ICANN Public Forum: Reports from SO's/AC's ICANN Meeting - Cairo Thursday, 6 November 2008 >> Ladies and gentlemen, we are just going to take a brief break. You can stay in the room. We're going to organize our stage for the next portion, which is our public forum reports. So if you just give us a few moments, we would appreciate it. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. We are about to have reports in two sections. The first is from chairs of committees of the board. The gentlemen that you see in the front here with me are going to give report for board committees. And then we go to a set of reports from other parts of the community. We have changed our practice in that area to improve communication and save time, or at least that is the intention. And so the committee chairs are not going to take you through a series of slides explaining what you can see in front of you. The reports from each of these committees are available on the Web site. And instead I've just asked the chairs if they could just take a few moments to explain some of the highlights and then answer any questions from the floor, if there be any. Some of these things are relatively straightforward and there may well be none, in which case we can move on to the next committee. With that introduction, I'm going to move on with the audit committee and explain two things. Firstly, congratulation to the chair of the audit committee Rita Rodin has become Rita Rodin Johnston, she has married. But, on the other hand, to commiserate with her, on the way to the airport to this trip she was struck down with severe pain which was caused by a injury she sustained a year ago in a rather terrible crash. So she's unable to be with us but has made incredible efforts to join the board in its working groups and committee work so far by telephone. With that direction, Raimundo Beca, a member of the audit committee, is going to present on behalf of the chair of the audit committee, Rita. So Raimundo, could you take care of the audit committee. >>RAIMUNDO BECA: The report has been -- has been posted and I think it's easier to ask a question if there are some -- than to present something. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Are there any questions, then, about the audit report? Let me say that it is the most interesting audit report, and we are very pleased with it. It's completely clean on every single score. There may be something that Paul Twomey comments on a little bit later on. Questions about the audit report? No? In that case, thanks, Raimundo, I'll move on to the Board of Governance Commitee and Vice Chairman Roberto Gaetano. Roberto, tell us about the Board of Governance Commitee. >>ROBERTO GAETANO: It's been posted on the web and so I think it's already known to the community. I would just go very, very quickly through the points, the major things that happened before the Board of Governance Commitee this year. We are working on especially -- especially on an idea of creating new committees for the committees that we've had, and we have proposed a new committee structure that is going to be discussed tomorrow. We have done -- we have worked on the views of the different parts of the organization, so we have coordinated the work of the new working groups, and that was a major piece of work. I think those were the two outstanding activities this year. And then, as usual, as every year, we have prepared the proposal for the committee population and leadership positions for the organization that also are going to be discussed tomorrow. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Roberto. Any questions of the chair of the Board of Governance Commitee? Excellent. I'll move on, then, to the conflict of interest committee in what may be its last report given the changes that we're proposing to make to some of the committee structures. Demi Getschko is the chairman of the conflict of interest committee. Demi. >>DEMI GETSCHKO: Thank you, Peter. We posted our very brief report on the web page and invite everyone to visit it. In this meeting we received and discussed the disclosure forms of four new board members. Steve Crocker and Katim Touray as voting members and Thomas Roessler and Ram Mohan as liaison. And as is posted on the web, we discussed some points of the draft charter and some -- maybe a new code of conduct and this is all. Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Demi. Any questions? Steve Goldstein? >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN: Thank you, chair, do I need a microphone? >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Yes, you do. >> The microphone is just behind you, Steve. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Turn around there. >>STEVE GOLDSTEIN: Thank you, I'm Steve Goldstein from the board. And I just would like to inform you that the board has adopted a code of conduct for board members. There was public comment on the code. I want to acknowledge the valuable contributions that we received. We don't often do that, and so I want to be very explicit in acknowledging that. Two of the comments dealt with the definition of conflict of interest as referenced in our code of conduct for board members. And suggestions were made about amending the definition of conflict of interest for the code. So I do want to feed back to those people who made those valuable recommendations that one of the tasks for the conflicts committee, which is likely to be folded into the Board of Governance Commitee, is to review the statement about -- or the definition of conflicts of interest and suggest changes as the need might occur. So your very valuable suggestions have been taken into account and they will be acted upon, and I thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Steve. Any other comments or questions about the conflict of interest committee's report? Thank you. Then I'll ask Dennis Jennings who is filling in for Ramaraj who had to get home for a family reason. Dennis Jennings is representing the finance committee and is presenting its report. Dennis. >>DENNIS JENNINGS: Thank you, Peter. The finance committee has been supervising the management developing a number of financial models, the most obvious and particular is the new financial model for the introduction of gTLDs which has been approved by the finance committee and is out for comment. Beyond that, the finance committee has asked the management, particularly Kevin Wilson, the chief financial officer, to develop more transparent financial reporting and that's an ongoing piece of work which we hope to report to -- report on more clearly in the Mexico meeting. The objective being that there will be much more transparency about what ICANN is spending its money on, how much it's spending on various activities. And that, I hope, will be out for comment at the Mexico meeting. Apart from that, just the general supervision of the strengthening of the internal financial controls. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Dennis. Any questions about the finance committee? Dr. Twomey. >>PAUL TWOMEY: Thank you, Chairman. Perhaps I could just make an observation to the committee reports because I think it's an important one. In the context of -- there's been some discussion in some sectors about ICANN's financial probity for, you know, speculation. I think it's really worth reinforcing what we've just seen reported. First of all, from the audit committee, ICANN is independently audited. And when I said there was speculation about probity, there's all sorts of what do they do with the money, basically that's really what was meant, there's no accusations of wrongdoing, but we get these questions what do they do with the money. I think there are two parts of the committee reports that people should pay attention to. The audit committee work is done very seriously, and I think, as you pointed out, and as Moss Adams, the independent auditors have pointed out, in their experience, I think an outstanding audit, not just a good, normal audit, it was an outstanding audit. And the second one is this real commitment from the finance committee to ensure that the reporting against the financial budgets and the utilization of funds that be as transparent and as specific to the needs of interests to the community. I think it's worth reinforcing that and keep reinforcing that because, you know, myths always abound about organizations. We should let the daylight of facts really work here. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Paul. Any other questions of the finance committee report? Marilyn, are you standing to raise a question? Okay, can we have a microphone to the front, please, for Marilyn Cade? >>MARILYN CADE: I'm raising my -- I'm raising my -- >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Raising a question but not raising your voice. >>MARILYN CADE: I'm raising a question but I don't think I have a mic. >>MARILYN CADE: I'm raising my question now. I'm raising my question now because I've taken a look at the ever-changing, without notice, schedule that we're dealing with. And I note that there is only an hour devoted to the community for public forum later today. That means that my opportunity to ask a question, which I would have raised then, is limited. So I'm going to ask it now. During the input into other processes, there has been concern raised or expressed view raised from the community about ICANN's need for a very robust reserve fund. And I'm assuming of course that is the responsibility of the financial committee to take that into account. And I will review the reports with even more thoroughness. But one question that I want to raise is a question about how the -- whether the board is giving consideration to returning to establishing a sort of budget advisory committee that involves members of the stakeholders at an earlier process that can help to provide early input on the views of the community about the overall budget process and priorities. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Marilyn. That is a question to put at this point in the public forum and it is properly put to the finance committee and possibly the CEO. Dennis, as the representative of the finance committee, can you comment on the need for or plans to create or go back to some of the earlier mechanisms? >>DENNIS JENNINGS: Well, we have not discussed that, either in the finance committee or at board level. Speaking personally -- and such a committee existed before I joined the board. Speaking personally, I would have no objection to more formal mechanisms of getting comment from the community. But I think it should be first discussed at board level. If it's agreed at board level, the finance committee would be very cooperative -- work very closely with whatever committee is in place. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks. Marilyn, is there a -- and Raimundo, who's been a chair of that finance committee and a current member, would you like to comment as well. >>RAIMUNDO BECA: I would like only to recall that last year, we approved an investment policy, and we're working with an investment policy. Well, you know, in these days, we -- all investments have had financial problems, and I think that our investment policy has looked to work well at the high level of the bad days, which proves the importance of having an investment policy. And while the -- there is going to be resolution about that tomorrow. Thanks. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Marilyn, I just wonder if there's a purpose behind the question. I think my reaction is that some of the functions of the earlier mechanisms have been -- and I'm thinking of the President's Advisory Group on the Budget, et cetera -- date back to an earlier day when the budget was the only strategic planning document, and what was sought, really, is not -- the same information that was being sought then is now intended to be captured by the budget process and the strategic and operational planning process, which, as you know, begin with six months of community input into -- at sessions like this. And Doug is -- he can comment on this as well. And then we, as you know, create a strategic plan, from which develops the operating plan. So are you suggesting that there's something about the current mechanisms for taking community input into the strategic plan, operating plan, and budget that we could look at? >>MARILYN CADE: I am. And thank you for that follow-up question. And, again, this -- it was my intent to raise this in the public forum, which I expected to be much longer, this afternoon. I will just say that all of -- the board is very busy, the staff are very busy, and the community is very busy. And we are operating multiple dints, simultaneous consultation processes with very detailed input mechanisms, very detailed documents. And the present approach to getting community input is not achieving the level of participation that an organization like ICANN strives for. And all of us would like to do better on providing effective and informed input. So I also think that the importance of the consensus-based, bottom-up process and contribution from the community cannot be underestimated. And in order for the board to make governing decisions and for the staff to be able to really fulfill their responsibilities to the community, that means the community must provide input. So I would just go back to, you know, the community's changing a lot. And I think that having such a process, even though it may be informal, will make a great contribution to ensuring the satisfaction of the community with the later decisions. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you. And I think a quick comment from Dennis. >>DENNIS JENNINGS: Thank you, Peter. Whether this is brought forward or not, one comment I'd like to make is that we have a pretty well developed strategic planning, operational planning framework. The output of that includes the financial planning and the financial budget. And as I've said earlier, we hope and expect that this will be much better and much more transparent and much better outline the costs associated with each of the activities. So whatever is done in response to the input from Marilyn and others, my view is that it has to be part of the strategic planning, operational planning, financial planning cycle that we have already done for one year and is happening again this year. And I think it's going to be better this year than last year. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Dennis. Any other questions of the board committee, chair? Yes, Dr. Tonkin is down the back there. Bruce. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you, Peter. My name is Bruce Tonkin, and I am a member of the ICANN board. I just wanted to comment a little bit more broadly on what Marilyn's raising. And this is something that we have been discussing the last few days. But it's how to better respond to feedback on things like the better and other matters. And I think at ICANN, we have a mixture of formal and informal processes. And an example of informal processes was during constituency day earlier this week, a number of the board directors attended different sessions, and there were certainly listening fairly carefully to what the constituencies had to say. And they each reported back to the whole board on the various pieces of feedback that they received. So there are a lot of informal processes where the board members do listen carefully to the feedback they get, whether it's on the budget or any other topic. But the problem for the community is that this is -- the outputs of this process, I guess, are not visible. And one of the things that we're trying to do is improve our support for both the formal process. For example, on the Web site, we have public comment periods, and we encourage people to submit public comments, but we get very few. And part of that, I think, is because we don't formally respond to those comments and say you know, "Thank you for your comment and your suggestion on topic X. We have considered that suggestion, and we've," you know, "We've added it to the budget," or, "We've considered that suggestion and looked at the budget as a whole in terms of priorities and this year have decided not to take your suggestion on board, but next year, we may." So, in other words, we can respond to your formal input so that you feel we have actually addressed it, and that means we will get more formal input. But also in the informal processes, we need to have better documentation of what feedback we've received. So when we are meeting with constituencies or are meeting with the community here, that we document the themes of feedback we've had and document how we've responded to that feedback. So just want to sort of comment, at that out there, that we are really trying to improve the -- the documentation, if you like, but, really, be able to show that we're taking your feedback into account. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Bruce. Any other comments or questions of directors of the particular board committees? If not, I'll say thank you, gentlemen, ask you to resume your seats in these exalted reserved seats in the front row. When we first switched to this system of reporting, I imposed a one-slide rule on each of the speakers. Now, I'm not going to impose that on them at this stage. But the idea is that there's a brief report with an opportunity for questions from the various staff, committee, SOs, and so on. And I'm sure prepared alphabetically for me, the first one is from the At-Large Advisory Committee. And I'd ask Cheryl to do it from there, if you can. Or if you want to, you can come forward and use the lectern. But it's entirely up to you. Cheryl. >>CHERYL LANGDON-ORR: Thank you, Chairman. I think it would be faster if we just stayed where we are so as not to take additional time. I did prepare a single slide. If it goes up, it has a URL, because that is, in fact, the repository of not only this report, but all of the pointers and links to the various documentation and outcomes not only for the work we've done here in Cairo, the work we've done intersessionally and we will be continuing to do between now and Mexico. So I'd like to take one or two moments to highlight some of the main areas of work that our community, both the At-Large Advisory Committee, the 15-person body that is regionally separated into the five geographic regions, having one nominating committee-appointed person, and two Regional At-Large Organization appointees, as well as the regional representatives that have been able to share time and work with us in this last week. We, quite unsurprisingly, I suppose, spent a considerable amount of time and energy going through and discussing, both within our community and between the other parts of the ICANN community, the recently released big-point report of the Board Governance Committee's At-Large Committee Working Group and much other mainstream scheduled time has been committed to that. But it obviously is a major piece of work for us, and continuing to be, for our feedback by the 12th of December. One important and I think very rewarding meeting was held between ourselves, the At-Large Advisory Committee, and the registrar constituency. Among the subjects discussed were proposed RII amendment provisions that would extend registrant protections, and a proposal that is being -- at the beginning of debate within the ALAC that may, in fact, have an additional RII amendment as well, and very early conversations about any benefits or possible advantages to both sides, both the supply and the demand, if we were to look towards some form of registrar code of conduct being developed. And we have models in ccTLDs. And a full, frank, and fearless discussion on those topics was held. The ALAC has also discussed with staff and community members or proposals to request an issues report relating on how post domain expiry grace periods operate. And in my formal written report, there is a link to the current documentation and earlier drafts on that. We had a very useful and very informative meeting with Steve Crocker and members of SSAC. And the -- resulting in previous face-to-face meetings we've held. Intersessionally between now and Paris, we have had several briefings that have been facilitated by the SSAC to our community on quite technical and specific matters. We are certainly moving forward with continued partnership opportunities, and unsurprisingly, focuses will be on things such as DNSsec and some of the WHOIS data accuracy issues. The ALAC and RALO leaders met on Saturday and considerably advanced the work on the organization of the at-large summit, which is scheduled for Mexico City in the Saturday and Sunday part, prior to the ICANN meeting, in March 2009. We spent some time devoted to some organizational development, which goes to the accountability and transparency of our part of the ICANN organization. And we concluded our ALAC liaison nominations, and the formal elections for several of those positions will be beginning in the next 48 hours. In closing, I do need to publicly thank and recognize the incredible really long-serving and tireless work of two of our outgoing ALAC committee members. That is Annette Muehlberg and Izumi Aizu from RALO and APRALO respectively. They're being replaced at the close of this meeting by a NomCom appointment, Mr. Adam Peake, and by a regionally elected appointee, Dr. (saying name), who I think it is notable to mention in my written report his C.V. and credentials are linked, he will be an exciting and very dynamic adjunct to our committee. Finally, we need to note the stepping down of our long-serving ALAC IDN liaison, (saying name). The millions of Internet users she has quite literally personally championed in the IDN ccTLDs and fast-track process and the IDN gTLDs, I think, is recognized by many of us in the community. But she has found a worthy successor in the manor of a Mister -- I'm sorry -- Mr. (saying name), who is the president of ISOC, India Chennai, and CEO of Turea. And is our most recently at-large accredited structure. And just to advise that you the prior serving chair from the 2007/2008 period have been reappointed to be three of the four-part executive team, that is, myself as chair, Vanda Scartezini, and Sébastien Bachollet. And we are joined by Mr. Alan Greenberg of Canada. Thank you for the time to make the report here. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Cheryl. Any questions of the chair of the ALAC about ALAC's activities or its report? If not, I'll move on. Next alphabetically comes the Address Supporting Organization. On behalf of that, I'd like to ask Ray Plzak to present the report. Ray. >>RAY PLZAK: Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm Ray Plzak. I am the president and CEO of ARIN and also a member of the Executive Committee of the NRO, the Number Resource Organization. For those of you who are not familiar with the Address Supporting Organization, its role and functions is fulfilled by the NRO. And all of the activities are basically executed by the RIRs. The coordinated management of the activities of the ASO is done by the executive council of the NRO. And so, in a way, I guess, you could say the chair of the executive council is the chair of the Address Supporting Organization. This year, that's Paul Wilson, from APNIC. This January, it will be Adiel Akplogan from AfriNIC. There's one element of the ASO that you're probably most familiar with. That's the Address Council. It is an element of the ASO and has a specific policy function and does a few other things with regarding to selecting members of the ICANN board. Looking at the current status of Internet addresses, there are a number of policies that are under discussion and some -- various statistics that are available. They are all available via the NRO Web site or the individual RIR -- RIR Web sites. Looking at IPv4, the free pool continues to decline, and it will probably totally deplete somewhere within the next two to three years. There is policies that have been put in place that will allocate one /8 of IPv4 space to each of the RIRs from the IANA at the moment it gets down to five remaining. Policy discussions in this area are looking at what to do with that last /8. And, more specifically, specific policies regarding the allocation of IPv4 addresses to support the deployment of and adoption of IPv6. There are also various discussions regarding recovery and reuse of IPv4 address space. Most notable to this is, in several regions, there are discussions about the transfer of IPv4 addresses between individual organizations within the various regions. In the area of IPv6, there continue to be policy examinations regarding things that could be done to use the policy process to further increase the adoption of IPv6. The regional registries have spent a large amount of time and resources in outreach, reaching out to governments, businesses, and various other organizations to explain to them the importance of adopting IPv6 and also providing training in various aspects of using IPv6. This continues and will continue into the future. We do have a concern regarding the extended TLD policy of ICANN. And that is with regard to reserved labels. Attachment 11 to the TLD sponsorship agreement is not now being observed and fully enforced. So we are concerned about now with the expansion of gTLD -- of the gTLDs that this will get even worse. So we call upon ICANN to enforce the provisions of attachment 11 to the TLD sponsorship agreement that are published and make sure they are published, fully observed and enforced within all new as well as existing TLDs. I will say, from a standpoint of ARIN, we have had to engage persons in court to preclude them from using ARIN. The problem with using a regional registry name is that persons who are looking to go to that regional registry could end up at a wrong place and could get wrong information. And this is not the thing that you want to have if you desire to have stability in this area of the Internet operation. Another concern we have is the fidelity of WHOIS data. This is needed for peering contracts between service providers who do the routing. It is needed for the reliable use of points of contact for abuse and for technical troubleshooting. Law enforcement needs to have reliable WHOIS information so that they can carry on things -- activities such as antispam activities and furthering goals to provide for child protection activities and so forth. To that end, the regional registries are implementing a resource certification, often referred to as RPKI. This is use of a certificate to bind the number resource to a particular organization or party. It is not an attempt to control routing, and, in fact, it is not to be used that way. It's not to say that sometime in the future, once a secure routing protocol is devised by the IETF, that this certificate system could not be used to support such a system. Those persons who say that this is what is going to be happen in the near future are wrong. We -- Regarding the root authority of the RPKI, the architecture that has been designed is designed to accommodate cross-certified root authorities at each of the RIRs. And this is the configuration which is currently being implemented. That's not to say that we couldn't look to some other method of devising a root in the future. But, for the moment, we will use cross-root certifications. In the area of Internet governance, we have published, as requested, an enhanced cooperation report. We are particularly working in the area of accessibility, accessibility to our policy development processes. Currently, globally, there are thousands of people that participate in our policy development process, either through e-mail lists, attendance at meetings, or remote participation. We are working to enhance that remote participation. We are doing it through increased online, interactive activities, increased use of jabber rooms and so forth. We have also looked at and APNIC has experimented with providing focus points where people can assemble and then participate as a group in the meeting. And this is part of our goal to achieve a broad, multistakeholder participation. It's something that I will note that has increased significantly in all the regions, and will continue to do so. As the ASO, the RIRs, through the NRO, continue to support ICANN -- the ICANN model of cooperative coordination and management of the technical resources of the Internet. Statements by parties who are participating in the arena of Internet governance which call for the implementation of parallel or substitute processes outside of the ICANN model, in our opinion, are, at best, not enhancing cooperation, and at worst, they are divisive. We would hope that these efforts would cease and that these parties would work within the ICANN model to provide for beneficial and useful growth and improvement. With that, Mr. Chairman, that concludes my report. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Ray. Very interesting report. I have noted your position in relation to Chapter 11, for example and perhaps might come and see you about some further information you could present on the RPKI proposal. The issue you raise in relation to the fidelity of WHOIS is well made. And thank you for your support, your continuing support, and that of the ASO, for the ICANN model. Are there any questions of Ray in relation to ASO, address, or the matters that have come up in the report? If not, I'll move, then, to the second of our support organizations represented today, the country code name support organization. Chris Disspain is the chair of that and has already been introduced. So I'll go straight to Chris for your report, Chris. >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Thank you, Peter. I will be brief. We have spent a fair bit of time discussing IDNs. And I wanted to make it abundantly clear to everybody that foreign languages -- non-English languages, I'm sorry, on the Internet is a very complicated and difficult thing to get right. This is a road sign in wales. My mother is Welsh. And in wales, there are two languages, English and Welsh. And like Canada, the road signs and all the other signs are in both languages. And the way that it works is that local council decides what's to put on the road sign. In this case, no entry for heavy goods vehicles, residential site only. And sends it to the Welsh translation board by e-mail. And gets a response which they put up on the bottom of the sign. That response reads: "I'm away for the next 14 days and will reply when I return." [ Laughter ] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We have to be very, very, very careful. [ Laughter ] >>CHRIS DISSPAIN: We also discussed DNSsec and antiphishing at some length. DNSsec seems to have been -- is becoming, I think, embraced by more ccTLDs, especially since the discovery of the Kaminsky vulnerability. We have discussed our own processes to give us the structure we need to keep at least in part with the issue I raised in part about time. We are time-challenged. We talked about new gTLDs, but I discussed that earlier on. And, finally, we have a retiring councillor, Slobodan Markovich was appointed to the council three years ago by the Nominating Committee, and is stepping down at this meeting. We will do a formal written report, which will be posted on the Web site in the next day or so. And I'm happy to answer any questions except anyone who wants to ask me to pronounce the Welsh words at the bottom of that sign. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Chris. And a very serious point well made about how careful we need to be. Any questions of the chairman of the ccNSO? Thank you, Chris. If not, we'll move, then, to the Governmental Advisory Committee, the chairman of the Governmental Advisory Committee is ambassador Janis Karklins. Janis, a report from the GAC. >>JANIS KARKLINS: Thank you, Peter. 48 members and three observers and one invited country, Russia, participated in the meeting this time. Since GAC meetings took place with open doors, many more people passed by initially at the beginning of the GAC meeting, and at the end, there were very few observers at the back of the room. And maybe the best explanation was a judgment what I heard just by accident. One of the participants said after being present in the GAC room, said, "If that is what they are doing," meaning GAC, "Better they are doing it behind the closed doors." But, more seriously, the Governmental Advisory Committee expresses warm thanks to the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt for hosting the meeting in Cairo, and ICANN for supporting the GAC meeting. On IDN ccTLDs, what we discussed in length, the GAC welcomes the release of the draft implementation plan for the IDN ccTLD fast-track process, which represents a good basis for further discussions. The GAC considers it important to receive further information on the issues outlined in Module 7 of the draft implementation plan, including a draft text for the proposed agreement intended to determine the relationship between ICANN and potential IDN ccTLD operators. This would allow the GAC to advance its position on the issue. The GAC emphasizes that every effort should be made to avoid situations where problems regarding the formalization and finalization of agreements would prevent or delay a legitimate applicant from introducing an IDN ccTLD. In addition, the charging of fees for the IDN ccTLD fast-track process should be examined further to ensure that it does not constitute an additional difficulty for participation in this process. The GAC considers that it would be useful to have further examination of the geographic names issue associated with the implementation of the IDN ccTLD fast-track process and the new gTLD, including the proposal outlined in the ccNSO resolution of 31st October, 2007, relating to the consideration of the country and territory names in the new gTLD process. On the new gTLDs themselves, due to the late posting of the draft applicant guidebook, the GAC was not in a position to provide substantive comments at this stage. The GAC intends to provide comments, at the latest, by the next ICANN meeting in Mexico. The GAC appreciates the level of engagement intersessionally with the ICANN staff, which led to better reflection of the GAC principles on new gTLDs in the draft applicant guidebook, particularly, principles 2.2 and 2.6. As a result of this exchange, subsequent meeting with the ccNSO, the GAC became more sensitive to the potential blurring of the existing distinction between the ccTLD and gTLD namespace. Questions related to consideration of the country and territory names need to be addressed further. The GAC will continue consideration of whether the strings being meaningful representation or abbreviation of the country and territory names in any scripts or languages should not be allowed in the gTLD space until the related ccTLD policy development processes have been completed. The procedure recommended in point 2, point 7A on the GAC principles on new gTLD also need to be further considered at the Draft Applicant Guidebook. On the input to the PSC report, Mr. Chairman, in line with its communiqué of Paris meeting, the GAC has progressed in the preparation of its input to the PSC report, including on the role of governments. Unfortunately, we were not able to finalize it, and I will come back to you with a more precise information in coming days. On WHOIS, in its meeting with GNSO and the ICANN board, the board expressed disappointment that no substantive process has been made in response to its March 2007 report on its studies on use and misuse of WHOIS data. The GAC welcomed the status report by the board and asked that it be converted in a more formal, written response. The GAC also asked the board to have other ways to address the GAC's report. On DNSsec, the GAC received an informative presentation on the GAC vulnerability in DNSsec and looks forward to further engagement with SSAC on these issues. It is understood that greater interaction is responsible for generating security related standards and protocols could provide a more integrated approach on security issues. On ICANN meeting, reform proposal, the GAC input to ICANN's meeting reform proposal is attached to the communiqué. In its discussion to the board, the GAC emphasized the difficulties faced by GAC members in providing advice to ICANN on matters where documentation is only available immediately prior to ICANN meetings and only in English. On geographic regions, the GAC supports the proposal to create the communitywide working group to consider the issues raised in the ICANN geographic regions report prepared by ccNSO regions working group. On its work program for 2009, without surprise, the GAC identified the following priorities for 2009. IDN ccTLDs, including fast track. New gTLD. IPv4 to IPv6 transition. Security and stability of DNS. And evolution of ICANN. This work program is subject to review and will be adjusted as challenges arise. Mr. Chairman, we had also elections. Janis Karklins from Latvia was reelect to the position of the chair of the GAC. Mr. Bertrand De La Chapelle from France was reelected to the position of vice chair. Ms. Manal Ismail from Egypt and Mr. Jayantha Fernando from Sri Lanka were elected to the positions of vice chairs. The decision is effective from the end of the first meeting of 2009. The GAC thanks Ms. Maimouna Diop Diagne from Senegal and Mr. Bertrand De La Chapelle from France for their capacity as vice chairs for their outstanding contribution to the work of the GAC. And in conclusion, the GAC warmly thanks all those among the ICANN community who have contributed to the dialogue with the GAC in Cairo and our next meeting will take place in the period of ICANN meeting in Mexico City, Mexico. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Janis, and congratulations. Thank you. Congratulations on being reelected to the chair and thank you for continuing to serve in a difficult -- well, testing job. We appreciate your service. What an extraordinary range of activities. Thank you for that. Are there any questions of the chairman of the Governmental Advisory Committee arising from that report? If not, we will move on to the Generic Names Supporting Organization, and the chair of that is Avri Doria, who you have already met this morning. So straight to you, Avri, for a report from the GNSO. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Peter. The work that the GNSO has been doing, basically we started work on Saturday, and it had a very full schedule through until now. In fact, it continues later today. We have done extensive work on WHOIS, basically in the weekend meeting and in our public meeting. And I think to various degrees, we're optimistic about coming to sort of an initial decision on possible studies. So I think that's actually getting quite close. On gTLDs, we're still going through the report. We're working on actually understanding what our concerns are related to various areas, among others, the geographic names, costs, contractual issues, and objection processes. As I say, we're still about halfway through our detailed review of the plan, and we will be having phone calls with staff within the next couple weeks to continue that review before we then produce our comments, if there are any comments. The GNSO restructuring and improvements process has basically started in earnest a lot of work going into the details, trying to figure out how to meet the schedules that the board has created for us in terms of getting these things in place throughout the next six months and such. We have had beginning discussions on reserved names, again looking at some of the issues with single-character names at the second level, and ICANN IANA names at the second level. And basically looking at the balance between consensus policy and Rstep slash funnel processes. Nothing concrete on that, but it's just an issue we are trying to understand at this point. There are working group efforts going on in the interregistry protocol and in Fast Flux and those are coming along well. And in the Fast Flux we will have an initial report fairly soon for community consideration, for constituency consideration, and there's an intention to send it to the ccNSO as a liaison to get their viewpoints on some of the issues that are discussed in this. Speaking of liaisons with ccNSO, we have agreed with the ccNSO to establish a liaison, and we have elected Olga Cavalli as our liaison to the ccNSO for the next year. We have four serving GNSO council members leaving: Jon Bing, a NomCom appointee who was with the council for two years; Norbert Klein who was with the council for three years; and Robin Gross for four years from the NCUC; and Tom Keller from the registrar constituency. We also have four new council members we are welcoming. Terry Davis a NomCom appointee. Mary Wong and William Drake from the NCUC, and Stephane van Gelder from the registrars constituency. And that's my report. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Avri. Questions of the chair of the GNSO? I see the former chair of the GNSO wants to ask a question. This could be interesting. Bruce. >>BRUCE TONKIN: Thank you. Bruce Tonkin, former chair of the GNSO and current ICANN board member. I guess this is a comment. It's really in the sense of what's the best way for the GNSO and the GNSO council to respond to the staff work on implementation of a particular policy? And I think we have to be careful that we understand that the GNSO, with respect to new gTLDs, in many ways, developed policy principles that could get consensus support of the whole council, and then the staff have taken those and created a particular suggested implementation. Now, certainly to the extent possible, it would be great for the council as a whole to come back and say, "We as a whole council have reviewed a particular implementation detail and think it should be changed to something else." I think that would be difficult to achieve in a timely fashion. And so what I would suggest is where you don't necessarily reach agreement on a proposed change that you can at least report back to the board on the diversity of views that are being held within the GNSO council, because I think understanding a range of suggestions for improvement is often better than -- and having quick response on that would be , I think, more helpful than having to engage in a sort of three to six month process to reach agreement on one solid outcome. So I think I would just encourage that the feedback from the council, I think, can be immensely valuable on the implementation, but suggest you don't get too hung up on necessarily trying to get agreement because then you will end up with something very generic like, "We agree the price is too high" or something, as opposed to something more constructive saying, "Here are some different alternatives for how you might approach a particular cost model," or whatever. So I think getting that range of view from the council would be very valuable at this point. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Bruce. Any other questions? If not, Avri, I would like to you carry back to the GNSO, particularly its council and particularly its working group, my deep thanks for the work that followed Paris. Members of the community and the board who were in Paris will recall the relatively dire position that we had reached in relation to GNSO restructuring. And effectively, the GNSO was put on notice that if we hadn't reached a position within 30 days, serious consequences would flow. Now, the response to that was fantastic, and a huge amount of work was done by your working group and your council, ably assisted by some staff. And as a result, we are moving forward solidly now into the reconstructive phase. So please, would you carry my thanks back to that response from the GNSO. >>AVRI DORIA: Thank you, Peter. Can I -- Should I respond to Bruce's comments? And by the way, I thank you for that comment. The only thing I would say, it's sort of not "my" GNSO. And before anybody speaks to me about it being "my GNSO" or "my council." But thank you. In terms of Bruce's comment, I thank you, Bruce. In fact, I have thanked you over the last two years for the coaching that I have gotten from you as I have been working as council chair. In terms of this, I think there's probably one of two approaches that we'll take that we haven't decided on one, and one is that constituencies and individuals within the GNSO will be producing comments, and that those will be comments that go in and they will be endorsed, to some extent, by the whole council or not. The other approach that we have taken, and I think it's one that was initiated while you were on council, and perhaps by you yourself, is perhaps look at producing the comments in sort of the level method that we have done several times in working groups. There are things on which there is agreement, there are things for which there is some degree of support, and there are things that are individual viewpoints. And if it gets to that, in submitting in that sort of framework. But I certainly thank you for the comment and do agree with the sentiment that waiting for the full consensus in the GNSO on the implementation plan would be a challenge. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Avri. Let's move to the next report. One of the strengths of the ICANN model, the multistakeholder model, is the diversity and, in relation to this, it's a pleasure to note the relationship we have and the support we have from the root server community. The next report comes from ICANN's Root Server System Advisory Committee, given by Suzanne Woolf, who is the Root Server System Advisory Committee's liaison to the board. Suzanne. >>SUZANNE WOOLF: Thanks, Peter. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I will endeavor to keep this brief, while not talking too quickly for our transcription team. As most of you know, RSSAC is one of the original advisory committees to ICANN. It advises the board and the community about issues involving the operation of the DNS root name server system as well as providing a pool of operational and protocol expertise on the DNS. When I received recent activities for this update, I found that there's been little formal output from the committee in some time, which honestly, we tend to think of as a good thing. It generally means things are going smoothly. Discussion recently has been primarily in review and informal discussion to ICANN and to IANA. The topics included the technical aspects of new gTLD, including IDN, and the IANA interim trust anchor repository for DNSsec keys. We also do regular updates of operational updates on DNSsec, IPv6, Anycast deployment. The next committee meeting will be in Minneapolis on November 16, in conjunction with the IETF as we usually do. We expect a busy agenda this time with maybe a need for more formal input than we usually have, because more will impact the root zone in the near and medium term. There has been a lot going on with the new gTLD and IDN initiatives recently so we will need updates and discussions on those and we will generate formal advice and comments if there is consensus that it's called for. We also expect to be discuss being Department of Commerce Notice of Inquiry on DNSsec and in the root zone including the technical plans put forward by both ICANN and VeriSign. ICANN has also now undertaken an independent review of RSSAC, and so we expect to include the review team and an overview of that process in the meeting. Those are the highlights. I would be happy to take questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Suzanne. Are there any questions of the Root Server System Advisory Committee? Seeing none, we will move on to the next one of our technical committees, the Security and Stability Advisory Committee, currently chaired by Steve Crocker who is also their liaison to the board. Steve, a report from the Security and Stability Advisory Committee. >>STEPHEN CROCKER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. We have had a very packed agenda this week. It includes both SSAC and DNSsec activities which are under the aegis of SSAC within the ICANN arena here, which we run on a separate track. We have a series of four reports that we have presented and are published on our Web site and that represent the output of SSAC over the past few months, reports numbered 35, 34, 33, and 32, in reverse order. The impact of broadband -- impact of DNSsec on broadband routers and firewalls. Comments on the FY '09 operating plan and budget. Comments on domain name registration records and directory services. And a preliminary report on DNS response modification. We had, in addition to our own public meetings, we had interactions and meetings with the GAC, with the ALAC, with the registrar constituency, and those have been reported on separately already. We have active work underway on what we call high-value domain names and Fast Flux and DNS. With respect to DNSsec, the session was two and a half hours, very contentful, important talks on related to signing the root, reports from a number of TLD operators, including a number of ccTLDs, and reports from vendors and suppliers of services: Microsoft, Names Beyond, and so forth. The SSAC review is just getting started, and speaking personally as the original and longstanding chair, I am keen to have this as thorough and penetrating a review as possible. I think there's -- I'm pleased with the work we have done. I am also probably capable of being the most critical of our work, and I invite others to take a strong look. SSAC was created out of a general principle when -- after the events of 9/11. And over a period of time, ICANN has matured in many ways, and I think it's quite a fair process to ask whether SSAC needs to exist, and, if so, what its proper form should be. Also, on the administrative side of things, my plan is to stop being the chair the SSAC at some point in time. I have just been appointed to the board formally and tomorrow I will be seated and, in that process, will vacate, perforce, the other chair that I have been sitting in, which is liaison from SSAC. Ram Mohan, a vigorous and longstanding member -- in fact, a charter member of SSAC, will be sitting in as liaison for SSAC, and I think that will be a very strong addition to the process. Thank you very much. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Steve. Are there any questions of Steve in relation to Security and Stability Advisory Committee? Steve, I get the pleasure tomorrow of welcoming you as a new board member, which seems kind of odd, but I would like to take this opportunity formally to thank you specifically for your long and extremely diligent and valuable service as the chair of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee and as serving as its liaison to the board. Thank you very much from me personally and from the board. >>STEPHEN CROCKER: Thank you. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Which brings us to another one of the strengths of the ICANN multistakeholder model, the office of the ombudsman. The ombudsman is available to receive, investigate inquiries and complaints made by people who believe they may have been unfairly treated by some aspect of the ICANN process. The ombudsman is Mr. Frank Fowlie, and I invite Frank to give the ombudsman report. >>FRANK FOWLIE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will try my best to keep you on time. My report has been posted on the site for several days. I will be happy to answer any questions, and the only business that I have is simply to ask the corporate secretary to table my fourth annual report to the board at this meeting as is required by bylaw 5. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Wonderfully brief. I'm sure the secretary has noted that request, and the bylaws will be complied with. Otherwise, there will be a complaint to the ombudsman. >>FRANK FOWLIE: I think I would take that one into my jurisdiction and could probably predict the outcome. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Constant work generation. Thanks, Frank. Are there any questions of the ombudsman? Is that a question at the back? I have a question of that questioner. Why is that board member not sitting down here with the rest of the board? Have you done something that we need to know about, Bruce? >>BRUCE TONKIN: I sit where there's power, and power is here right now. Referring to electricity, of course. My question for the ombudsman, I'm interested to understand, we have these ICANN meetings in different locations in the word, and they are very expensive undertakings. My question is, are you getting much input from the community here when you do have these face-to-face meetings? In other words, are people taking advantage of your physical presence here to raise issues with you? And do you have see any variation geographically with the kind of response you get depending on which part of the world you are in? >>FRANK FOWLIE: Thank you, Bruce. That's actually a very interesting question. I think that there are two factors that play into that. The first factor is what is before ICANN and its discussions at the contemporary moment. There have been times when the issues before ICANN have caused a number of people to seek me out during the ICANN meetings to have discussions, and at other meetings where there have been less contentious issues before the board and the organization, the number of visits drops off. The second issue that provides background on that is the accessibility of my office to members of the community who wish to make complaints. I have made a notation in my annual report this year and recommend that my office be in much more accessible locations. Those that are aware of the office will continue to use the complaint portal and e-mail to contact me. But for those who are less informed about the institution of the ombudsman and ICANN's ombudsman specifically, if -- in my opinion, if the office is far removed from the main activities of the meeting, it makes it much more difficult for those interactions to take place. I would say in those meetings where the ombudsman's physical office has been located closer to the activities of the main group that volumes have been greater than those in other meetings where the office has been removed. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thanks, Frank. Bruce, does that answer your question? Thank you. Any other questions of the ombudsman? If not, thank you very much, Frank. And we come to the last of the current round of reports which is from our Nominating Committee, and the chair of the Nominating Committee is Hagen Hultzsch, a former board member. Pleased to welcome you back, Hagen, and a report from the Nominating Committee. >>HAGEN HULTZSCH: Thank you, Peter. And the report is called an update, but it is really the final report. If I go to the next slide, we have started our work a year ago, about a year ago in Los Angeles, and during the first face-to-face meeting, we more or less agreed on the procedures how to proceed, including confidentiality agreements and all of these issues which are a part of the Nominating Committee. So in that sense we are proud that we could run the other major task by conference calls, since we are well acquainted, to do this. And this is part of the work we have done for the year. We also have decided again to ask an outside consultant for assessment of the individuals providing us advice, which again was a change back to the procedure used when I, for example, was chosen to be member of the board. In that sense, it's a kind of new thing which also needs to be evaluated and experience must be gathered in order to provide the best possible results out of the work of the Nominating Committee. We had eventually done our work in two face-to-face meetings in Paris mid last year which resulted in the announcements which you have seen and which I will show in the slide again. If you can translate to the next slide. We had, which was kind of a success, in time, 78 statements of interest from around the world. Unfortunately, only 13 ladies against 65 men, so we have to work on this hard, out of our community. 27 came from Europe, 20 from North America, 15 from Africa, 14 from Asia-Pacific, and 2 from Latin America. Next slide. We had used, as I stated already, Ray & Berndtson for the assessment of the candidates which made our work easier and avoided that we would have to physically meet with ourselves and some of the candidates. In the end, we could use also procedures provided with the Ray & Berndtson outside mechanism for our decision process, even in Paris where some members of the Nominating Committee acquired the technology, modified it and contributed in this way to the efficiency of the Nominating Committee work. If you can go to the next slide. I have asked the finance team of ICANN to evaluate the cost we had to pay to Ray & Berndtson for this outside assessment which was $100,000, against the savings we have achieved for ICANN and for the community of all. And the numbers in total are very favorable, so in that sense, I think it was well-spent money. If you go to the next slide. You know the names. Some of them are here. Katim Touray from Africa, Steve Crocker from North America, Adam Peake from Europe, Alan Greenberg from North America, actually from Canada, Zhang Jian, and Terry Davis again from North America. I think most of them are here and you have met them. Next slide, please. One of the issues Nominating Committee stumbled into was the dual citizenship or maybe even triple citizenship issue, which created some potential problems for the rules of sitting members of the board with respect to their participation or their belonging to the five ICANN regions globally. So we, the Nominating Committee, suggested to the board to modify the criteria from citizenship to what we say the country of residence. And this is currently the process you have seen. The comments in the ICANN information. We have proposed it, and let's see what, in the end -- The country that's the residence of the individual is the criteria. If you go to the next slide. There were some considerations, when we started our work, we asked the chairs of each of the constituencies about their needs for the seatings and also some background thoughts and so on. That was well done and helped us significantly. At the end there were some, let's say, considerations about the seatings we had provided. So this, from my point of view, will result in, let's say, developing more thoughts on how to best distribute people not only in the board but also in the other councils so that we really generate global presence, that's actually an issue which we will discuss later today or so. If you go to the next slide. That's finished. Thank you so much. Mr. Chairman. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Hagen. I just moved so people could see you, I'm sorry, I'm blocking away. Thank you for an excellent detailed report and thank you for the work in producing the candidates for all those slots in the ICANN structure. Are there questions of Hagen? I see Jean-Jacques Subrenat, Mr. Subrenat, s'il vous plâit. >>JEAN-JACQUES SUBRENAT: I just had a small question about what you termed "dual citizenship." Is it really in every case dual citizenship which is at question or can it be a discrepancy between citizenship and residence? >>HAGEN HULTZSCH: Yeah, actually, that's what was our concern. Let's assume there's one area. Let's assume Europe has five people in the board, and we would like to have somebody from Asia Pacific to join the board because of experience and talent and so on, and this lady or gentleman would live in, let's assume, Australia. And if he had another citizenship in Europe which happens more and more frequent, then he couldn't do so because his dual citizenship -- let's assume Australia and Europe -- would apply and he could not be seated. And that's why we recommend that the area where he lives, the domicile is the criterium, so if he says he's domiciled in Australia, it would not matter if he has a dual citizenship in Europe. That's a consideration. I hope that answered your question. >>PETER DENGATE THRUSH: Thank you, Hagen. We're going to have to close the session now, and we're going to have a short break. And I would like you to come back at no later than 11:00. This is an historic event. We will be hearing for the first time from the secretary-general of the ITU. So we'll take a break now. No, there's no further questions. No, I'm closing it off at this stage and declaring a break. We are going to pick up the public forum after this. So a short coffee break, please come back. And when we come back, I would invite board members to be seated at the board table, at the board seats. Thank you, see you back here at 11:00. [ Break ]