Meredith Atwell Baker Speech 
 ICANN Meeting - Cairo
 Thursday, 6 November 2008

 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   And after one historic event we move on to a slightly different historic event and that is possibly the last presentation from a friend, Meredith Atwell Baker, the Assistant Secretary for Commerce.  She joined in NTIA in December 2004 as senior advisor, and also served on detail for White House Office of Science and Technology policy.
 Before joining NTIA she was vice president of the firm of Williams and Mullen Strategies where she focused on telecoms, intellectual property, and international trade issues.  She was senior counsel to Covad Communications, and Director of Congressional Affairs at the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association from January '98 to June 2000.
 And NTIA of course is a long-time partner of ICANN.  From signing the original MOU in 1998, from which we have grown into the arrangement now in the Joint Partnership Agreement.
 And NTIA also cooperates -- is also the contracting party with ICANN in relation to the performance by ICANN of the IANA functions.  In all of these roles, Meredith has been an enormous supporter of ICANN and made considerable efforts on our behalf at NTIA and in other fora.
 So, Meredith, with that said, let us know that this may be your last appearance in this particular role.  And, of course, as I mentioned, you would always be welcomed back as a TLD applicant or --
 [ Laughter ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   -- or in any other capacity.
 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Meredith Atwell Baker.
 [ Applause ]
 >>MEREDITH ATWELL BAKER:   Thank you, Peter.  And before I begin I want to say what a privilege it is to follow the highly esteemed Secretary-General of the ITU.  Hamadoun we are grateful for your comments here, your presence and for everything that you do.
 I am very pleased to join all of you on ICANN's 33rd meeting at this very auspicious time of hope when change, change is happening.  That's a joke, but it's true.
 [ Applause ]
 >>MEREDITH ATWELL BAKER:   I want to start out to thank our host, the Egyptian ministry of communications and information technology, as well as the ICANN staff for their efforts to organize the meeting.
 It's really a lovely location and it's been a very productive meeting.
 After five years of working on this portfolio for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, I really appreciate this opportunity to engage with you all one last time, at least in my current capacity.
 So given that this is ICANN's tenth year anniversary, I thought it was fitting to take a step back and to reflect on ICANN's progress as well as offer my thoughts on some of the challenges that we will collectively face as ICANN moves forward.
 When NTIA issued the green paper and the white paper so many years ago, the world and the Internet was a very different place.  It is a testament to the ICANN community that you all have worked so hard to evolve the DNS project as it was then called, which truly has been an experiment in private sector leadership and bottoms-up policy development.
 The fact that my own experience in ICANN represents half its entire life span indicates how relatively young this institution is given the enormously important work it is called upon to perform.
 While there have been inevitable growing pains, there has also been great progress in building ICANN as an institution.
 The progress should be acknowledged.
 A few highlights over the last ten years from my perspective include refining ICANN's mission and restructuring its supporting organizations and Advisory Committees to meet its core technological purpose.
 Securing an agreement with the Regional Internet Registries to facilitate the development of global addressing policy.
 Developing accountability framework agreements with many country code top-level domain operators and establishing the Country Code Name Supporting Organization.
 Enhancing participation in ICANN processes by the global community through improved outreach, regional liaisons, and multilingual communications.
 While these and other achievements are very significant, the experiment that ICANN represents has an immediate future, a series of very daunting tasks.  I say this in the context of ICANN's initiative to improve institutional confidence.
 I have long thought that a stable and independent ICANN could only emerge and succeed if ICANN enjoys the competence of the community it serves.
 Whether ICANN enjoys such confidence is yet to be proven.  Looking forward, the documents prepared by the President's Strategy Committee have raised important issues for the community to consider.
 Many of the recent submissions suggest changes that reflect key elements of basic good governance.
 I think it is critical for ICANN to adopt and implement these elements to earn the confidence of the community as the JPA potentially expires.
 What replaces it needs to include performance matrix, results-based budgeting processes, fact-based policy development, improved cross-community deliberations, and more responsive consultation procedures that provide detailed explanations of the bases for decisions, including why certain contributions have not been accepted.
 As important as this confidence building initiative is, it is only one of the several challenges facing the ICANN community today.
 In your meetings this week, you have been considering detailed plans that, once implemented, will represent a significant change to the domain name space.
 This will not only increase the number of domain names but also will likely increase the complexity of coordinating the Domain Name System.
 To make the Internet truly global, the incorporation of non-Latin scripts in the DNS is clearly important, while considerable work has already been accomplished, such as the IDN guidelines and the introduction of IDN at the second level within many existing TLDs.
 Implementation of IDN at the top level is the obvious next step.
 I am very encouraged by the efforts currently underway to develop processes and procedures to facilitate the introduction of IDN ccTLDs.
 I believe that the cross-constituency policy approach that has characterized this particular project should be enhanced and serve as the model for the future work of ICANN.
 In addition to IDNs, there are issues associated with the introduction of new generic top-level domains in both ASCII and non-Latin scripts which are challenging and complex.
 ICANN's publication last week of a series of very detailed documents, including a Draft Application Guidebook, provides useful information to inform this debate.
 While I am still digesting the extensive material released, an initial review of the applicant guidebook reveals several issues that I believe need careful and thoughtful consideration and resolution prior to moving forward.
 For example, the impact of potential changes to the registrar/registry marketplace to allow for vertical integration.  Expanding the marketplace before having effective and meaningful tools to protect consumers and brand owners.
 Demonstrating ICANN has sufficient capacity to enforce contract compliance with, as yet, an unknown number of new contracts.
 The fee structure, the possible use of auctions and the disposition of excess revenue given ICANN's status as a nonprofit, and appropriate mechanisms to address dispute resolution, including the very delicate issues of morality and public order.
 In closing, I would like to take this opportunity to bring your attention to the current NTIA Notice of Inquiry on DNSsec.
 As you all are well aware, the development and discussion of DNSsec has been underway for at least a decade.  However, full DNSsec deployment is no simple task and requires action by a broad range of actors in the DNS hierarchy.
 Currently, DNSsec deployment is not widespread, and some point to the authoritative root zone as the linchpin.
 In light of this, NTIA needs your help in exploring the implementation of DNSsec.
 We invite and encourage all of you to share your perspectives on this very important issue through the NOI process.
 The past ten years have seen tremendous change in Internet applications, capacity, and development.
 With these changes, ICANN's narrow role as the technical coordinator for the Internet's unique identifier system has remained unchanged.  However, the processes involved in performing this role have and will continue to evolve.
 As you are aware, the agreements between ICANN and NTIA are potentially expiring next year.
 We will, of course, in the coming months seek your input on our appropriate next steps.
 It is unclear what the next decade holds for the Internet DNS, but a constant need will be the need of this community in wish ICANN serves to have confidence in the decisions made and for the community itself to have proactive and contribution to the evolution in the next phase of the Internet.
 You all have very important roles to play.
 I want to thank all of you for your attention this morning and to ICANN for facilitating our interaction today.
 I wish you, actually, I wish all of us the best for the future as we work together on this very unique DNS project.
 Thank you.
 [ Applause ]
 >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH:   Thank you, Meredith.  The depth of experience that you bring to this project and the extensive history you have mean that all of those comments carry a great deal of weight and we will be digesting those at the board and, of course, in the President's Strategy Committee in relation to that and in relation to the new gTLD activity.  So thank you of that range of, as I say, very thoughtful comments coming from you.  They're important.
 Well, ladies and gentlemen, that brings us to an end, slightly late of -- excuse me -- slightly late, of this phase of the public forum, but we'll be coming back.  We're now going to take 15-minute break.  So please can you be back at 12:30 where we'll continue though to about 1:15 when we break for lunch.  Could we have the remaining staff reports ready to go once we get back from coffee.  See you at just after 12:30.  Thank you all.
 [ Applause ]