insight 

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/

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)