressing on an implementation plan based on the policy development work done by the Generic Names Supporting Organisation (GNSO) and ICANN apparently hopes to start accepting bids for new gTLDs by the end of 2008 at the earliest. I expect that date may need to slip, as there is much work to be done by ICANN and the various consultants before everything will be ready.

Joint Project Agreement
In the open session on the JPA review, the ICANN Chairman helpfully ‘clarified’ that the ICANN submission to the review was not seeking an immediate end to the JPA, but dialogue about what will happen when it ends in 18 months time. Many present seemed to agree that we should use the time to discuss what accountabilty and oversight will be needed for an independent ICANN. I suspect there will not be so much agreement about what form this should take. As I pointed out, this is actually quite a tight timescale for an international multi-stakeholder discussion and dialogue will need to develop rapidly if an acceptable solution is to be found.

I was delighted to recently welcome to Nominet Roelof Meijer, CEO of SIDN the registry for .nl, as part of a job swap auction for our senior management we held last year to raise money for our chosen charity.As we shared ideas and experiences it was quite fascinating to discuss the fact that our respective registries have many similarities. We are both running country code Top Level Domain registries that are experiencing continued growth and we are both working hard to improve our systems and services. SIDN have also won the contract to run the registry for ENUM within the Netherlands, as we have for the UK. For both organisations this represents a significant opportunity to diversify from our core businesses of running country code Top Level Domain registries. Both registries are also taking more of a leading role internationally. This is in order to share best practices and experiences, but also to ensure that the interests of our local Internet communities are taken into account in international discussions.

The list of things that we’ll be discussing at the forthcoming ICANN meeting seems to be growing longer by the day. I’m travelling to Delhi tomorrow and you can bet that by the time I’ve landed there will be yet more last minute papers and additional meetings. For the time being, my topic list includes:

- The draft ICANN 2009 budget (just issued on Monday) which has expenses rising by $15m or 36% to $57m. One of the first things to strike me is that the cost of new gTLDs in 2009 is over $12m, but spend on security and stability is only $3.5m! It feels the wrong way around to me.

-  The NTIA request for comment and the ICANN approach to the mid-term review. Like a number of others, we’re calling for discussions about the possible transition during the remaining 18 months of the agreement. ICANN are in full lobbying mode though and are encouraging standard emails (for which they’ll helpfully provide the template) directly to the US Government calling for them to deliver on previous promises. I’m surprised at this approach, which has been amusingly labelled ‘astroturfing’ in Brett Fausett’s blog.

- The possible accreditation of registries. In theory, minimum standards for registry providers has to be a good thing for registrants and registrars, but the devil will be in the detail of course.

There will also be the latest on the new gTLD process, domain name tasting, IPV4 address exhaustion, domain name front running, DNSSEC and increasing participation. A busy week ahead then…..

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) of the United States Dept of Commerce has called for comments on the transition to the private sector of the technical coordination and management of the Internet’s domain name and addressing system. This is in the form of the mid-term review of the Joint Project Agreement (JPA) between the NTIA and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

This isn’t the sort of consultation where a 3 line comment would be appropriate and our response extends to almost 3 pages. Our view is that:

- there is more to be done to improve participation in and effectiveness of the ICANN supporting structure.

- the operational checks that the NTIA currently perform should ultimately be integrated fully into ICANN/IANA functionality.

- there should be in-depth discussions amongst all relevant stakeholders over the remaining eighteen months of the JPA to develop a shared vision of a post-transition ICANN. In particular, what will ICANN’s accountabilities be and to whom?

I’m reminded of the TS Eliot quote “if I’d had more time I’d have written a shorter letter”!

The link to our full response is here:

http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/latest/?contentId=4767

My diary seems to have been crammed full with preparations for the forthcoming ICANN meeting, including drafting the Nominet response to the NTIA review (more on both later).

It was therefore really nice to have a non-domain name related day recently, talking about how to become an employer of choice and to receive our Best Companies accreditation award. It takes a certain amount of bravery to agree to enter this scheme as the independent ratings are based on what your staff really think about working for your company. Whilst we’ve still got things to do to make Nominet an even better place to work, we’ve improved our results from the previous year.

The event also saw the launch of a Best Companies guide web site that allows you to compare prospective employers and find out if the recruitment blurb is matched by reality. I can see this becoming a useful job hunters resource:

http://www.bestcompaniesguide.co.uk/index.php

No escaping domain names though - it was good to catch up with a retired Nominet registrar who was also at the event :o)

The much anticipated panel session on the subject of critical internet resources took place yesterday at the Internet Governance Forum in Rio. It’s a shame that this issue seems to overshadow debates about how we can improve internet security and global access, which were the strongest concerns voiced by UK users at our pre-IGF discussions the other month. Read more

In amongst all of the preparations for the IGF this week, we managed to snatch a quiet moment to draft our formal response to the request for comments on ICANN’s draft Strategic Plan.

There was a packed room in Los Angeles just the other week when we made some verbal inputs on the plan and the future direction of ICANN seems to be a hot topic at the IGF. Increasing participation in ICANN and improving ICANN’s transparency and accountability have been popular themes. So why then are there only 2 comments (of which ours is one) on the most recent draft?

The link to our input is here:

http://forum.icann.org/lists/stratplan-2008/index.html

I attended the launch event for the UK Inspirational Women’s network this week. The whole idea is to get together a group of inspirational women to coach and inspire other women to develop meaningful and rewarding careers. We’re all up for this work.

You couldn’t help but be inspired by some of the speakers and fellow members. Read more

I had two discussions yesterday which, on reflection, illustrated the difficulties of labelling organisations and the consequences of the labels that are attached to organisations. By labelling I mean the way in which people categorise or describe an organisation. Often we seem to seek a single term for describing an organisation and I think this is too limiting.

The first discussion was part of an interview with a journalist new to the industry. Describing Nominet as a not-for-profit, in that we are prevented from distributing any profits we make, didn’t capture the full picture at all. A consequence of this label is that some think we should not make any profits at all. We’ve been a commercial company right from the very start, but probably not many people would give us this label and some think that this means we should introduce differential pricing. We are also a membership organisation and a consequence of this label is that some think we should do things purely in the interests of our members, rather than all stakeholders. We’re also labelled as a service organisation and a global internet industry organisation. Its actually quite difficult to categorise Nominet with a single label. If we do so, we miss the complexity as well as many of the issues and opportunities but also people come away with expectations linked solely with that label.

The second discussion was as a Board member of another not-for-profit organisation late yesterday evening. The introduction of benchmarking was viewed as too commercial for a not-for-profit by some, with a consequence that we might miss areas for improvement. The organisation is also a charity, with a consequence that some people think we should spend our income differently.

Thankfully, common sense prevailed when benchmarking was re-labelled as a standard management tool, a single label which made it much more acceptable :o)