ICANN Contractual Compliance has completed its audit of selected generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry operators ("registries") with the terms of the Registry Agreement and ICANN temporary and consensus policies. The report summarizes the methodology and the results of the audit of 28 TLDs that have not previously been audited under the New gTLD Registry Agreement Audit Plan.
During the audit phase, ICANN reviewed over 3,400 documents collected in eight (8) different languages and received from 14 countries. At the completion of the audit phase, ICANN issued initial, individual audit reports to each auditee indicating what initial findings, if any, were identified as a result of the audit and asked auditees to address these initial findings.
As detailed in the report, three (3) of the 28 registries (11%) received an audit report with no initial findings. Ten (10) of the 28 registries (36%) who received a final report had initial findings noted in their draft reports and were able to fully resolve them prior to the completion of the Remediation Phase. The remaining 15 of the 28 registries (54%) completed the audit with deficiencies noted as they were unable to fully resolve their initial findings prior to the completion of the audit. These registries did not "fail" the audit as they provided ICANN with a specific remediation plan that included the estimated time for completion. ICANN will confirm that remediation plans have been implemented and update progress on the CEO monthly reports.
To date, all registries have either resolved their findings or are in the process of implementing necessary changes to prevent the instances of non-compliance from recurring in the future. Failure to remediate a deficiency will result in additional enforcement actions.
More information on the ICANN Compliance Audit Program is available here.
