The ICANN organization is a community-based organization and one of our defining principles is that we are an "open" organization.
Our strategy for the data we hold must reflect this, and our default position must be that all of our data is open data unless there are good reasons to treat it otherwise.
If data is important enough for us to collect and keep, then it is important enough to share. It is not our role to judge what is useful to publish, just as it is not our role to predetermine the usage that people will make of the data. When information is shared, it increases in utility and value as people analyze it, combine it, and enhance it in ways we cannot predict.
To make this happen, I have made it one of my personal goals to see the ICANN org deliver open data to the ICANN community. It will take time, but the resulting open data platform will be comprehensive and authoritative.
For the ICANN org, this will mean a more formalized approach to data management, and support will be put in place to help manage that change.
Many in the ICANN community have called for this and have listed a wide range of uses and benefits they will get from open data. One of the first benefits I expect to see is a shift toward evidence-based policy, and I look forward to the ICANN community using open data in increasingly innovative ways.
