Transcript
>>HEATHER DRYDEN: Good morning, everyone. Let's get started. Welcome to this capacity building session. I'm just going to say a few words now to welcome you. And then I'm going to hand over to Alice to run the session. And let me begin by thanking all of you that contributed to the preparation for this meeting today. I know a lot of work and thought went into it, and it's very much appreciated. I understand that we do have interpretation starting this morning. So we have interpretation -‐-‐ French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian is being added at this meeting. So please feel free to take advantage of that. The materials you have in front of you are for the whole day's program. So the pieces that we'll be referring to today, first of all, you have the GAC daily agenda. So, if you look at the first item, GAC capacity building, that gives you the agenda that we're following for this morning. And then you have a book of materials which Alice may wish to say more about. But that have been compiled as well to support us in this session. So without any further delay, I will hand over to you. Please, Alice. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much, Heather. And good morning, everybody. Before we begin, I'd like to ask for a quick round of introductions, perhaps starting from the right there, please. Thank you. >>MACEDONIA: Good morning, everyone. My name is Saso Dimitrijoski. And I'm representative from Macedonia. >>TURKEY: Good morning. This is Ihsan Durdu from Turkey, the GAC representative from Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications. Thank you. >> Good morning. (Saying name.) >>BOLIVIA: Good morning. My name is (Saying name.) I represent the Society for the Development of Bolivia. >>URUGUAY: I am Jose Clastornik. I am the director of the Agency for the Society of Information in Uruguay. >>PARAGUAY: (Saying name.) I represent the presidency of Paraguay, science, technology and advisory. >>CANADA: Good morning. I'm Kathryn Reynolds from Canada.
>>CANADA: Good morning. Kathy Fischer from Canada representing the Department of Ministry. Thank you. >>UGANDA: Good morning. Ambrose Ruyooka from Uganda. >>SENEGAL: Good morning. I'm (saying name.) I'm from Senegal. >>UNITED STATES: Good morning. Suzanne Radell from the United States. >>SWEDEN: I'm Maria Hall, and I work for the Swedish Ministry of Enterprise, Energy and Communications. And I'm one of the three vice chairs of the GAC. Thank you. >>KENYA: Good morning. I'm Alice Munyua from Kenya, one of the GAC vice chairs. >>AUSTRALIA: Good morning, everyone. Peter Nettlefold from Australia from the Department of Communications. >>AUSTRALIA: Good morning. I'm Samantha Stebbings also from Australia, representing the Australian Federal Police. >>SINGAPORE: Good morning. I'm Choon-‐Sai Lim from Singapore, one of the vice chairs of GAC. >>COSTA RICA: Good morning. My name is Carlos Gutierrez from Costa Rica. Welcome. >>UNITED KINGDOM: Good morning, everybody. My name is Mark Carvell from the U.K. government, Department for Culture, Media and Sport. >>EGYPT: Good morning. My name is Manal Ismail from Egypt. >>ECUADOR: Good morning. My name is Mario Ortega from Ecuador representing the Minister of Telecommunication and Information Society. >> Bonjour. [speaking foreign language] I am responsible for the government of Uganda -‐-‐ Cameroon. >>COMOROS: I'm from Comoros. I'm from the national authority for relations in this country.
>>GINGER PAQUE: I'm from DiploFoundation. I'm not on the GAC. >> Good morning. (Saying name) from the African (dropped audio.) >>AUSTRIA: Good morning, everybody. I'm Christian Singer from Austria. >>PARAGUAY: Would you please correct the transcript. It says -‐-‐ I'm from Paraguay. My friend here is from Uruguay. I'm from Paraguay. >>ALICE MUNYUA: I'll just run through the agenda. We're going to be looking at a brief introduction to ICANN, the background, looking at the multistakeholder model, ICANN constituencies and, of course, the role of GAC within ICANN and with other constituencies as well. And then look at the current issues and priorities that are going to be dealt with during this Costa Rican session. But that doesn't stop us from discussing other issues. But we're careful to discuss the issues that are going to be on the table during this Costa Rican session. So, if we have time, you're all welcome to actually ask questions on other issues that the GAC is dealing and working on. I would like to thank Jeannie for having prepared a very comprehensive package here, introduction to ICANN for the Government Advisory Committee for new members. And also for those of us who have been with ICANN for a while, it's actually quite a good resource. Just going through it, the table of contents, what is ICANN? Again, the multistakeholder model, the structure, the strategic plan, which is an important document -‐-‐ ICANN document as well. You know, understanding the ICANN's policy development processes, which can sometimes be a bit complicated. But I hope, during the introduction, Suzanne or Mark will go through that quickly and linking it to how, then, we can make sure that we take them back home to our capitals. The new gTLD program and initiative, an introduction to the domain name system. And the affirmation of commitment kind of places the GAC in a different space. And then the IANA and its procedures and GAC's operating -‐-‐ GAC documents, the operating principles and the joint working group, final working group, which Manal is going to be touching on. And the last communique, the Dakar communique. Without much ado, I think I'd like to introduce the first speaker to this session, Mark Carvell, who will take us through the ICANN background. Mark, please. Thank you. >>MARK CARVELL: Thanks very much, Alice. Yeah. I'll give a few facts and figures and a few sort of personal reflections on ICANN and why we are here and why the GAC is important.
"The Economist" publication said ICANN is in many ways a completely new institutional animal, a fairly colorful reflection on ICANN and its place in the global landscape of Internet governance. And it's true. In the 15 years or so that I've been working international ICT policy, there's really nothing quite like ICANN and its meetings. And it can seem a very daunting prospect engaging with ICANN. It is a big organization. And it's getting bigger. No doubt about it. Revenues increased from $18 million in 2005 to 66 million in 2010. It's a not for profit organization, but it's generating a lot of revenues and surface. The staffing numbers are increasing, going up from I think 125 to about 143 this year. Its budget is increasing by about 10% per annum. So it's an organization going through a number of changes and certainly an expanding one. And the GAC has an important role to play in it as a multistakeholder organization, that's one of its primary unique aspects. We're here to advise on policy. Sometimes, actually, to get involved in helping to develop some policy. And we'll no doubt talk about that role later on. New joiners are coming at a time when ICANN is engaged in a major initiative, quite controversial initiative. The expansion in the number of new generic top-‐level domains. It's an initiative that's rolling out quite late, certainly later than many had expected. It threw out quite a lot of difficult issues, difficult challenges. And there are its critics. It's quite a divisive initiative in many ways. ICANN, the board, and many stakeholders and us in governments have always gone along with the initiative as one that could achieve greater competition, competition for dot com and dot net, in particular, and innovation. One of the problems for us is that we never really saw a clear explication of that. There is no current economic or market analysis of the generic top-‐level domains initiative, but a kind of trust that this was going to deliver benefits. So the supporters have endorsed it for those reasons. And the critics simply say that this is just another opportunity to make more money for the registries and for ICANN itself, that it's a complete scam. You know, some of the commentaries you see in the blogs just see this as -‐-‐ the gTLD initiative as really a very opportunistic one for businesses. So it's quite a contentious initiative. It's very high profile. It's got a lot of media coverage and so on. So you're joining at a time when all of this is going on at the highest level involving all stakeholders. And, if you look back over the history of it, you'll see that the GAC got heavily committed in some of the public policy aspects of that -‐-‐ of this initiative. There was a lot of work for us. And we had a lot of support from other stakeholders in what we were trying to achieve in respect to the public policy issues -‐-‐ right to protection, security and stability and so on.
So it's -‐-‐ and it's a big meeting here. There may be up to a thousand people turning up. Who are they? Well, it's a multistakeholder entity. So you'll see people from the registries, from both the country code registries -‐-‐ and no doubt some of you have been consulting your national registries about ICANN issues as they impact on the country codes -‐-‐ but also, of course, the generics and also those applicants seeking to establish new generic top-‐level domains. They're here, too. There will be lobbying going on and so on. There will be technical experts here. There will be people from civil society although, as I'll make comment later on, the level of civil society participation here is not one that gives great comfort, given that this is a multistakeholder entity. But there will be people from the civil society. There will be academics and journalists, press, and so on. So it's a great coming together of people from all walks of life, people who are directly engaged in the Internet and the domain name system and its evolution. After two or three meetings you'll start to recognize some familiar faces from amongst all these stakeholders. There are people who have been attending, even I think some have attended every ICANN meeting since it was established. What is that? 12, 13 years ago. So you'll start to see some familiar faces. The challenge is to remember who they are. But, again, I think it's -‐-‐ the GAC -‐-‐ and, well, ICANN, as a community, actually, is performing better in terms of the level of interaction amongst these stakeholder groups. I remember when I first came to an ICANN meeting, it was the meeting in New Delhi. It was complete turbulence, my impression from that meeting. Every session that I sort of walked into -‐-‐ and sometimes I wasn't even sure who they were and what was going on. It was very difficult to work out the dynamics of the ICANN meeting. But it seemed like every session there was argument and friction, and it seemed a very fractious environment to work in. But that was -‐-‐ what was that? About three years ago. 3, 4 years ago. I think it's a bit different now. There's a lot more interaction and communication and consultation. And that fosters greater understanding of different positions and cross-‐community working. And we're starting to see that with the GAC itself. The GAC is now almost wholly working in open session. So stakeholders can come along and hear us in our discussions. We have joint working opportunities with other parts of the ICANN family with the -‐-‐ for example, the generic name supporting organization. We have some joint working activities. And we meet with those other organizations. And one of the papers that's just been circulated, this one, Introduction to ICANN Structure is not in the book yet. I hope -‐-‐ I wrote it, so I don't know. If people feel it's good enough, it may actually go into the book which Jeannie has put together.
But my aim for this paper was really to help you navigate around this community and all the supporting organizations, advisory committees and stakeholder groups and committees and so on. There's a real plethora of activity involving all these different groupings and entities within the ICANN family. And I get more comfort now that working across the community, breaking out of silos and engaging and discussing is now undertaken in a much more constructive way. And this will have, potentially, very positive impacts on how policy is developed within the ICANN organization. It's a bottom-‐up entity. So the policy initiatives will start with the stakeholders, with the GNSO, the generic names where you've got all the registry interests wanting to develop policy. And that's -‐-‐ they were the drivers of new gTLDs. It was bottom-‐up. Eventually -‐-‐ after consultations and publications and interaction, eventually, it will go up to the board. And then it will be for the board to approve and implement the policy and then coordinate with the staff. ICANN staff, on the whole, has been very positive for us in the GAC, I think. We haven't always gotten what we wanted; but they've always appreciated the need for information for briefings, for updates that the GAC needs to have to empower it to engage and also crucially to start constructing its advice for submission to the board. I was worried when I joined. I thought, oh, this is a very technical area. Domain name system. I mean, I'm just -‐-‐ I'd used the Internet, and it's part of working life and as well as personal life. Do I need to get a deep knowledge of this? I'm not an engineer. I'm a government policy maker. And I think I can reassure you on that score, really, that you don't need to develop a deep knowledge of the system, the technicalities of the system. And the way the GAC handles the more sort of technical issues is in such a way that is pretty much in layman's terms and it's -‐-‐ the policy aspects readily emerge. And we saw that in the work we did on root scaling with regard to the new gTLDs program. Because there we thought, hang on, is this system actually going to sustain itself with the prospect of 20 gTLDs increasing to a 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000? Technically, is the system (dropped audio) -‐-‐ massive increase? So we had discussions about that. But we didn't need to go into the very technical level. And the advice we got from technical experts and from the staff and other stakeholders was mostly in the way that could be readily understood. And, as I say, the policy aspects became very visible. And we were able to engage and articulate our views on root scaling and ask for the right kind of reports and so on. So you can easily, I think, reach a kind of level of comfort with regard to the technical aspects of what ICANN is. And ICANN is a technical -‐-‐ has a technical mission to safeguard the system of unique identifiers which determine how the Internet works and is accessible and how communication across the web and so on is conducted. So why is this a multistakeholder organization then? You know, why shouldn't governments have a stronger controlling role in this organization? Well, that's a
policy issue which is a very live one. We're going to see it be thoroughly examined over the next few months with various conferences and events happening which will scrutinize the performance of ICANN and how the multistakeholder model engages. I think -‐-‐ I mean, ICANN's record is very strong, very positive since it's been charged with managing and coordinating the system. There's never been a major failure. A few near misses with certain registries, but there's never been a collapse of a registry or part of the system. It's still a unified system. It is -‐-‐ it's not -‐ -‐ there's no risk at this time of it breaking up and you having parallel domain name systems. There's no prospect of that. There's always speculation about, you know, what might happen and whether that might be one course for the future. But ICANN's record is pretty good. So ICANN's mission hasn't really changed over the years. The system was very well-‐designed from the start in very early enterprising days of the Internet. We still have that system. And it's proved a remarkably resilient design, the domain name system. And ICANN's mission to coordinate at the global level the system and ensure it's stable and secure -‐-‐ it operates in a way which is stable and secure, remains the key mission of this organization. And it's serving the global community. I think its record is good in that respect as well. The key thing is that the dynamics of the Internet and the evolution of the system should really be still led by the private sector. They are the people who understand the system and how it can evolve and how it serves the community across the globe when the Internet has expanded so rapidly. I think, if governments were trying to do it, it probably wouldn't have resulted in the same way. And we'd have a very different Internet. And we wouldn't have the range of applications which have sprung up, like social networking, so quickly and so rapidly if governments were taking all the decisions. So the technical functioning of the Internet has been, I think, safeguarded by the organization. And, generally, it works pretty well. You could argue that ICANN has moved beyond purely technical coordination into the area of content regulation. And I guess that most obviously appeared when, in one of the previous very limited rounds of applications for new gTLDs, you had to propose an adult content top-‐level domain, the dot xxx. That episode, which was a very long episode, and the GAC were heavily involved in that -‐-‐ showed that ICANN was starting to become a bit unstuck, because it was starting to take decisions which might really be described as one of content regulation. You had an applicant saying, you know, we want to provide adult material. ICANN had to take a decision on whether to agree to that proposal.
>>HEATHER DRYDEN: Sorry to interrupt you, Mark. In the interest of time, yeah, we might need to move to the next session, yes. >>MARK CARVELL: So I guess my message is the GAC is very important. It's part of the internationalization of the organization. We've got 110 member countries. We're here to make the system work. The U.K. government has always endorsed the system. And the role here, as members of the GAC, is to contribute to the policy processes through advice, consulting, and engaging the stakeholders. You got the strategy for ICANN in the book. So I was going to talk a bit about that. But it's in the book, so I'll wrap up there. Thanks. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much. Open the floor for any additional comments or questions before we move to the next session. Any comments? Yes, please. >>SENEGAL: Thank you, Alice. I will speak in French. Thank you very much for this brief introduction that we have received about ICANN. And especially -‐-‐ and this is addressed to the non-‐members -‐-‐ I would like to pinpoint what was said at the beginning about the fact that ICANN is a new animal in the world. All of us who are international organizations find it hard to find a place here. And I'm going to share my experience with you, an experience with ICANN, actually, in relation to what we saw at the previous meeting. For us as government, it's just important to try and understand. Because it's not easy to understand that ICANN is a private organization, a nonprofit and also a North American organization. And we need to highlight this. It's a North American organization. Even when there are 110 different countries that -‐-‐ 110 countries that are part of ICANN, ICANN is a North American organization in its organization itself. And let me go back to this Dakar experience that I shared. Because we had agreed on a number of things. But we had not taken into account that it is a North American organization. But the consequence of that was that there were many issues in the organization of ICANN's meeting. Why is that? Because, locally, when we organize an ICANN meeting, there are a number of commitments and responsibilities. Of course, we tried to engage a number of internal bodies and also private organizations, civil society, and so on. The fact remains that we find many difficulties; because, when we launched the organization three months before in the presence of ICANN's staff, they have not clarified for us that the U.S. law had blacklisted a number of countries and, if these countries were interested in our country, it was also applied to our countries. We had agreed on the fact that, while one Senegalese organization sponsored this, acknowledged by Senegal law, in the very last minute before the meeting we got a letter from ICANN saying that, by applying U.S. law, we were prevented from using
the Senegalese organization logo which was involved in sponsoring this in the organization support material. And I don't know whether you're aware of the huge amount of work. And they're going to scan all the communication supports. And at the very last minute we get this information that tells us that we have to get the logo out from some of the documents. And it was an enormous work. We were forced to stop -‐-‐ >>ALICE MUNYUA: Maia, I'm sorry to interrupt you. We don't have much time -‐-‐ >>SENEGAL: I understand. But I think it's important for newcomers to see what kind of organization we are inside. I think it is a workshop for newcomers to take advantage of our experience. And I think it's important to share with the newcomer what we have as hosts of previous ICANN meeting. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Okay. Then may I respectfully and kindly ask you to be brief. >>SENEGAL: Yes, just two minutes on this. As I was saying before -‐-‐ excuse me for having used all this time. Despite the fact that we are going to an internationalization of ICANN, ICANN is still, whatever you say, a U.S. organization. And we are part of their efforts. Because, if we don't appear, the decisions will be made without our input. And that's why we're here. But, GAC wise, and after everything that has been said about the new acknowledgment of commitments, we need to work for the voices of governments to be heard and to make ICANN a real international organization. Thank you very much. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Comments or questions before we move on? Yes, Heather. >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Thank you very much, Alice. If I could just make a suggestion that, for the rest of the program, we focus on presenting information about how things are structured and so on and, respecting the fact that members do have their own views. And they should be able to express those. But, if we can first deal with the material. And then we can, you know, have an opportunity to express some views. I'm sure newcomers will have questions about all kinds of aspects of the organization. And let's address those, then, perhaps a bit later. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, Heather. Yes, I'd like to emphasize that, if we can focus on the introduction session and actually looking at introducing the areas, then we can have an open discussion about, you know, members' views later. So I would like to call upon Suzanne for the next session, please. Thank you.
>>SUZANNE RADELL: Thank you, Alice. And thank you, Mark and Manal, for your previous comments. I think I shouldn't probably present myself this way. But I think I'm understood as one of the old timers. So Alice thought it would be useful if I shared a little bit of my experience and the steep learning curve that I felt I walked into at my very first meeting. It was October 2003 in Carthage, Tunisia. And I think the biggest challenge I had day one -‐-‐ so I'd be interested to hear from our new colleagues -‐-‐ was the acronyms. I honestly could not get my hands around the GNSO and the ccNSO and the ASO and blah, blah. I thought oh, my God. The GAC -‐-‐ it's quite an unfortunate acronym. GAC. I mean, it sounds quite ugly. But we're so fundamentally important. It is what we are stuck with. But I think we have made it far more attractive than it sounds, because of the ability we have. What I find so truly valuable about our GAC meetings is the opportunity for us to meet face-‐to-‐face and to exchange our national perspectives and to work from that to shared positions. And, in my 8 1/2 years, I think the GAC has done an enormously successful job of actually arriving at consensus. But, of course, most of us have grown up, if you will, as civil servants who operate in the international community. We know how to interact with one another. What I think has been an interesting evolution, in my experience in these 8 1/2 years, is the GAC sort of helping to explain itself to the rest of this community and having the community better understand who the GAC is and the important role we play. And I think we have seen an enormous change over time. We may have been our own worst enemy way back when. As Mark alluded to, the GAC used to meet in closed session. So there were no other interests in the room. So apparently there would be people standing outside the door sort of waiting with bated breath to see the GAC communique, because that was the only communication we sent to the community. And if you go back and read some of the old ones you would think, oh, boy, what was the fuss? We were simply sort of coordinating our own views. So over time, as these issues became, frankly, more challenging -‐-‐ this is not an easy portfolio, I think. I don't know, some of you may have come from the world that I used to live in. I used to do what I call hard-‐core telecom. So I did accounting rate reform and submarine cable landing licenses and stuff like that, and then I worked on standards, so technical standards and regulatory policy. And when I came back to NTIA, they said please do this ICANN stuff. I said okay. And when you jump in the deep end, it truly does feel. So I would be curious to know what some of our new members feel. You really do feel a little bit at sea because it's just all so different.
What I think we have accomplished over the past eight years is opening our doors, engaging with the different parts of the community. And it's a large community. So I don't know what your responsibilities are, but for my agency, I have to cover all of ICANN. So it isn't just the GAC. If my assistant secretary wants to understand a board decision or what the Nominating Committee is, that's me. So it takes quite a bit of time. It takes quite a bit of energy. But I think over time, the more open we have been, we have actually been able to forge better working relations with the rest of the community. One of the challenges we've identified for ourselves that I believe the Accountability and Transparency Review Team also identified is the way we are structured under the bylaws. So there are pluses to that structure, because in a way, we are the first among equals. So we are an advisory committee. However, when and if the board decides it cannot accept our advice, it has to try to come and resolve that disagreement. And if they still cannot, then it has to explain why not. Nobody else benefits from that structure. The complication, if you will, is that we are structured to give advice to the board. So the problem is we do that. How does the board get it back down to the rest of the community who are engaging in these policy development processes? And I have to say the material Jeannie and Mark put together is really, really valuable. The first time I heard PDP, I didn't know what it meant and when you try to understand the rules you think, oh, Lord, I am never going to get this. This is the most difficult thing I have ever seen. Probably -‐-‐ This is probably impolitic for me to say, but I will. We are among friends. I think the GNSO structure is one of the more complicated things I have ever been exposed to, and it may well change with new gTLDs. You are going to have a lot of new registries, there will be new registrars, there will be potentially a large number of brands at the top level. So all of these countries are going to be registries. So I think the structure will change, and maybe that -‐-‐ we can help inform that change so that we can engage differently. What I think has been very, very positive about the GAC is because we're not a formal -‐-‐ we're not structured like an IGO, which most of us are familiar with. We're rather informal. You see we don't have name plates. It's an easier way to engage. We don't come with sort of prepared speeches. We come with prepared national positions, of course. But it's a lot more of a give-‐and-‐take, which I think is invaluable because we have to kind of move a little more quickly than some of the more highly
structured meetings that we otherwise would go to at OECD or WIPO or ITU. They're kind of structured. While we have structure here, we have a lot of flexibility as well. And I think that has held us in good stead that we good shift gears. I think we have introduced some innovation into the ICANN world by reaching out directly to the GNSO, to engage on our GAC law enforcement recommendations to amend the RAA, which I know we will get to in a minute. When we adopted a position to protect the International Olympic Committee and the Red Cross, Red Crescent names, we wrote a proposal. The board accepted part it have and then asked us to go work with the GNSO. We are now doing that, and it's familiar territory for us, I think, and it's unfamiliar for the GNSO. So it's a learning curve. But I think we have some previous models that we have shared with the board that worked very well. ccNSO. I am looking at Manal. She will speak to this issue. And maybe because we all have a CC, we are a little more comfortable with one another. I think our CCs understand governments, perhaps, differently than the GNSO community. So they have been fairly practical, and when we collaborated on the IDN fast-‐track policy, it was an extremely productive way to develop policy. You did it jointly. Instead of them doing something in a silo and presenting it to the GAC and we would have to say, oh, this is actually not helpful, or inconsistent with our laws or our policies. So I think we are moving steadily in that direction of more joint collaborative work, which I think yields a better outcome. So the GAC, its role, and I will defer to the chair, of course, but our role has steadily evolved and we play a very critical role. My government certainly supports this multistakeholder model, and my assistant secretary has attached an enormous amount of importance to the role of the GAC. So he was a member of the Accountability and Transparency Review Team, and there are those five recommendations, as you know, that pertain to us. And I think it's really, really important that -‐-‐ and we're meeting with, of course, our board counterparts to keep improving our role and to keep reaching out and informing this process. So I won't belabor that, but I thought, if you might find it helpful, I have seen a change domestically also in the way my agency has prepared for these meetings.
So quite candidly in the early days when I was doing this, there wasn't a lot of understanding inside many federal agencies as to what this thing was and what it worked on and if we were just advisors. We're just sort of looking and making sure nothing horrible happens; right? The DNS should not collapse. I think over time, certainly as they began to develop -‐-‐ well, the IDN policy was critical to all of us -‐-‐ new gTLDs, WHOIS data, all of these things we began to say these really resonate. So our first attempts were to develop high-‐level principles. Well, now, as you can see, if you look at the GAC scorecard we developed for new gTLDs, we have moved a long way from principles, which are excellent because they help guide us all, they are framework, but we are getting down into very specific issues relating to law enforcement, stopping criminal activity or minimizing it, protecting consumers from fraud or -‐-‐ that's quite helpful to this process. I like to think of it -‐-‐ and don't ever mean to offend them but sometimes I might, when we meet with the GNSO I say, "You civilians," we need to help you understand why we care so strongly about this, and we will continue to ask for certain improvements because it's important to us nationally. Because we're on the hook. We're here to guide this process. But domestically, we're all held responsible for making sure -‐-‐ we do inform the policy process appropriately. So I've seen our interagency process has steadily expanded over the years. We have about -‐-‐ we just had a meeting last week to prepare for this meeting, and there must have been 25 people in the room representing maybe 18 agencies, which is a lot. And I will tell you, as we start to prepare for the new gTLD early warning, we realize that we will have to reach out -‐-‐ and I confess, personally, I have no idea how many federal U.S. agencies there really are, but there are a lot. And so I am learning that we're going to have to go probably through the White House, Office of Management and Budget, which knows everybody, and send a message to every single agency that you would think wouldn't even have an interest. Health and Human Services. Veterans Affairs. Well, they might have an equity, depending on the strings. So we're now reaching out to every single federal agency to say heads up. There's this thing called new gTLDs. All of these strings are going to be posted on X date, and we have 60 days to collaborate and develop an assessment whether any of them are inconsistent with national law, raise a sensitivity. We also have realized we have to reach out to our states. There are several of them that have already come to us, so they have some very attentive -‐-‐ it's often the chief information officer in a particular state. They are very attentive. Some of them have
already contacted us to say, "What is this thing, new gTLDs? I'm worried about my state name. I may even want to spend the money to get my name." I'm not sure anybody really has that, but -‐-‐ So we're finding our domestic outreach has had to broaden. And I can tell you, sometimes it's challenging. You get different agencies with different perspectives, and we have to strike a balance. Plus, as the Department of Commerce, we feel strongly that our largest constituents are business, industry. So we coordinate, and we try to strike a balance. So I just thought I would throw that out. I imagine everybody here goes through a very similar activity. It can be very challenging, but by the time we get here, I sort of feel like we have been through every possible angle you could debate, and I feel very confident by the time I get here that, yeah, we have really looked at this from every possible angle. So I did just want to say I think -‐-‐ I'm so pleased to see so many members here. We have been steadily doing that. I think Maimouna's meeting in Dakar also drew a lot of new faces, which is extremely helpful because that's how we get stronger. The more of us, I think, we have at the table with this opportunity to talk and compare notes and arrive at joint positions, the better the GAC is. So why don't I stop there. I just thought I would share a little bit of personal experience and open to any questions. Thank you. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, Suzanne, and thank you, Mark, as well. I would like us to go straight on to the role of GAC which is presented by Heather, and she will touch on the AoC and all the other aspects as well. Heather, please. >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Thank you very much, Alice. Good morning again, everyone. So to come back to some of the basics about the Governmental Advisory Committee and how it is structured and how we conduct our work and where it fits within the organization. We have over 100 members within the committee, and they are governments and public authorities, and we also have observers in the GAC, and they are usually intergovernmental organizations. So we have quite a large committee, and it's growing. And as my U.S. colleague pointed out, it's really important that we continue to strengthen the GAC by having representation from all the regions and being able to draw upon the experience and expertise and such in the formulation of the advice of the committee.
So the committee is part of the bylaws of ICANN, so this means we are part of the overall structure. However, we do have our own operating principles and we are an independent committee. So in that sense, yes, it is unusual from other arrangements that you're probably more familiar with. Representatives from GAC members and observers are usually public servants with expertise in telecommunications, ICTs, Internet policy, those kinds of related cases, but in some cases the GAC members are represented by the foreign ministry as well. So we have a variety. We have some ministries, and in some cases some regulators have responsibilities for this organization. So the GAC formulates advice based on the global public interest, which is what we ask ICANN to take into account in making its decisions. And governments are very well placed to determine and represent what is the public interest in their respective jurisdiction and from their perspective. So this speaks to the way that the GAC works. We work toward consensus wherever possible, and if we are able to formulate consensus advice, this allows us to communicate as clearly as possible a GAC view to the board, whom we formally advise. And this is also in the bylaws. Our advice is communicated to the Board. But of course it's of relevance to other parts of the community as well. And we're also communicating to other parts of the community at the same time as we determine and issue that advice. So the GAC is growing, and this makes it a challenge as well to formulate consensus in this environment, because one of the ways that the GAC is really different from other intergovernmental organizations is that -‐-‐ pardon me -‐-‐ is that the policy development process is driven elsewhere. So in the context you're familiar with, governments will come together, they will determine what they're going to discuss, and it's up to them to progress their work and so on. But in this kind of model, where the policy questions are raised elsewhere in the organization, where the processes are initiated elsewhere, then it means that this committee has to be able to track and follow issues happening elsewhere and be able to conduct its development advice with enough speed and clarity that we are able to be effective as part of this model. And that's a challenge. We're always trying to balance that. So we move as quickly as we can because we need to be responsive to other parts of the organization. But at the same time, we know that it takes time to build consensus.
And as the committee grows, then it will take more time as well, for that reason, the more members we have in the committee. I believe Mark from the U.K. talked about the openness of the sessions, which is really an important feature for the GAC so that we can allow for this information to be communicated across the organization with other parts of the community. There is a chair and three vice chairs that are elected to run the committee, and we try to have representation from various regions. And -‐-‐ Ah, yes. GAC advice comes in various forms. I believe Suzanne mentioned that we issue a communique at each of our face-‐to-‐face meetings. And the communique contains, really, two kinds of information. So in that we have advice, and that's negotiated text. So at the end of this week, when the GAC meetings end on Wednesday, we will focus on the communique, finalizing the communique. And the advice is going to be the focus of that effort. We also have records of meetings, because we meet with other parts of the community through the week, and we identify what are the current topics, and then we try to reflect that as well in our communique. There may be particular issues that we want to highlight that we discuss with those parts of the community. There may be, you know, efforts to coordinate on something and that kind of thing. So we'll reflect that in the communique. We also will issue letters intersessionally, and we don't do that a great deal because we really work most effectively face to face. And this is a challenge for us; again, when we're trying to move quickly enough that we can be commenting early to other parts of the organization as part of the policy development process, that GAC advice can be considered and taken into account early. I believe my colleagues were talking about some of the specific issues that have come up, and if you are trying to have a change in a policy much later in the process, it's much more difficult. And so this is what we're trying to work towards as part of this community, is how to make that work a bit more smoothly. So those are the prime forms of advice. And it's written advice as well. Sometimes we're asked about what we consider to be advice because we meet with the board and we meet with different parts of the community, and if we're having verbal communication, that's not formal GAC advice, as outlined in the bylaws. So that's a brief introduction about the Governmental Advisory Committee. Does anyone have any questions about the committee and about how it operates? Canada, please.
>>CANADA: Thank you, Chair. Could you also provide us with -‐-‐ give us a sense of the structure as to how GAC advances its work in terms of the leadership that some members will take to advance a particular issue? And how that is structured, how we work through that. And the reason why I ask that is because I note from the agenda that we're going to be talking about those specific issues. So I think it would be good to provide some context in terms of how was that -‐-‐ how did we arrive at that structure and so on. It just provides further context for new members who have participated. Thank you. >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Thank you. That's a good question. So within the GAC, as I mentioned, we do have this complexity to deal with of the range of issues. So we have to identify which are the priority issues. We could not possibly comment on every public comment that the organization puts out to the community. And not every issue is critical, really, from a governmental perspective. So we try to identify those key issues. And then there are usually members that have a particular interest in it, and that are willing to come forward and help lead development of a GAC view, and also to help share information. So it's a very useful mechanism for a GAC member to be able to indicate to the committee the latest developments or "Here's the process," and so the GAC will need to comment by such a date and so on and so forth. And then this would feed into a GAC so it can be clear for colleagues what are the topics under discussion; who may be -‐-‐ if there's a small group that wants to carry on work and then bring it back to the committee, then you can see quite readily who is advancing that as a group; and then the relevant deadlines and so on. And this really helps us to manage our work. So we often talk about the volunteer aspect of ICANN. And the other communities work in very much the same way, where they look to those that have a particular interest and are willing to come forward to lead the work. And so this is a challenge as well, but it, as I say, helps us to be more efficient and ensure that we're covering all the issues that we need to. We will talk a bit, I think, about the Accountability and Transparency Review Team, but the issues that are being dealt with, led by Manal from Egypt as well as one of the board members, really deals with a lot of these kinds of issues. How do you get the process working so that we're being asked for advice when -‐-‐ you know, when there's something that is of relevance to the committee, so that we know, so that we're alerted to it. And how do we track that we're -‐-‐ that we've provided a response and what happens with it, that kind of thing.
So Tracy, please. >> What is the role of the GAC in the situation where this ends up being taken at ICANN for the world in terms of informing countries who are not actually on the GAC or informed of what the GAC is doing? So the new gTLD process, the dot XXX, et cetera. Does the GAC have a role to play in reaching out to those countries and say what is happening or is it something that we wait to see what happens thereafter? >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Thank you for the question. I will try to answer. If it's an ICANN decision, then -‐-‐ and something like the new gTLD program, then they are responsible for doing communications and outreach. GAC members, in that case, may wish to undertake effort in their own jurisdiction to raise awareness among their own stakeholders if they think it's useful to do so. But because it's really an ICANN program, then we have looked to them to conduct that outreach as an organization. So in that case, that's how that has been addressed. Mark, U.K? >>UNITED KINGDOM: Yes, thank you, Heather. I just wanted to come in to endorse what you said about the usefulness of burden sharing through volunteering to lead on taking forward specific issues. It's very -‐-‐ it's very important for the GAC to be able to work in that way, I think, but in a way which is open. I mean, from my experience, usually there are two or three GAC colleagues who will lead on the topic. One of them will (garbled audio) and manage the reporting back to the whole committee, either through the GAC list or at face-‐to-‐face meetings, so everybody on the committee is aware of what the particular group of GAC members is doing and can contribute and can join the team. So it's a very open process, and nobody should feel inhibited from joining those little -‐-‐ those sort of subgroup efforts. It's very important to do that, and not to rely on one person, because we all have other elements to our work dossiers back in capitals and it can be quite a challenge for one person to lead on topic. So messages really do help with sharing the burden, and the variety of input of expertise enriches the way which the GAC can work. So, yeah. Thanks. >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Thank you for sharing that.
So the primary work of the committee is to provide advice related to the coordination of the names and numbers of the Internet. So it's very much a working committee. And so we need to maintain a focus on, in some cases, very technical issues. And we found that the advice we provide is followed so much more readily when we can be detailed in that advice. And there's a tension between that and the high-‐level advice that you may want to develop in other settings. My U.S. colleague mentioned that we have, at times, developed principles documents, which is very useful for us and we think provides very high-‐level guidance on a particular topic. But then as part of this model, we know that those receiving that advice are not governments, and they need to be able to act upon that advice. So we're always wanting to be as detailed and as clear as possible. So this is one of the challenges as well in our work. So, Alice, did you want to introduce the next topic or did you want me to talk a bit about the Affirmation of Commitments? >>ALICE MUNYUA: Yeah, I would like to ask you to talk briefly about the Affirmation of Commitments so it takes us to how the review teams are formed, and we'll come to the sessions where we introduce the ATRT and the rest. So just a group background. >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Manal, did you have a question? >>MANAL ISMAIL: Actually, this is where I have compiled a few slides, and they start with Affirmation of Commitments. So, if you would like to start and then -‐-‐ >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Okay. Agreed. So then the Affirmation of Commitments. This is a document that is signed by United States Department of Commerce and ICANN. And both organizations affirm various commitments to ensure things like accountability and transparency for the organization, which is considered, really, a critical area of focus as the organization grows and the structures need to be sufficiently robust to be sustainable in the long-‐term. It also deals some issues related to new gTLDs, security and stability of the domain name system, and so on. And so this is very much a commitment that ICANN undertakes to the community. And, as a result, there are review teams that are formed as part of the affirmation. And Manal, I think, will talk a bit more about at least one of those. And, as I say, this one is of the key documents that has been developing over the years since ICANN was created in 1998. There were various MoUs. And the most recent has been in the form of this Affirmation of Commitments, which is quite different from MoUs.
It's meant to be a lasting affirmation, and it's meant to turn ICANN back to the community rather than how things began initially with the first MoU. So with that, Manal, would that be a good moment to hand to you? Thank you. >> MANAL ISMAIL: Okay. Thank you, Heather. And thank you, Jeannie, for putting the slides. If we can move to the first slide. So, being a non-‐native speaker, I thought maybe compiling a few slides would help me organize my line of thought and help you follow what I'm trying to say. So, as Heather just mentioned, in 2009 the JPA, the joint project agreement got to a conclusion and was replaced by the Affirmation of Commitments, which was signed by ICANN and the Department of Commerce. The Affirmation of Commitments called for four periodic reviews. The first to ensure accountability, transparency, and interests of global Internet users. This one has finished its mission by 31st of December 2010. This should -‐-‐ and I was participating to this one on behalf of our chair. Further reviews are expected no less frequently than every three years. So every three years there should be further reviews that look into the accountability and transparency and looks at the accomplishments of past reviews. Second is preserving security and stability and resiliency of the DNS. This one is ongoing. And we have Alice on this one on behalf of our chair. The third one: Promoting competition, consumer trust -‐-‐ and, for some weird reason, the rest is not on the screen. But, anyway, this one has not yet started. It is supposed to start one year from the effective date of the Affirmation of Commitments, after which there should be another review in two years' time. And then reviews should proceed no less frequently than every four years. But this one has not yet started. And, finally, the fourth one is enforcing ICANN's existing policy relating to WHOIS. This one also is ongoing. And Peter is participating, again, on behalf of our GAC chair. And ICANN is supposed to take actions within six months from the end date of each and every of those reviews. So now our focus is going to be at the accountability and transparency, which has already finished its review. So, if we can proceed with the next slide. The accountability and transparency review team constructed its work through four working groups. The first one was looking into ICANN board of directors' governance, performance, and composition. And working group, too, on the role
and effectiveness of the GAC. And the third one on public input processes and the policy development process. And, finally, review mechanisms for board decisions. The working group came up with 27 recommendations. They were adopted by the ICANN board. And the GAC-‐related recommendations, as Suzanne mentioned earlier, are from 9 to 14. Those are the recommendations that have to do with the GAC. Recommendation 9 says the board working through the GAC board joint working group should clarify by March 2011 what constitutes GAC public policy advice under the bylaws. And, again, as Heather was mentioning earlier, there should be some clear mechanism so that we -‐-‐ we're not expected to provide advice where we were not informed and we don't provide an advice and we don't get a reply and we don't provide an advice and then it is not being interpreted as GAC advice. So this needed to be more clear. Recommendation 10 -‐-‐ and this has to do with acting through the GAC, again, joint working group should establish by March 2011 a more formal documented process by which it notifies the GAC of matters that affect public policy concerns to request the GAC advice. And then the rest of the recommendation -‐-‐ I don't want to get into every single word. But, again, it's establishing a formal process by which the GAC knows and advise as needed. The board understand this is GAC advice. The board either follows the advice or comes back to the GAC with why that advice was not followed. And recommendation 11: This has to do with -‐-‐ I'm very sorry. Recommendation 10 has to do with the online register. And it is more of keeping track of the advice as provided by the GAC, the responses provided by the board, any pending issues, the progress and so on. This is recommendation 10. And recommendation 11 has to do with the process itself, a formal process of notifying the GAC that an advice is expected and coming back to the GAC with what happened with this advice. Recommendation 12 has to do with the timeliness of the GAC advice and how to engage the GAC early within the PDP process. And, again, as Suzanne highlighted earlier, the GAC advises the board and the process reaches the board at the very end. So it becomes very difficult to come back, if the GAC has certain concerns, to repeat the whole process again. It delays the decisions. And it was not usually very well-‐received by other people who have been working for so long on this specific topic. So -‐-‐ and recommendation 13 has to do more with the mutual exchange of information between the GAC and the ICANN and how the ICANN should keep the
GAC updated on the policy issues that are being under discussion and how the GAC should keep everyone -‐-‐ I mean, express concerns on certain issues early enough, should they exist. And, finally, recommendation 14 -‐-‐ and this has to do with more government support and more government commitment to the GAC either by participating, by sparing the GAC representatives more resources to participate, more time to be able to participate, and more authority to be able to take timely decisions and positions and to also help GAC representatives to facilitate any necessary channels nationally, if needed. So the next slide, please. And it's, in a nutshell, the six recommendations. There is now a joint working group that has been established. It's a joint working group between the GAC and the board. And it is cochaired between the GAC and the board. This has to look into the implementation of the accountability and transparency review team recommendations as well as the recommendations of the joint working group report, the JWG report. That was even working on the role of the GAC and cochaired by Heather and Ray even from the accountability and transparency team recommendations were issued. Where we stand on those six recommendations, on the mailing list we've been discussing recommendation 9 and 10 as well as 14. We've done some progress in 9 and 10. And, hopefully, we could progress further in 14. And then we're going to have three more to go. The next slide, please. And, finally, those are some reference material: The Affirmation of Commitments, the final report of the ATRT recommendations, the JWG final report, summary on where we stand on the 27 recommendations of the ATRT, and two more URLs that are on the ICANN Web site that has to do with the AoC reviews in general and the accountability and transparency of ICANN in general. Thank you. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much, Manal. And thank you, Heather, as well. Any questions or comments on the ATRT review and Affirmation of Commitments before we break for tea? Paraguay, please. And then Canada. >>PARAGUAY: Are we going to get copies of the material she just presented? >>ALICE MUNYUA: Yes. Canada, please. >>CANADA: Thank you, chair. This was -‐-‐ this is only my second meeting. And thank you very much, Manal, for this presentation. It gives us a sense of -‐-‐ it picks up on the comments that our chair mentioned of what we're trying to accomplish at the end of the day, what our role as a GAC is, that we do have a very significant role to play. And this is the progress that we're making to ensure that there's a certain level of predictability. There's some processes there, and this is how we're engaged.
Having said that -‐-‐ and we are making some good progress. Can you give us a sense of some challenges that we could anticipate as we move forward with our accountability and transparency work? Thank you. >>ALICE MUNYUA: So I think the main challenge is the time frame we are working within. And I know everyone else is very overloaded either with other ICANN issues or even back home. But, again, it's important that we all participate to put this in a documented process because, again, GAC members change and board members change. And we have to have a right system in place for further tracking and for our day-‐to-‐day communication with ICANN. Because sometimes we feel things are trivial and obvious, but they are not understood the same at the other side. So, again, I see the whole thing is very easy to accomplish. It's just that we sit together, and we have a common understanding on how to communicate. But, I mean, this needs more participation. We're going to have a session on Sunday, hopefully, to sign-‐off what constitutes the GAC advice and to have a first version of the online system. So, again, this would need more commenting and -‐-‐ because the system would include entry -‐-‐ the data entered from old communiques as well as how to -‐-‐ if we say how to format our communique to be easily entered in future. So, again, GAC members' input is highly helpful in that respect. And, again, we're going to have another session on Wednesday, I think, on the high level meeting. So, again, if we could grasp the opportunity of this face-‐to-‐face meeting, I think we're going to have some good progress at least on those three recommendations and maybe kicking off discussion in other recommendations and, hopefully, catching up with our tight schedule. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. U.S., please. >>UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Thank you, Alice. And thank you, Manal. And, Kathy, that was an excellent question. We are sort of charting new territory with these recommendations. I think the good news is it's a partnership activity with the board, because it requires us to be creative and innovative. As I noted earlier, I think one of our biggest challenges that we've had is where we sit in the organization in the bylaws. And so changing bylaws is not an easy task. And I think it opens up -‐-‐ the way I've heard people talk about it, it's sort of like Pandora's box or a can of worms. So we probably want to leave that as it is but refine the understanding between the GAC and the board as to the role of the GAC and the rest of the community. So that is one of our challenges is, in fact, being innovative in trying to find ways to implement these recommendations. And thank you, Manal, for mentioning the high-‐level meeting. Because that is something that came out of our own joint working group and now is in the ATRT. And we do have an opportunity on Wednesday to further sort of agree on an agenda
for a meeting of senior officials on the margins of the Prague meeting in June. So I think that's really, really important, because that's another visible step to implementing these ATRT recommendations. Thanks. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Heather, please. >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Hello, yes. Thank you. I just wanted to add a bit of emphasis to that and point out we really are trying to strengthen the committee and support to the committee. And there are various recommendations in relation to interpretation, translation, travel support, and these kinds of things. And that's all coming into place. By Toronto or starting in Toronto, we will have all six U.N. language plus Portuguese at every meeting for the committee. And I think this will help us to enable participation. And Suzanne from the U.S. mentioned this high-‐level meeting. That's another way to emphasize for more senior levels within various governments and administrations the relevance of the work that the committee does and the relevance of the decisions that ICANN makes. Because they make decisions that impact Internet users everywhere. If you think about the way that users access the Internet, they use the domain name system. It's the directory for the Internet. And so it has great policy significance for users. It may be a small part of the Internet, in fact. But governments have a range of interests and responsibilities related to the Internet. So this is why the work that's happening in the accountability and transparency review is so relevant. And I think after the break we're going to talk about the early warning mechanism. And, in this context, this is a way in which the committee is going to become operational. It's going to be a real mechanism for governments to come to the committee and use it as a means to raise concerns early on regarding new generic top-‐level domains where they may have sensitivities or they may be controversial. If you think that we're moving from having 22 top-‐level domains to what's estimated -‐-‐ 500? Thousands? This is a huge expansion. And you're going to get such a range of applications, we think. We don't know yet. But, imagine, they could be geographic terms. GAC members may have a concern there. And, also, we may have entrepreneurs in our countries that are applying that may be bringing forward a great idea and this kind of thing. So, just to relate that back to some of the priority issues. But I won't take the thunder away from my Australian colleague who is going to tell us more about that mechanism a little later. So thank you, Alice. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Comoros. >>COMOROS: Thank you, Alice. I'll speak in French. I would like to thank you for the initiative to organize this session. With respect to this initiative, I would like to say, regarding what was said, especially regarding the advice that the GAC provides to the board, I think that, when we understand the role that ICANN has, generally, in
terms of governance of the Internet, we need to ask ourselves if -‐-‐ of course, three meetings a year is a lot. But I think we should wonder what we're living with on a daily basis with the development of the Internet. Are we providing the maximum number of resources to react on time? Because there are certain things than between one meeting and the other. And sometimes we don't really have the necessary tools to allow us to have a better power of reaction. And I think the survival and the good image of the GAC depends on our power of reaction and our possibility to react to what is happening. I think I once said something regarding what was being done in the United States with the U.S. government, with the decisions made at the U.S. government. And I say that, when we are here representing our countries, within the ICANN community, we should also be speakers of our countries. When we see that the government does certain issues and we're representing our governments to provide an opinion to make our voices be heard within ICANN, that's -‐-‐ we should say that we are not playing the role we should play. And this role can be -‐-‐ can only be played if we get involved on a daily basis on our community. And I wonder if the advice that we provide is sufficient to be able to react on time and to get involved on time in whatever is happening, which is not happening three times a year, but is actually happening all the time. I think we should have mechanisms then. And I believe what is being done at the secretariat and the tools that the secretariat has will allow us to react on time irrespective of the meetings being held. Our councils should be able to have this power of reaction, which is very important within the ICANN community and within this multistakeholder model, which is part of ICANN's governance. Thank you. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Okay. We can break for tea and be back at 11:00. Yeah, so 11:00. So about 10 minutes break. And we'll come back. Tea and coffee is served right here. (Break) >>ALICE MUNYUA: Hello, can I invite everyone to take back your seat so we can start the second session.
The second session is going to be looking at the early warning, presented by Peter, and then law enforcement and RAA amendments, Suzanne, a brief overview of the WHOIS Review Team. And then new gTLD applicant support. And we'll have a short presentation from Diplo on Internet governance. So we'll go straight to early warning, Peter, Australia. Thank you. >>AUSTRALIA: Thanks, Alice. I'll just start by saying I'll try and move through this fairly quickly and leave some time for questions at the end. There's a couple of other places where we're going to be talking about early warning on the agenda, including a presentation later in the GAC schedule showing an early warning tool, an online tool which has been developed to assist with it. So with that said, I'll just start off by saying I assume we're all aware of the gTLD process. And as Mark spoke in his session earlier, there are a good many (garbled audio) and issues for governments that that raises. The one which I'm going to focus on relates to the potential for there to be contentious or sensitive strings or applications applied for. During the policy development process, there was, I think, relatively early on the GAC side, an acknowledgment that it wasn't going to be possible to deal with every potential stream, every (dropped audio) or every (dropped audio) in advance. It wasn't possible to make a list of those and say that you shouldn't have those strings. It wasn't possible to break them up into categories and have rules for how each one of those would be dealt with. (dropped audio) ultimately there are simply too many variations, so there are policies and processes in place for many strings, or for broad -‐-‐ broadly speaking. But for those ones which are difficult to categorize which will raise sensitivities for governments, ICANN ultimately agreed to put in place two mechanisms that the GAC can intervene. The first is what's called an early warning. We've already spoken -‐-‐ Heather mentioned in some detail about GAC advice. This is different to GAC advice. It does not require the consensus of the GAC, according to ICANN's rules. So it's possible that an early warning could be -‐-‐ a GAC early warning could be issued at the request of a single country. An early warning is also different to advice in that it doesn't trigger the bylaws requirements that Heather spoke about before, and also, I think, it was Suzanne
mentioned. So (garbled audio) doesn't require the board to go into consultation with the GAC. It doesn't require the board to do anything along those lines. It is simply an informal early warning to the applicant that one or move governments are concerned about a string. And that can be for a variety of reasons. It can be ultimately for any reason. The Applicant Guidebook gives examples, say it potentially violates national law or raise sensitivities. Heather alluded to a couple of the sorts of strings that we might think about. They might be geopolitical strings which may be sensitive. There may be some strings which are not necessarily sensitive on their face but it may be sensitive (dropped audio) for them. One which has been discussed in the GAC before is dot bank, for example, or dot farmer for pharmaceutical products. There are a good range. I mean, we've all -‐-‐ as Mark mentioned briefly, there was a lot of discussion about dot XXX. There are other strings of that type which we can imagine which may be sensitive for one or more governments. I'll briefly just say before I move on to a little bit more detail about the early warning, the other way that the GAC can intervene on a contentious or sensitive string is by issuing advice. The reason I won't spend too much time on that right now is the GAC already understands pretty well its ability to give advice, and the (dropped audio) or the (dropped audio) is that we have more tame to give advice. The interesting or one of the important things to note on early warnings is that it's going to be a time critical process for the GAC. So that said, in terms of timing, as I'm sure we're all aware, the application window is already open and closes in about four weeks or so from now on the 12th of April. And after that, ICANN is going to do some very brief sort of due diligence type checks before posting the applications publicly, which is expected, as I understand it, to happen around the beginning of May. Probably the 1st of May or so. And at that time, two things happen. Public comment period opens, and that coincides with the GAC early warning period. Both of those periods will last for 60 days. So the GAC will have 60 days, two months, to issue any early warnings on those strings. And as Heather mentioned, there are potentially hundreds of strings that could -‐-‐ we will need to assess. 500 plus, I would think, would be a (dropped audio) estimate that I keep hearing around the corridors. So thinking about what the GAC needs to do, the first thing, which Suzanne already alluded to, is that individual countries will need to make some sort of assessment themselves about whether a string is seen as sensitive or contentious for them or not.
To share the processes that I have been looking at within the Australian government, we have provided briefing through our central agency, which in Australia is called Prime Minister and cabinet, essentially to all of the agencies and departments within the Australian government advising that this process is coming up, advising of the timelines. So we have given them warning that in early May, they will potentially need to assess a number of applications that may be of interest to them, and that we will need to come to Australian government positions on whether or not to issue early warnings. So I understand that a number of governments will be doing that. And given that the process starts on 1st of May, it's probably something to start thinking about fairly soon. Just at the Dakar meeting, when we briefly discussed early warning, it was agreed that to assist the GAC in its processes, so having any discussions about early warnings, registering early warnings and keeping track of them all, it may be useful to have an online tool, some sort of online (dropped audio) tool. Following the Dakar meeting, we asked (dropped audio), for people interested in assisting with that. I can't remember exactly how many countries. I would say on the order of 10 or 12 volunteered to join that group, and we then started working through specifications for a tool. So things that we looked at, for example, were how to limit access to the tool to only GAC members so that we can be -‐-‐ have a level of assurance that early warnings are only coming from GAC members. We talked through the sorts of information that should be available in the tool. So essentially we decided that it should have all the necessary information. It should be a one-‐stop shop for early warnings. That it should facilitate discussion and collaboration between (dropped audio) members. So while a GAC early warning does not need the consensus of the GAC, there may be one or more countries that have a concern about the same string or that there may be different countries that have different concerns about the same string who may wish to collaborate on an early warning. And the (dropped audio) would be able to register and manage early warnings, from the beginning of the process right through to when they are issued. So I'm happy to advise that ICANN staff have been assisting with the development of that. In fact, they have been doing all the work, for (dropped audio) that portal. Big thanks to Jeannie Ellers. I spoke to -‐-‐ I had a teleconference and Adobe chat with ICANN staff just this last Wednesday morning to work through the portal and where it's at. There appears to be very good progress, but I understand that we'll be having a look at that later in the GAC meetings.
That said, it is at probably a very useful phase for the moment in that it has developed enough so we can get a very good understanding of where it's at, see how it's going to work, but there are still a couple of little questions which we may need to look at, and it's early enough that we can get those resolved while it's being developed. With that said, I may stop and take questions. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Any questions or clarifications or comments? Yes, Mark. U.K., please. >>UNITED KINGDOM: Yes, thank you, Alice. And thank you, Peter, for a very comprehensive account and all your work on this. And Jeannie, as well. Much appreciated. My question is do we know what information is going to be made available to us by ICANN? I mean, will they provide a kind of digest of the critical information? The string, who is behind it, the aims of the string, the community it is serving, and so on. Is there kind of an agreed template of what information we work on for each applicant? Thanks. >>PETER NETTLEFOLD: Sorry for the feedback. The answer is yes. So the portal will do a couple of things. I trust Jeannie will maybe correct me if I'm getting anything wrong. I am just flipping back to the slide pack having only seen the portal itself once so far. But it will provide either all the -‐-‐ It will provide either directly or via links all the (dropped audio) available on applications. So it will provide the string, the applicant. It will provide the translation of the string into English and the meaning and so on. So all the publicly available portion of applications will be available through the portal. And the portal will then be sortable and searchable by categories. So by the string, the applicant, the (dropped audio) or relevant category, so that being geographic, community, other. Just looking -‐-‐ what other -‐-‐ through the slide back I got from ICANN the other day. And then there will be different pages which we can then go to. So there will be like a classic discussion-‐thread type part of the portal, where we'll be able -‐-‐ GAC members will be able to say, "I'm interested in this one. Is anyone else interested? Here's what my concerns are." Basically have a discussion before registering early
warnings. And then there will be a separate link through where early warnings will be registered. And what the portal will then do, in addition to all the information on applications themselves, is off the front page provide you ready access to all those discussions and early warnings that have already been clicked. So you will be able to click on the early warning tab and it will show you all early warnings that have been registered. You will be able to click on a discussion tab, go to any discussions about any of the strings. So from what I can see, having only seen it once, and it's in a development phase, it actually looks like it will, a), be fairly straightforward, and, b), it will be fairly easy to find your way around. You will be able to search and sort by countries, by strings, by applicants, and so on. So it does look like it will be fairly comprehensive and usable tool. One other thing, I'm sorry, I did mean to mention earlier is that ICANN will also be putting -‐-‐ in addition to developing the tool itself, will be putting together some instruction manuals for GAC members to assist. So -‐-‐ including some pretty brief ones, like focused on the two or three most likely things that you are likely to want to do and how to do them in very sort of simple step form. I hope that answers the question. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Okay. Senegal, and then the U.S. Thank you. >>SENEGAL: Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Peter, for this progress. I think a lot of progress was made with this new warning process. But I have a question about have the string that have already been approved, like dot XXX, is there anything we can do -‐-‐ (feedback noise) -‐-‐ on this area? >>PETER NETTLEFOLD: I guess I'm happy to take that one, although perhaps someone else could do, as well. Not through this process. So the early warning process is limited to new gTLDs. I guess for existing, already-‐delegated top-‐level domains the GAC's range of options are quite different and would be limited to providing advice other than early warnings, would be my understanding. And then if we were interested, then we would obviously need to craft that advice very carefully given that the top-‐level domain is already delegated and so on. So I hope that answers that in some way as well.
>>ALICE MUNYUA: The U.S. >>UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Thank you, Alice, and thank you, Peter, for the update. And I certainly commend you for all the hard work you have done, and the working group, as well as Jeannie. It sounds like you have made an enormous amount of progress. I guess what is so striking about this activity is it's brand-‐new for us. So we're really kind of -‐-‐ this is tabula rasa, we're starting fresh, which is going to be challenging in part, but it sounds as if you have put a lot of structure around this, and I think it's going to be enormously helpful. So I wanted to commend everybody who has contributed, but especially Peter and Jeannie. I did have a question, which may be a stupid question, so my apologies. I know in the GAC scorecard, we had advocated, and I thought the board had accepted, a commitment to undertaking due diligence on all the applicants, so that we could find out if an applicant actually had been convicted of a criminal activity anywhere in the world, had broken a law somewhere in the world, so we would have a sense of that. So what I am ignorant on is in that case, presumably the applicant gets told they may not apply. But I confess that I am not entirely sure what happens if the due diligence surfaces a problem with the applicant or the group that they are representing. So I wasn't sure if that's going to end up either they get cut out and kicked out of the queue, or do they still get to apply. Let's say it was a civil infraction and they paid their fine. Do they still get to apply, but do we get to see the results of the due diligence? And the reason I ask, and I'm sorry if this sounds pedantic, but we, NTIA, are developing an overview, kind of a framework, if you will, of factors that we think USG agencies should be looking at as they review strings. So some of them, you know, would relate to whether the applicant, in fact, has broken a U.S. law. Do we know this? Because that would be very informative for us. So I'm trying to understand how the due diligence piece fits in, if it does. So apologies if it's a really stupid question. Thank you. >>PETER NETTLEFOLD: Actually, it's a very excellent question, and part of it I will have to take on notice. And we'll try to find out the answer for you.
So this comes to, I guess, there are a number of good parts to that question. One of them is the timing, which I guess we're kind of stuck with in that we have 60 days. I will check with ICANN at how long it's going to take them to do the due diligence, some of that stuff. But to be honest, my initial thinking is that some of it will probably not be available to us during the early warning period. The other part, while we're on that part, I actually don't know whether that will be made public. If it's made public, we will have it at some stage, and then we can obviously feed that into advice. So one thing to say about early warnings is that if we do not issue an early warning, it does not constrain the GAC from subsequently giving advice. So if we miss something in the early warning period or the information comes to light that we didn't have in the early warning period, it does not stop the GAC giving advice subsequently, and we have many months more, six months more for that period. The other thing is, there is a lot of information, I guess, that we, due to timing issues, may not have. One, which I was going to bring up, will still bring up in the full GAC session, is that I learned on the Wednesday discussion with ICANN staff that ICANN is not intending to translate the strings into other languages. We had requested that when we drew up the specifications in the working group, that the strings be translated to U.N. languages to assist the GAC. ICANN's staff's view as of Wednesday is that they were not intending to do that, and, instead, the best we could hope for was that the applicant themselves were to provide an English-‐language translation and meaning for any string. The GAC is probably going to have to consider if that's going to cause us some difficulties in assessing -‐-‐ in assessing the full range of strings. I understand that ICANN will be translating strings at a later date for assessing whether they're geographic names for their expert panel looking at geographic names. That won't be available in time for the early warning period. So there's probably going to be a number of bits of information which could be very useful for us, which either we won't have or we may have to consider other ways to get. So that's something maybe to be discussed broadly with the full GAC. But excellent questions, and I'll certainly look into the bits that you raised. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Egypt, and then Canada. >>EGYPT: Thank you.
I was going to ask about the batching. Are we -‐-‐ Should the number of applications turn to be unmanageable, have we agreed to receive them in batches, same as was discussed earlier? Or is this not yet clear? And if we are going to receive them in batches, where should this fit within the excellent timeline you provided? >>AUSTRALIA: Yeah, more very good questions. My understanding that if the board -‐-‐ if ICANN does batching, then we will also do batching. How that will affect the timeline, the first batch will be -‐-‐ look like the timeline that we have here. I'm not clear how long -‐-‐ how the batching timeline will work for ICANN, and probably ICANN may not -‐-‐ ICANN staff -‐-‐ it maybe something to ask ICANN staff. I guess it's -‐-‐ They haven't done this before, much as we haven't, so I guess I'm not sure that they would definitively know how long it will take them to assess 500 applications, but perhaps they could tell us if they do know. >>EGYPT: So the 60 days are basically for the first batch, should we go for batching; right? >>AUSTRALIA: That's my understanding. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Canada and then the U.S. >>CANADA: (In French) I would like to thank all the efforts made by ICANN in the development and the efforts regarding the bylaws and the framework established to advance on the work. This is a very important issue that we should take into consideration. Competence and efforts that contributed to make this activity. Peter gave us some information regarding the system, and also on the activities. One question I had was the following: I wanted to know when will we have the opportunity to show that we have observations to submit all the proposals submitted by the candidates, by the applicants, are observations; right? We as a group, as GAC, how are we going to submit our comments? We know the structure, we know the procedures, but at the end of the day, how are we going to
do it? Are we going to do it as a GAC early warning or are we going to have an early warning by each of the members? I wanted to know how we are going to submit our early warnings. (In English) We've learned that we have a structure in place, we understand the process that we are going to go through, the review that we're going to go through. We are going to be able to have a conversation with each other if we have some concerns with regard to a very specific string. This is all the work. This will be our deliberation that we will have. But I am just wondering, at the end of the day, how those deliberations will be communicated. Are they communicated as a GAC view? Are they -‐-‐ How are they represented? I'm just trying to get a sense. Are they GAC early warning? Or are they early warnings from individual members? That's what I'm just trying to get a better sense of. >>AUSTRALIA: More very good questions. As we said before, early warning is a new thing, and it's quite different to advice. So the first -‐-‐ the first -‐-‐ the (dropped audio) pertinent thing to your question is that an early warning does not require consensus. So will it still be called a GAC early warning? And again, this is my reading, so I -‐-‐ I could be wrong. It could still -‐-‐ GAC early warnings -‐-‐ early warnings will be called GAC early warnings, and they could come from one country. And my understanding, or the way I have been reading it, is because they do not require consensus, there is effectively limited need for discussion. So if a single country, country X, decides that it is going -‐-‐ wants to issue an early warning about an application, it can submit it as an early warning. And if other GAC members, for example, wanted to discuss it, they could discuss it. The country X could decide not to discuss it if they really wanted to. So it's a strange, a strange beast. So the reason we have put -‐-‐ we have recommended putting in discussions is not so that a country could disagree or try to veto or stop an early warning from another country. It is more on the collaboration side. There may be countries who share views, who share the same concern about an application, and so they may want to join and issue an early warning together. And there may be countries that have two different issues with an application. And again, they could choose to issue a
combined early warning. Or they could choose to issue two different early warnings. Three really isn't any rules in this space as far as I can tell. So it is conceivable that an application for dot bank could get seven different early warnings, because countries wanted their own particular wording and weren't willing to compromise, would not agree to a consensus text. As I understand it, that is a feasible outcome from this process. So the discussion (dropped audio) are there to hopefully avoid that, if possible. I think it makes sort of more sense if we can get a limited number. But if there are a whole different points of view, there's no reason for there not to be several early warnings. The other thing is, and this is again an issue, one which I'll flag, and I flagged in an e-‐ mail just before I came here. People may not have seen it. Everyone probably was on the plane. But there is a question about to the extent to which countries need to be identified or associated with early warnings, and there is actually no reason that they do need to be, according to ICANN's rules. So early warnings could go out as GAC early warnings from a single country without that single country being identified, in which case the GAC Secretariat or some other nominated point of contact would -‐-‐ may be needed to facilitate any follow-‐on communication. For example, if the applicant wanted to ask some questions about if they could remediate or otherwise fix their application, if they perhaps had been misunderstood or so on. So it's a new area, so they're good questions, and you have more. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. I have the U.S., then Canada, then Sweden. >>UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Thank you. Am I right? Oh, thank you. I did want to follow up on Manal's and Kathy's interventions. I think on batching, if I recall in Dakar, we did try to convey to the board that whatever batching methodology they ultimately adopt, that we felt fairly strongly that we, as GAC, can only handle 500 at a time for the early warning. So that there should optimally not be an overlap. So in other words, if we're dealing with 500, we should be confident that we are only dealing with -‐-‐ which is a lot -‐-‐ 500 in 60 days. So it's not that 45 days later they issue the second batch, because I think we're sunk. I think we are just awash in applications. I don't know how we function.
So I think we probably want to reinforce that. So I think actually this is an interesting exchange as to the fact that individuals, we are looking to each country to submit a notice of early warning, for whatever reason. There may be cases, I guess, with a geo name, where the country would wish to be identified to say, "Well, look, I'm country X, and this applicant isn't even a national of my country and they want my -‐-‐" either a version of the name or let's say they want a city name. And so that's their prerogative to say, "I'm going to object to this, because they don't have proper approval." The applicant has the right to try to make their case, try to persuade them. But that's an individual government's prerogative to say, you know, no. And, in fact, if I may say, Heather has already received a letter, and I have been copied, from the City of Miami, Florida, indicating that they would like the GAC to be mindful that any application for dot Miami has to be the one that they have approved, which is -‐-‐ of course we have agreed to that. But it's very interesting that we're getting approached by different places. But what I have always thought was sort of a real strength of the early warning notice system is that if -‐-‐ let's use your dot bank example. If a number of GAC members have the same concern, we almost already know that we most like-‐ -‐-‐ we may well be -‐-‐ I should be careful here -‐-‐ filing a GAC consensus objection. But we have the time, because we have the subsequent six or seven months, we have the time to coordinate amongst ourselves as to how we present the objection. And we either cite that X number of countries have strong concerns because it's a regulated sector, however we wish to do that. But that, to me, is the beauty of early warning because we all have a sense, then, of where are the shared concerns. So I really like the idea that it is country by country, but as we keep track -‐-‐ because you have a means, I think you told us, of tallying. That's really helpful for us to know how to anticipate the possible consensus objections. So thank you for covering that one. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Peter, do you want to respond to that? No. Okay. Canada, Sweden, and the U.K. Canada, please. >>CANADA: That was very helpful, Peter, and thank you, Suzanne, for your intervention. But I just wanted to pick up on a -‐-‐ (speaking in French.)
This gives as example that when there is a mechanism implementing to facilitate a debate between the members of the GAC on a specific issue -‐-‐ (speaking in English) that we have a system in place, an electronic system in place that's going to allow us to have a discussion, a private discussion, a managed discussion amongst members, that it is that we can have a system that can be put in place that allows that level of trust that you can have, and so that you don't have concerns that whatever we say amongst ourselves in those deliberations are going to be viewed by the outside. So it's an example of a mechanism where we've had assistance from our -‐-‐ from ICANN in helping us develop that, you know, through your guidance, Peter, in developing the specs, in terms of where the GAC can operate independently and where we have a system that's going to enable us to support that. So I just wanted to recognize that. I think that that's very important, and it's going to be very useful as we, as a GAC, advance our work. So this is something that I wanted to -‐-‐ This was something that I wanted to come to this meeting and to learn about, and I'm hearing that from you. So I just wanted to thank you, Peter, for that. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Sweden, please. >>SWEDEN: Thank you very much, Peter, also for your very good explanation. And I really understand, as you say, this is strange body, this is strange new system, but it still is very interesting and it gives us, as Kathy from Canada is saying, it gives us an opportunity to discuss among ourselves, and also express our concerns and so on. And I actually -‐-‐ what Suzanne from the U.S. was saying was pretty much covering what I was going to say, but my impression of this procedure and actually the outcome of this early warning system or the early warning period is exactly some kind of report or some kind of conclusion based on the 60 days of discussions and the 60 days of clicking here and there from the different countries. And of course I do understand there are going to be different points of view, different objections, different ways of how you interpret those -‐-‐ this new top-‐level domain strings and so on. But at the end of the day, and I was so happy that you said it, it is a strange body, because I think it is going to be. But it still is going to be good material for ICANN to actually go to decision, because that is what they do in the end. We come with a device in different forms, this is a new form, but at the end of the day, the ICANN takes advice based on all the good information that we give them. So I see the result as some kind of report where there are going to be information about a certain amount of countries have this kind of objection based on that one, or that could be grouped, of course, if we have a good discussion during these 60 days.
It could be some other views, like just a few countries, or sometimes we even find consensus among all of us. So it's going to be different groups of information, but still it is going to be good information for ICANN to have. And that's what we're doing. Thank you. >>ALICE MUNYUA: U.K. After that, I'd like to really stop so we can move to the next topic. We are still going to be discussing early warning in the afternoon, GAC afternoon session. So U.K., please, and then we can move to the next session. >>UNITED KINGDOM: Thanks. Actually, I think I will save my questions to the GAC session, actually, come to think of it. Help you move on. Thanks. >>ALICE MUNYUA: All right. Thank you very much. I would like to move on now to law enforcement and RAA amendments. Suzanne, please. >>UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Thank you, Alice. I am happy to provide an update. We, of course, will get a more detailed update -‐-‐ I'm not entirely sure which day. Is it Tuesday? But we will have a session on this in the full GAC plenary, joined by those law enforcement agency reps that have been able to travel with us. I have several colleagues who are going to be here. The lead, if you will, for us on this issue has been a colleague of mine named Bobby Flaim from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and he has been coordinating sort of with his law enforcement counterparts around the world. So just a teeny bit of history, if I may, for some of our newer members. The law enforcement community began to collaborate all the way back in 2009 to develop consensus recommendations for amendments to the key contract between ICANN and the registrars. So the registrars are the retailers, right, who interface with individuals registering a domain name. So the RAA is what it's called. The Registrar Accreditation Agreement. And in reviewing it and in looking at the track record of ICANN's contract compliance function, LEAs began to be concerned that there was a disconnect, so that the text didn't go far enough, it didn't set the bar very high on things like accuracy of WHOIS data. It didn't seem to mandate that the registrars do certain things. It seemed to leave a lot of stuff to "you may," "we urge you to do" whatever.
So the LEAs reached agreement amongst themselves. They did their own due diligence, I think. They reached out to registrars and registries and got feedback. They brought it to the GAC in June 2010. We, as a GAC, endorsed all of the recommendations, and actually at that meeting, we received a number of other very significant endorsements. INTERPOL has a high-‐tech crime group that endorsed the recommendations, and they are now a member of the LEA team. We had the G8 cybercrime group that also endorsed them, we had the anti-‐phishing working group come in. We had the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. We had a number -‐-‐ There are so many acronyms, I can't remember, but it was a very significant sort of milestone June 2010. So the GAC communique, if you want to go back for some history, and Jeannie always does these nice helpful links back to these documents, that's where it began kind of publicly, officially, GAC LEA moving forward. What we tried to engage in were sort of direct exchanges with the registrars to see could we get them to buy into these proposed recommendations for recommended edits. This has been a very challenging process, as I'm sure you can imagine, for a number of reasons. Registrars feel fairly strongly, this is my impression from them, and you all should feel free to ask them these questions when we meet with them on Monday, that the contract that governs their relationship and gives them the accreditation is between them and ICANN. So they're very sensitive -‐-‐ prickly, if you will -‐-‐ to the idea that anybody else gets to participate in these negotiations. So for our part, we have been trying to be as sensitive in return. However, we have tried to convey to them that politically, this is an extremely important issue in all of our national capitals; that our law enforcement agencies have been tracking the rise or the increase in criminal activity, and a lot of it does relate to the Domain Name System, a lot of it is based on criminal entities using false registration data. I can't tell you how many Mickey Mouses have applied for domain names. A lot. And Donald Duck and other sort of anonymous types, to conduct illegal activity. My Food & Drug Administration and Drug Enforcement Agency has been tracking very, very specifically the illegal sale of pharmaceuticals online, and a lot of them, again, are using the Domain Name System. So we started to engage with the registrars to find out what's the best timing for amending the RAA. We were challenged by the fact that the most recent amendment had been conducted in 2006, which, unfortunately, from many of our perspectives, kind of permitted registrars to offer privacy and proxy services without identifying what they were, without defining them, without imposing rules. It didn't get to the problem we all have, our LEAs have with resellers. So there are quite a few registrars who work solely through a reseller model, and their view is,
"Well, we can't control the resellers." So from the U.S. government perspective, we think that's just stupid. If you are using another entity, we would think of them as a subcontractor, and so of course you should be liable for what your subcontractor does. At any rate, we invested a lot of time and energy trying to find the right way forward, engaged in a face-‐to-‐face, which we thought was a very productive meeting in June 2011, I believe, in Singapore where we felt we had a positive response from the registrar community to engage in -‐-‐ develop a voluntary code of conduct. So it would get us as close as we could to the actual amendments which we would test, and then the next time the RAA was up for amendment, we would actually implement. Well, that blew up, quite candidly. The registrars, once they got amongst themselves, there was an enormous amount of resistance. And they are over 900, by the way. So that was killed. And we were very disappointed when the GNSO Council adopted a resolution from the registrars to start a policy development process, which, frankly, they go -‐-‐ they can last for quite some time -‐-‐ to do the most basic of the recommendations we had asked for, which is to put the names of their corporate officers on their Web sites. So, from our perspective, this was way too little way too late. We went to the Dakar meeting in October and went to the board saying, well, we have been working on our own for two years, really trying to engage. We have hit this brick wall. And, because of the ATRT recommendations that you've endorsed, we've endorsed, we're partners. So you, board, please help us out. And we were very pleasantly surprised that the chairman of the board actually said, you're right. This has gone on far too long. He developed and issued a recommendation endorsed by the entire board membership that instructed ICANN staff to start negotiations with the registrars to develop amendments to the RAA. So that was a huge breakthrough for us. So, since that October meeting, the registrars have identified a negotiating team. It's around five or six of them. They've even hired an outside council, legal advisor to help them. And they've been engaging in consultations with ICANN staff. Our chair -‐-‐ this was a political message, but also meant to be helpful. We made two overtures to the ICANN board and staff. One was after the Dakar meeting to express our appreciation for the chair's taking this seriously and taking a personal interest. And it was to offer the GAC and their LEAs up to be consulted with. Happy -‐-‐ these are our recommendations. We're happy to be available to answer questions.
We sent another reminder, because we didn't have a response. So we sent a reminder before the holidays, which was extremely helpful. And we actually finally scheduled a consultation between GAC LEA -‐-‐ some of you may have been on that call. Some of you were in the room. I'm looking at Ihsan from Turkey. He was in the room. He was in Washington. There was a consultation with ICANN staff. And it helped us GAC LEA go through the GAC LEA recommendations one by one. And the staff gave us a verbal report as to where they thought things stood. We had also asked for an exchange with the registrars so that we could sit across the table. And, if they had questions -‐-‐ what do you mean by this, and is there another way for us to arrive at your goal but not the way you laid out? That was also very constructive. That was on February 10. What I think the community and even we, perhaps, expected was that we would all be looking at today for this meeting a document laying out the proposed amendments that have been agreed to date. But, as you will see -‐-‐ and we'll review this in our next discussion, what we have is a progress report. Because I guess the -‐-‐ all I can guess. We're not party to the negotiations. All we can guess is that the negotiations are not yet at a point where they have reached agreement on specific text. So we have a progress report. My sense is, you know, from our perspective, we are making progress. I think the GAC's solidarity on this has really been very strong. And it's helped impress upon the board that we need to see some movement. We need progress, and we want it now. But, not being party to the negotiations, so -‐-‐ I'm sharing with you what I'm understanding from an outsider. And those of you who have been on these calls, feel free to chime in. All I can guess is the negotiations themselves might be at a delicate stage, shall we say. So I think our posture should be to keep encouraging movement to, perhaps, recommendation that, in addition to the progress report which was helpful -‐-‐ (dropped audio.) >>HEATHER DRYDEN: We have interference. Okay. >>SUZANNE RADELL: That resonated with the board very, very much that we had exercised every avenue that we thought was available to us and that we clearly needed their assistance. So I'm very positive. I'm quite hopeful. But we don't have any text to look at today. But I think -‐-‐ and I can share with you -‐-‐ because you will probably hear this from some of the community. The registrars were -‐-‐ I think it
was a wakeup call, the Dakar session. Because the GAC came out very firmly. And I think they were a little bit surprised. So I'm going to tell you our personal view is the registrars, I believe, have been resisting, quite candidly, making the forward progress. I think the GAC has made a very good case to the board that you know, our support of the model remains; but it also is contingent upon constant improvements. So the model has to evolve. It has to self-‐correct. In our view -‐-‐ and I think some of you used the same phraseology -‐-‐ we see this as a self-‐regulatory construct. So, if you're a self-‐regulatory entity and somebody says your regulatory activities are not achieving the desired results, they need to be improved, we expect to see them improve them. So I think we've set the bar fairly high. I think it's entirely appropriate for us as governments to set the bar. So I think we just continue moving ahead, making it clear what our expectations are, and hope that the registrars and the negotiating team are able to make progress. I think it's a very good sign that there is this Monday session, the public meeting session on one of the very difficult issues we've asked for, which is how do you validate the registrant WHOIS data at the time of registration? So that's going to be -‐ -‐ (dropped audio) And the fact that the registrars are very keen to meet with GAC LEA, which is going to be right afterward. So I think we should take advantage of this opportunity and continue to make ourselves available to answer questions and to try to help push the process along. So I hope I've given everyone a sense of where we are. And we will revisit this with some of our LEA representatives later on. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much, Suzanne. Any comments? >>UNITED KINGDOM: Just to underline Suzanne's points and just to add one point, actually. Underlining -‐-‐ I mean, we tried to shake up registrars, as Suzanne said, in the GAC work on this. And we warned them there's some ministers following this. This is the credibility of ICANN at stake and the whole system. And so they've been playing fast and loose with us pretty recklessly, I think, and disregarding that -‐-‐ how important this is and how critical this issue is. And Steve Crocker's picking this up, I think, has been very helpful. He readily appreciates the political significance. And, secondly, very much in the self-‐regulatory vein that Suzanne was describing, of course, the registrars accreditation agreement is like a contract. Just as the registries for the generics have contracts, the RAA is effectively the contract with the registrars or all registrars have to be accredited.
And so there's the question of compliance, you know, following on from our hoped-‐ for success with the agreement in embedding due diligence and so on. There's the question of ensuring that ICANN does enforce these agreements and secure compliance and that there's no blockage in, actually, ICANN's ability to do that. Thanks. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. Any other comments? Okay. Yes? Yes, please. Australia. >>AUSTRALIA: Just to reiterate, I suppose, the importance of these recommendations. The Australian Federal Police have, for the first time, sent myself as a representative to an ICANN meeting. I think two or more years of negotiation and recognizing that cybercrime has no boundaries and we can often be dealing in our jurisdiction with criminal activity from any one of a million different jurisdictions, recognizing that we may need to have it happen ASAP, particularly now that the new top-‐level domains are coming out, I suppose it's made it even more critical for us. So thanks for having it on the agenda. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much. I would like to invite Peter again to give a very brief overview of the WHOIS review team. Please, thank you. >>AUSTRALIA: Thanks, Alice. So, following on from the earlier discussion which Manal led, the fourth of the review teams, which was set up under the Affirmation of Commitments, is to review WHOIS. In very simple terms, WHOIS is a protocol, a very sort of fundamental and simple protocol part of the Internet which allows or should allow anyone to identify who is responsible for a domain name. I guess I'll go through in sort of simple language. That sort of glosses over a few things. But, ultimately, it is like a lookup service. So for icann.org you should be able to go to the WHOIS system and find out which organization or which person is responsible for that domain name. There are a good number of uses that WHOIS is put to. It follows on nicely from the discussion that Suzanne just led on law enforcement. A number of the law enforcement recommendations relate to WHOIS. It is no surprise that law enforcement agencies may want to find out who is responsible for domain names that are being used for criminal purposes. It is also used by IP enforcement. It is also used by consumers, although, as studies by the WHOIS review team show, there's actually quite a low awareness by consumers. But there are very many legitimate uses of WHOIS.
Of interest, the GAC made some principles on WHOIS in 2007. And it listed a number of legitimate uses of WHOIS. One of the challenges for the WHOIS review team is to balance those legitimate uses against people's interests in privacy and anonymity. It is equally not surprising that some people who may want to register domain names may want to remain anonymous, other than the people using -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ purposes. One of the difficult things the review team has had to balance is the legitimate need to be able to find out who is responsible for domain names versus interests in privacy and anonymity. The review team has been operating for well over 12 months now, probably about 16 months. And, critically, it has released its draft final report and recommendations for comment. The comment period closes just after this meeting. So I guess I would take this opportunity to encourage anyone who has not yet considered the report and does have an interest in WHOIS matters to consider either making a formal submission to the review team or letting me know if you have any views on the recommendations one way or another so that I can factor that into my contributions to the review team. The review team is meeting with the GAC. I know the schedule is sort of in flux. But I think it is on Tuesday. And also Monday afternoon the review team is having a public session with the community. I think there is a chance that overlaps with the RAA and law enforcement meetings that Suzanne was just talking about, which is unfortunate. But the last schedule I saw actually had those overlapping, which really is unfortunate given that they're on the same topic overlap probably 50%. Be that as it may, if you are interested in these issues, do feel free to talk to me about it more. After the public comment period has closed, the current target we have is the review team is going to take a further six weeks to do any necessary changes to the report and its recommendations, and then it will be submitted to the board. So it's getting quite close to closing. Just to give a quick flavor of overview of what the review team's looked at, as Mark just touched on, we look at ICANN's compliance activities. There is a recommendation there which urges ICANN to make its compliance activities a strategic priority and to fully resource them and to ensure that there are proper lines of reporting. I think the review team had a number of concerns. And I believe a number of other GAC colleagues around the table have concerns about the role that the compliance team plays in this self-‐regulatory model and how effective it is
for various reasons, not only resourcing but who it reports to, how -‐-‐ if it has clear strategic priorities and goals and so on. There were also a number of recommendations about accuracy. It's no surprise that the utility of any database is linked to its accuracy. The WHOIS team, unfortunately, had very complicated data to work with. But we did have access to a 2009 -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ that showed that WHOIS data -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ with anyone. Only 23%, I think it was, was fully accurate. The WHOIS review team chose the data that was really wildly inaccurate, taking the view that the goal was to be able to contact someone. Almost a quarter is so inaccurate you can't do that, which is pretty -‐-‐ (dropped audio.) The review team focused in a bit of detail on privacy practices, which Suzanne already mentioned. These are services which, effectively, allowed people to completely provide or limit the amount of information that shows up in the WHOIS records their own information. In my view -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ about privacy services is completely unregulated. It is an industry, which clearly people see a need for one way or another. It's widely used. But, unfortunately, ICANN has taken little or no leadership on this whatsoever. So there are no -‐-‐ there is no accreditation. There's no regulation. There are no rules about how these operations operate. And so, effectively, people use -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ they pay a fee. Their information is hidden. And that privacy service does its best never to give information. Very little -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ so we make a number of recommendations about setting up rules and operation for those services. And probably the last one which I'll mention, which I just touched on before, is the WHOIS review team actually commissioned an independent study, because part of its mandate was to look at the extent of WHOIS -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ consumer trust. Showed that, essentially, consumers have a very -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ so confusing, even if people manage to find their way to records, they don't know how to use it. It's buried amongst a bunch of adverts, and it looks like 1980s computer code to them. A recommendation the review team put there and is still grappling with is asking ICANN to not build a centralized database, which has a whole lot of data protection, data retention issues associated with it, but, instead, to make a centralized search portal, easy access for consumers, a one-‐stop place where you can go, look up the portal or Web site -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ will do all the work for you finding the data. And it will return it to you in a usable form. We think that will address a number of the keys with usability for consumers. So, if any of that sounds interesting, I would invite you to engage with the WHOIS review team or myself. We're quite close to finishing up. Thanks very much.
>>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, Peter. U.S., please. >>UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Thank you, Peter. Thank you, Alice. Actually, just to draw our colleagues attention to the fact that just yesterday I was able to circulate on the GAC list the U.S. government comments on the WHOIS review team draft final report recommendations. So I'd be very eager to hear others as to whether you also intend to submit comments, what you think of our comments. I certainly am open to that and very much welcome that. As Peter was saying, we, too, see very clear linkages between an amendment negotiations, the WHOIS review team recommendations, which we think should inform the RAA amendments, and contract compliance. Because, quite candidly, at the end of the day, I think we can all agree, if the contract itself is weak, then compliance can only be as good as the weakest. So we feel very, very strongly that that contract has to be improved. We've got to address these long-‐standing concerns and complaints and effect more discipline, higher standards that all registrars are held to. So I did want to sort of note -‐-‐ I'm sure everybody being traveling and being busy with your own preparations, you may have missed it. But I'm glad we were finally able to circulate it. We do intend to convey it to the WHOIS review team themselves as well as to the chair. But that cover letter just hasn't been cleared yet. But the actual USG agency position is in circulation. I welcome feedback and some exchange with members, my colleagues around the table here as to whether you intend to also submit comments. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you. U.K., please. >>UNITED KINGDOM: Yes. Thank you, Alice. If I could kind of summarize best practice for a GAC rep, representative, in a situation like this where you've got a draft report coming out of an ICANN process, a very important process, what do you do? What we did for the U.K -‐-‐ or what I did -‐-‐ I mean, I consulted, first of all, my law enforcement agency. Serious Organized Crime Agency on the draft report. What do they think of it. I consulted consumer protection policy experts in the Department of Business for the ministry. I work closely with them. I consulted the -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ registry, the dot U.K. registry, Nominet. What do they think of the report? I also reached out to the industry. I tried to -‐-‐ I got a colleague to identify U.K. registrars and then send off around there's about 30, 40 letters to the registrars, U.K., what do they think of the draft report? So sort of tried to get feedback, reactions from policy experts within the ministry, within the registry for dot UK and law enforcement.
We're at the drafting stage. And also done is circulate the U.S. draft back to base. So I think it's a good example of GAC best practice to do that, to circulate drafts of -‐-‐ this is what my country's intending to do in submitting a response. May trigger, help others and also provide useful feedback for the country and for the U.S., as Suzanne said. So -‐-‐ and, generally, to gauge the level of national interaction on a draft report. I hope that's useful. Thank you. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, Mark. Any other comments? Yes, please. >>URUGUAY: Jose Clastornik from Uruguay. (dropped audio) -‐-‐ this is a -‐-‐ in our countries -‐-‐ (dropped audio.) So some kind of an articulation must be made at the local level, national level, before -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ to do our homework and be able to give advice and mostly in things we're discussing at this point. That's my suggestion is, if we have some secretariat, something like that will come package our countries will experience some dissent. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you for those very good suggestions. Any other further comments? >>EGYPT: Just to note that both sessions, the RAA and WHOIS are not overlapping. So this is -‐-‐ in fact, they are in the same room. So -‐-‐ so it's the main room and with the conflict of interest session in between. So it's safe to attend both. Thank you. >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you, Manal. Yes, U.S., please. >>SUZANNE RADELL: Thank you, Manal. I was going to flag that, and I forgot to. There is a conflict. But I think we -‐-‐ for those of us who have LEA representatives with us, our LEAs can be in the -‐-‐ that separate side meeting with the registrars. So that's going to be your tradeoff, which is challenging. And I think, if I could say, I've been made aware for the first time maybe the GAC can participate. On Thursday morning there is a meeting on public participation in this room from 9:00 to 10:30. And, to me, that sort of relates to how these agendas are set, what gets scheduled when on an ICANN schedule. Because, as we know from experience, often the GAC is not able to participate in some of the broader discussions because they conflict with our own meeting schedule. And on the Monday meetings, I am very gratified what WHOIS is not in direct conflict. So the only thing, actually, in conflict, I believe, is the registrar exchange. So -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ from the other session that we can all compare with each other. I really do think that we need to try to start weighing in to help sort of maybe rationalize how the agendas develop. But, Heather, I look to you as a chair to see if there is a certain level of interest that is, perhaps, growing to revisit the agendas that are set and published and to try to minimize all of this overlap and conflicting schedules. Thank you.
>>ALICE MUNYUA: (dropped audio.) There's an agenda item on new gTLD applicant support. But I know we're supposed to discuss the new gTLDs in detail in the afternoon. So I'd like to suggest that we move that session -‐-‐ (dropped audio) -‐-‐ applicant support to this afternoon and have a chance to briefly explain the history of it during that time so that we can give time to talk about Internet governance and be able to close at 1:00, even before 1:00, for the lunch break before we start again at 2:00. So I'd like to welcome Ginger, please. >> GINGER PAQUE: Thank you, Alice. And hello to everyone I haven't met. I'm going to do zoom out, zoom in, to bring ICANN into focus. (Dropped audio) The importance of the GAC -‐-‐ I mean, if I were a conspiracy theorist, I would be worried about this meeting because it seems to me that some of the very most important people in the world are in this room right now because the Internet is probably the most important resource we have. And as the new GAC members, you (garbled audio) of the Internet. And I hope you take that responsibility seriously. I think you do as I look around the room but I can't say strongly enough how important you are to what's happening in the world today and what will happen in the next five, ten years. So what I would like to do is try to put that a little bit in perspective. If we zoom way from in GAC and go into each of us as a person, as an Internet user, we have our own concerns about how the Internet works for us. Do you know what cloud computing is? How many of you use the cloud? I'm quite sure that all of you use the cloud, I mean if you have e-‐mail accounts. We all to. (dropped audio) raise your hands, but you have a little exercise; okay? But as users way zoomed in, as parents, child safety, as consumers, identity theft, zoomed in, the Internet is extremely important. And so if from there we zoom out a little bit and we get into this room, but if we zoom out even more, we get in the whole picture of Internet governance, which is not just ICANN, which keeps it running in simple terms, but all of the issues that go in parallel. To try to illustrate this, I just have two slides. One of them is the Internet society, the ISOC ecosystem map which gives a view. And you will see the technical
community is a part practically of every single one of the issue areas as we deal with (dropped audio). How important it is that these elements all work together, how important it is that the GAC (dropped audio) as well as everyone else's input into ICANN, because ICANN is I think probably the original multistakeholder model that we have then taken out to other institutions. ISOC accepts (garbled audio) everyone the Internet Governance Forum process, the (garbled audio) and covers more of a range of issues that you as a user and you as a parent might be involved in than you are as an ICANN member. So we would like to look at the overview of how ICANN fits into that picture, how the GAC fits into the picture, and know what other issues are affected by the decisions that you make. The United States itself, Suzanne has had some quite interesting references, that it's just not okay to not know how the Internet works anymore, particularly if you are making decisions about it. So what I would like to point out is that there are very, very many resources available for you, and that it's important that you take advantage of them because you are so important for what you can put into the process, what you can get out of the process, and what you can put not only into ICANN but into the Internet governance process, into the Internet Governance Forum process as a whole. Because we need your expertise outside of ICANN. So with that, of course, there's a problem of resources, and your recommendation 14, Manal, thank you very much. (dropped audio) governments need to do to put increased support and commitment to the process, and take advantage and be involved in the other parts of the process. So you do -‐-‐ You have ICANN, you have ISOC, you have the IETF -‐-‐ the different parts of each (dropped audio). I can't really see it to go around it. (dropped audio) must be part of it, and there are resource -‐-‐ in the Internet (dropped audio) in the OECD, on the World Summit on the Information Society, the ITU, Internet governance project, the APC, mapping Internet governance (dropped audio). So we have -‐-‐ (garbled audio) interested in a list of resources that are available, I do have an information sheet. I also have flash drives or things where you can download a book on Internet governance, if you want to know the different issues. And there are other resources available. Right now what I'd like to do is see if there are specific questions you might have -‐-‐ if we go to the second slide, Jeannie -‐-‐ where the different issues join together, separate, and come back together as you, as a user, with security, with economics, with child safety.
There are themes that run through and carry through on this metro line of Internet governance topics which, as a matter of fact, in (dropped audio) Spanish and we are using a chart that was translated by our colleagues from Bolivia. This chart is available in English and French and other languages online. If you want the link, I'm happy to give it to you. But if we remember that technical and infrastructure issues are just one part of what's going on. We have security, we have identity, we have credit cards, we have our e-‐commerce, we have development, we have culture. We have all of the issues and developed -‐-‐ Does anyone for instance have a particular (dropped audio) outside of ICANN? Is there something that worries you? Are you happy to have your information on the cloud? Do you think it's safe there? Do you worry when you put your credit card information? Has any of you -‐-‐ has anybody in this room ever clicked on "I accept" without reading the agreement? Has anyone not ever clicked? I mean, we're all (dropped audio). We take advantage. And we have to be aware that that's normal; that you and we, everyone has to understand how the Internet works so that we can protect ourselves in those situations. Are we safe on the cloud or aren't we? What are the advantages? What are the disadvantages? Is Google really free? I love Google. I'm a Google supporter all day, but nobody is going to convince me that Google is free. I pay for Google services with my information and (dropped audio). I love it, I use it, I am happy. But we do have to understand what's going on. And to do this, we do need to take advantage of the resources and the information that's online to connect the dots. You are the experts. As an educator, I can maybe help connect the dots, so that everyone shares the information. Knowledge sharing is key. Have the information. We have experts in this room on every one of these issues. What we have to do is talk to each other, network about them and make sure we know what's going on. Rather than my talking, knowing that you are, in fact, the experts, I would like to know, are there any specific questions about where you can get information about how the processes work, about what other processes are going on parallel to what's going on in (dropped audio)? Where you can -‐-‐ I mean, I see faces here that I see in the Internet Governance Forum, so (dropped audio) adding into these processes and that you are aware of the importance of your work and what you do. Is there any -‐-‐ Do we have any questions to open?
This was supposed to be more a Q&A to get out what are your concerns. Are you finding the information you want? Do you have questions outside of infrastructure and TLDs? I didn't know if Alice was going to invite Canada or if I -‐-‐ if I may. >>CANADA: First of all, thank you very much for your (dropped audio). From what I am taking from this presentation is that when we -‐-‐ when we conduct our work in the GAC, recognize what our role is. Again, we're providing advice on some decisions that ICANN is making, and we want to ensure that it's in the public interest. So there are issues relating to -‐-‐ there are some security issues, there's issues related to (dropped audio), economic issues. But I guess what I'm trying to get a sense from you, and I guess you're trying to (dropped audio). You need to provide more context in terms of well, what does -‐-‐ what is the Internet Governance Forum doing? How could it serve to assist in becoming more engaged in this work? It will provide an opportunity to have a better understanding of a particular issue. Again, there are many resources that are out there. I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of, you know, how they can serve to be able to advance our work here in the GAC. And the reason why I ask this question is because there was a question that was raised this morning by our colleague from the Comoros and also from our colleague from Trinidad Tobago in terms of being able to broaden the scope or the (dropped audio) awareness of the issues. And so there's one thing attending meetings here and participating to shape the advice (dropped audio). What, in your view -‐-‐ I mean, how would you advise the members here as to how we could make use of these other fora to be able to assist us in our work here? Because I'm just trying to get a better understanding of what you're looking for, what kind of questions you're looking for from us. >>GINGER PAQUE: Thank you very much for that question, and I have to realize that looking at this from an egotistical point of view, I have been hoping I will get GAC and all of your expertise and your information and your work to help in the general Internet governance policy (dropped audio) international policy-‐making, which includes ICANN but it includes so much more. And we will need your expertise in that. And you are bringing in also, then, well, how dogs the global Internet governance process help the GAC. And the GAC is government. It's an advisory committee. And dealing with the technical and the addressing issues is extremely important. Without them, the Internet doesn't exist and doesn't work. But the Internet governance issues affect governments. Certainly Arab Spring isn't as much an Internet phenomenon, a government phenomenon, a social phenomenon, facilitated by the Internet. The Internet did not cause it. The situation existed. But it is involved in it.
How can government make sure these issues and these situations are well handled, positively (dropped audio) and not to increase conflict? Certainly the Internet governance is (dropped audio) security. The Internet governance (dropped audio). Governments have to (dropped audio) jurisdiction. Governments rightly protect their sovereignty. How do global issues (dropped audio) get dealt with. That's an Internet governance issue that's outside of the ICANN proof (dropped audio). Intermediate or the person who has shipped it. Governments want need and want the money. We would like to see the Internet subsidized. But if we can't agree on these basic governance issues (dropped audio) have the control, have the advantages they need, and the security to know that they can step in when necessary, and don't waste their energy stepping in when that's not necessary. So there is a synergistic relationship there, both the (dropped audio) governance process desperately needs the input of governments, and also (dropped audio) that the governments -‐-‐ the input of the whole Internet governance process. (dropped audio). The sources that are available are of course the forums that are open to explain your positions and to hear positions of the other parties. You are specifically mentioned the Internet Governance Forum process, and that is a very important process because it allows things to be aired. It is maturing and moving forward and may or may not move to more (dropped audio) output. But it allows all voices to be heard in an open multistakeholder area, much as ICANN -‐-‐ and we learn very much in the Internet governance process from what ICANN has been doing since (dropped audio) years already. Am I addressing your question? >>CANADA: No, I just wanted to get the point that in order for us to be effective here, in order for us, as members, to have a good understanding of the issues, that there are other -‐-‐ there are some resources that are out there that would help to inform governments to think through a particular issue. There are (dropped audio) to have further deliberations (dropped audio). When we come back here as a group, dealing with some very specific issues, that we're well informed and that (dropped audio). And what resources are (dropped audio). (scribes' audio cutting in and out).
>>GINGER PAQUE: Stated my point. Now, if your question then specifically is what are these resources, (dropped audio) information for anyone who would like it. I am (dropped audio) propaganda speech for DiploFoundation (dropped audio) but on our site there is a (dropped audio) Internet governance book. (scribes' audio cutting in and out.) Sitting at the table that can help you, but DiploFoundation is one example of a (dropped audio). Happy to see alumni here and current participants. So there's ISOC. Well, I'm sure you all are familiar with the Internet society in some way or form. The ISOC society is committed to building information (dropped audio) resources, (dropped audio) the Council of Europe does amazing things, the (dropped audio) the African Union has (dropped audio) an example of so many issues (dropped audio). I actually will be in Nigeria next week giving an Internet governance workshop because the concern to learn more is amazing around the world. To go into more specific details, I'd need a week. I'm trying to go general to let you just have an introduction to let you know the information is available. The newcomer (dropped audio). And the other people in the newcomer's lounge, we do have information, and to get you started and to give you a (dropped audio). Let's go. (dropped audio). (scribes' audio unusable.) >>ALICE MUNYUA: Thank you very much and thank you, Diplo. I would like to close the session here but before we do that I would like to give over to Heather, our chair. >>CHAIR DRYDEN: Thank you for all of you today for coming and for presenting and for DiploFoundation letting us know more about some of the organizations and resources that are available, including Diplo and the work that you do in this area of Internet governance. I think it's clear that the sharing of experience is really important for us to enhance our participation, and the GAC should be, I think, a means and ICANN should be a means for that (dropped audio). Responsibilities. I would point out that ICANN is a decision-‐making body, so that makes it perhaps different from the Internet Governance Forum where it's more about capacity building and (dropped audio) as well but that's meant to inform
policymakers and help build capacity so that when they're (dropped audio) that they are better able to do that. So I would like to know (dropped audio). May do it differently in the future. And we're going to be meeting over the next few days (dropped audio) colleagues about (dropped audio). Some have been in the committee for some time, and are quite able and willing to help you make sense of what is quite a complex organization. So a note for this afternoon. We are going to reconvene at 2:00 in this same room. It will be the GAC plenary meeting. And this will (dropped audio). Not to mention a bit earlier. As there are three ICANN meetings a year, I would point out that in June in Prague, those are the next ICANN/GAC meetings. And then in October we have the Toronto (dropped audio) in Canada (dropped audio) as well. So (dropped audio). Give you a sense of what's coming. So with that, we will see you back in this room at 2:00. (Lunch break)
