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Review of the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO)

Questions received during the bidding phase

Q. Are remote interviews with informed stakeholders allowed during the phase going from the signature of the contract to the ICANN Meeting in Nairobi?

A. Yes, any form of remote data gathering during the mentioned period is strongly encouraged.

Q. The RfP mentions that the review is expected to be largely based on qualitative analysis. From our understanding of the ToR, the review is likely to require qualitative analysis, relating to matters such as the effectiveness of the ccNSO; and quantitative assessment of relevant statistics, numbers and source of varying responses, etc. Is this consistent with the expectations of ICANN?

A. In order to appropriately answer to the evaluative questions, the consultant will be faced with the need to gather and process qualitative / behavioral evidence such as (ex.) opinions, experiences, and expectations of key stakeholders. For this reason a purely quantitative approach to data collection would not be optimal. Quantitative analysis of qualitative evidence –if possible in reason of the relatively narrow universe of key stakeholders and by the answer ratio- is a possible answer to this need.

Q. Our organization is an ICANN ALS. Does that status prohibit us from applying?

A. There are no particular reasons prohibiting an organization that has received ALS status to participate to this RfP, as long as all the other conditions are satisfied (capacity to provide independent, external advice; ability to reach out stakeholders located worldwide with varying degrees of Internet accessibility, etc.)

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."