Based upon the Board Resolutions resulting from the recent Special Meeting of the Board of Directors held in Amsterdam on 6 May 2012, the adopted 2012-2015 Strategic Plan [PDF, 864 KB] is now posted.

2012-2015 Strategic Plan

• English [PDF, 864 KB]
• العربية - coming soon
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During the Special Meeting of the Board of Directors held in Amsterdam the Board approved the July 2012-June 2015 Strategic Plan, and directed the President and CEO to move forward with the Internationalization survey and community-based operational planning process based on the strategic objectives as set forth in the plan. The aspects of the 2012-2015 Strategic Plan that cover the expansion of ICANN's international presence and engagement efforts are deferred pending further direction from the Board.

Rationale for Resolution 2012.05.06.06

To remain accountable to the global Internet community, the Board is taking this action to allow for community input on the further planning for ICANN's international presence and engagement. There has been a community survey on these items, and a paper will be produced that will be the subject of public comment and discussion. In addition, continued work towards these efforts as set forth in the 2011-2014 Strategic Plan is not prudent, therefore those portions of the 2011-2014 Strategic Plan are deferred.

After review of these inputs, and as appropriate to respond to inputs, initiatives to expand ICANN's international presence and engagement may be updated within the 2012-2015 Strategic Plan, and included within the 2012-2013 Operating Plan. In order to allow for the 2012-2013 operational planning cycle to proceed, the Board approves the 2012-2015 Strategic Plan.

While there will likely be a fiscal impact as a result of this work, the fiscal impact of undertaking the survey and review process is minimal. Further, the deferral of current initiatives within the 2011-2012 Operating Plan regarding the further allocation or reallocation of staff and resources that relate to ICANN's international presence and engagement prior to the Prague Meeting will preserve resources from having to be reallocated as necessary after this review is complete.

This action is not expected to have any impact on the security or the stability of the DNS.

This version of the Strategic Plan includes extensive community feedback, including a 45-day Public Comment period (10.3.11 – 11.17.11). Many thanks to the Community for its continued support and input.

ICANN's Strategic Plan is a three-year rolling, annually updated strategic planning process and feeds in to the larger ICANN planning process as the adopted Strategic Plan guides the development of the FY13 Operating Plan and Budget.

A new instance of L-Root has been installed in Odessa, Ukraine, increasing the Domain Name System's (DNS) overall fault tolerance and its resilience against certain types of cyber threats, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.

The launch of the server node is a joint operation between ICANN and Ukrainian domain registry Hostmaster. DNS Root Servers form a key part of the Internet infrastructure that contribute to the global security and stability of the DNS.

"Odessa is one of the largest Ukrainian cities, with one of the highest Internet penetration rates in the country," said Dmitry Kohmanyuk, a Hostmaster official. "Moreover, the Internet provider we opted for has quality connections to Western Ukraine, which is precisely why we decided to deploy the node there."

Hostmaster, the Ukrainian administrator of the .UA domain, supplied the equipment necessary for the installation of the new L-Root node.

"In addition to the newest L-Root server in Odessa, two other L-Root nodes, in Kyiv and Kharkiv, were also deployed through collaboration between ICANN and Hostmaster." said Joe Abley, Director of DNS Operations at ICANN."

The Following Public Comment periods are approaching their Comment or Reply Period Close dates, May 17-27 2012. As a member of the ICANN community, your timely feedback is critical to our accountability and transparency efforts. For your convenience, we have included direct links below to comments that will soon close.

During the Reply period for Public Comments, participants should only address previous comments submitted and new posts concerning the topic should not be introduced. When constructing Replies, contributors are asked to cite the original poster's name, comment date, and any particular text that is pertinent.

Please note that comments submitted after the posted Close Date/Time are not guaranteed to be considered in any final summary, analysis, reporting, or decision-making that takes place once that period ends.

For more information please refer to the ICANN Public Comments page at: http://www.icann.org/en/news/public-comment

As we announced last week, ICANN is targeting 22 May 2012 as the reopening date for the TLD Application System, or TAS. Specifically, we are targeting 19:00 GMT/UTC on 22 May for the reopening.

When we took the system offline on 12 April, just over twelve hours remained in the application window. We anticipate keeping TAS open for eight full days to allow users to review their applications and complete any remaining activities. We expect to close TAS at 23:59 GMT/UTC on 30 May 2012.

We appreciate the community’s continued interest and feedback on the TAS interruption.

ICANN is immediately seeking expressions of interest for the 2012-2013 Nominating Committee (NomCom) Chair-Elect.

In accordance with the Bylaws, "[i]t is anticipated that upon the conclusion of the term of the Chair-Elect, the Chair-Elect will be appointed by the Board to the position of Chair." See Article VII, section 3.4.

The Chair-Elect is a position created within the Bylaws as an outcome of the independent review of the NomCom. The Chair-Elect position is not a replacement of the Advisor to the NomCom Chair, and is not intended to fill an advisory role. Rather, the Chair-Elect will receive the benefit of training while serving alongside the Chair, gaining skills and knowledge to be applied for the Chair-Elect's anticipated succession into the role of the Chair. Candidates for Chair-Elect should possess the same skills as candidates for the Chair.

For more information about the NomCom see: http://nomcom.icann.org/

Position Description – Nominating Committee Chair

This position blends time management and negotiation skills with the practical aspects of conducting a world-wide search for individuals to fill various ICANN leadership positions. The NomCom Chair will be called on to schedule, organize and lead numerous in-person and telephonic meetings with a large committee of community members. The NomCom Chair is also responsible for managing the candidate identification and statement of interest process, with other committee members, and for managing the due diligence to be performed on nominated candidates, in cooperation with ICANN's General Counsel and any retained outside firm(s). Throughout all NomCom activities, the Chair is responsible for ensuring that all NomCom operating rules and procedures are followed, and that all required documentation and reports are prepared in a timely fashion and provided to the proper parties as necessary.

Skills and Experience

To properly serve as the NomCom Chair, the selected individual must have:

(i) adequate time available to undertake the role;

(ii) excellent communication and negotiation skills to manage a committee of 20-21 members;

(iii) a clear understanding of the duties and responsibilities of each position for which the NomCom is selecting candidates;

(iv) experience on or with a Board of Directors of organizations with similar scale, scope and diversity as ICANN;

(v) strong organization and leadership skills;

(vi) ability to remain unbiased;

(vii) no conflicts of interest, and

(viii) a thorough understanding of, and satisfy, all criteria set forth in ICANN Bylaws relating to the NomCom (see http://www.icann.org/en/about/governance/bylaws#VII).

Specific Duties and Responsibilities

1. Plans and schedules NomCom meetings as required, including ensuring posting schedules for public review. Please see attached for a Listing of the NomCom activities.

2. Appoints non-voting Associate Chair if so desired.

3. Reports to ICANN Board and the community on status of the NomCom.

4. Prepares and publishes the NomCom report.

5. Ensures that NomCom operating rules and procedures are followed.

6. Manages NomCom Selection Process, including:

   1. Approves outreach/advertising methods for attracting candidates.

   2. Conducts outreach with ICANN Constituencies, ACs and SOs (with Chairs of those groups), ICANN Board, and others.

   3. With other committee members, reviews and evaluates candidate Statements of Interest (SOIs) and references submitted during NomCom process

   4. Coordinates due diligence on nominated candidates in cooperation with ICANN's General Counsel and any outside firm(s) retained to perform due diligence activities.

7. Approves posting of NomCom announcements and schedules on ICANN website.

8. Ensures NomCom records are properly established, maintained and archived.

Eligibility Exclusion

No person who is an employee of or is a paid consultant to ICANN (including the Ombudsman) shall simultaneously serve as a member of the NomCom, including the post of Chair or Chair-Elect.

Expenses

All reasonable travel expenses and administrative costs incurred as a result of performing the duties as NomCom Chair or Chair-Elect in accordance with ICANN's policies will be reimbursed by ICANN upon the Chair or Chair-Elect's submission to ICANN of valid receipts and invoices.

Expressions of Interest

Expressions of Interest, which will be maintained as confidential, should be sent to NomComChairElect2013@icann.org no later than 20 June 2012.

ICANN is issuing today a Request for Proposal [PDF, 183 KB] to identify a provider capable of providing an open source reference implementation of a Domain Name RESTful Whois server.

On 15 May 2012, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) chartered a new working group to standardize a RESTful-based Registration Data Access Protocol. In order to facilitate the evaluation and adoption of the replacement protocol for domain registries and registrars, ICANN is seeking proposals for an open source reference implementation.

Whois services, and their effectiveness in the case of Internationalized registration data, are important issues for ICANN. ICANN has been working to make advances in this area, appreciating the technical community's past and present contributions, and committed to collaborating with the technical and policy community to improve the Whois service.

Beginning in 2002, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) published various advisories describing the needs for improvement related to the Whois protocol, service and data schema, most recently SAC 051 [PDF, 237 KB]: SSAC Report on Domain Name Whois Terminology and Structure. SAC 051 summarizes the previous advisories, and among other things, recommends that the ICANN community evaluate and adopt a replacement protocol that supports the query and display of Internationalized registration data as well as addressing the relevant recommendations in past SSAC advisories on this topic.

Respondents are requested to respond to this RFP by replying to: rws-opensource@icann.org. The period to submit questions about the RFP will close on 5 June 2012. ICANN will provide answers to all questions submitted to all respondents by 7 June 2012. The final response to the RFP is due on 15 June 2012.

In order to participate, please RSVP via email to the GNSO Secretariat
(gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org) to receive the call details.

Whether you plan to participate in the upcoming ICANN meeting in Prague remotely or in person, you're invited to an update on the background and current status of each major policy issue currently under discussion in ICANN.

The ICANN Policy Staff will provide a briefing on Thursday 14 June at 12.00 UTC and Thursday 14 June at 19.00 UTC, summarizing policy issues across the different ICANN Supporting Organizations, namely the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and Address Supporting Organization (ASO). Amongst other topics, updates will be provided on:

• Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy
• WHOIS
• RAA Improvements
• Consumer Choice, Competition and Innovation
• Study Group on Use of Names for Countries and Territories
• Framework of Interpretation Working Group for the delegation and re-delegation of ccTLDs
• Joint DNS Security and Stability Analysis Working Group
• Participation and Engagement activities in Prague

In addition, staff will provide a briefing on the ALAC's activities related to current policy development issues of the Supporting Organizations.

The two sessions are duplicates, scheduled to accommodate different time zones. Each session, scheduled to run for 90 minutes, will be conducted in English only. The meeting will be run in Adobe Connect with a slide presentation along with a dial-in conference bridge for audio.

Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of each session. During the course of the webinar, questions may be submitted using the chat function of Adobe Connect. If you are not able to participate in either of the live sessions, the recording of the session will be made available shortly after the meeting. The policy staff is always available to answer any questions that you email to policy-staff@icann.org.

In order to participate, please RSVP via email to the GNSO Secretariat (gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org) to receive the call details. Please indicate which call you would like to join, Thursday at 12.00 UTC or Thursday at 19.00 UTC (to convert those times into your local time, see: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html). We will send you an e-mail reminder before the event with log-in and dial-in details. Please DO NOT RSVP to any other ICANN staff members e-mail address.