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DNS Risk Management Framework Working Group

In Resolution 2011.03.18.07 the Board directed the Board Governance Committee to recommend to the Board a working group to oversee the development of a risk management framework and system for the DNS as it pertains to ICANN's role as defined in the ICANN Bylaws.

At its meeting on 28 October 2011, the ICANN Board approved the membership of the Working Group as recommended by the Board Governance Committee in Resolution 2011.10.28.11.

The members of the working group are Bill Graham - Chair, Patrik Fälström, Roelof Meijer, Ram Mohan, Ray Plzak, Bill Woodcock, and Suzanne Woolf.

On 16 March 2012, in Resolution 2012.03.16.06, the Board approved the charter [PDF, 143 KB] of the DNS Risk Management Framework Working Group.

The DNS Risk Management Framework Working Group held a public workshop in Prague on Thursday 28 June 2012 at 10:30-12:00. A staff assessment for the working group was posted as materials for that session. It is also linked here [PDF, 404 KB].

On 16 July, 2012, following the public workshop in Prague, ICANN published a Request for Proposals for DNS Risk Management Framework Consultant, calling for an expert consultant to assist with the development of a DNS Risk Management Framework. The announcement is available here. The deadline for responses is 31 August 2012, 23:59 UTC.

Following the RFP, Westlake Consulting was selected to develop the DNS Risk Management Framework. They were introduced to the community during the public meeting of the working group in Toronto. Westlake then prepared a draft framework which was published and discussed at the Beijing meeting. The working group has now received a draft Report which will be discussed with the community in Durban.

At the Buenos Aires meeting, the Board passed a resolution closing the working group and directing staff to implement the DNS Risk Management Framework. http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/resolutions-21nov13-en.htm#2.c. Oversight of this effort has now transitioned to the Board.

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."