I would like to begin with a regular dialogue with blog readers by bringing out my opinion about ICANN's globalization.
Our Corporation is already 15 years old, and during all these years we've been witness to an increase in the organization's globalization (it is also called "internationalization" in Russian). With the establishment of new divisions, opening of new offices, employment of international staff, and most importantly – with strict observance of multistakeholder principle for all stakeholders from every country of the world, ICANN is recognized as a truly global corporation.
But if we "set aside" the political aspect of the problem and discussions about substantial (or purported) influence of USA's public authorities on ICANN's activity, what does globalization bring to all of us in practice? Whether it is necessary at all, if we stop thinking about just the political reasons of such discussion?
In practice it becomes obvious that global Internet (and there are already at least three billion Internet users all over the world) demands for global approaches to its infrastructure management. In relation to the unique network identifiers system (IP-addresses, domain names), and ICANN is responsible for its security and stability, it means the following. Based on the common, "global" rules and standards, it is necessary to cooperate with the national registries and registrars as closely, as conveniently and as timely for our counterparts as possible. As a result, for example, a special headquarters has been established for "Europe-Middle East-Africa (ЕМЕА)" Macroregion in Istanbul (Turkey), and experts who support registrars in our region are already working there, and we expect that legal support functions, financial estimates and so on will also be performed in the nearest future. Even such factor as time zones closeness and, accordingly, working hours closeness in corresponding zones, in comparison with the corporate services placed in the other hemisphere of the Earth (Los-Angeles), is of utmost importance in terms of convenience and efficiency of work.
Decision of the United States Department of Commerce regarding the transition of NTIA's stewardship functions and the following discussion about "new IANA" gave an additional impulse to ICANN's globalization. All stakeholders in our region who would like to participate in this project, to communicate their opinion and to take the opportunity of discussing it at ICANN Meeting in June, 2015 in Buenos Aires (Argentina) still have time for that. And so they can directly promote globalization of our organization. Thinking globally, we will promote making decisions, which serve the interests of all stakeholders best of all.