We live in a time of change, and the speed of change is accelerating. From my perspective, some aspects of this change have a greater impact on ICANN organization (org) than on others. To fulfill our mission, we must continue to evolve and develop innovative approaches to handle the challenges that come our way.
Each year, I work with the Board and the org's Executive team to develop goals for the coming fiscal year. I develop the first seven goals, and the Board develops additional goals. They reflect the challenges we face and what we have learned about what the ICANN ecosystem needs to continue to fulfill our mission. I am sharing them with you as part of our collective commitment to accountability and transparency.
FY22 Goals – Developed by Me
Goal 1: Develop, with the community and with support from the Board, the ability to conduct hybrid meetings that are inclusive and enhance the opportunity for community interaction and decision-making.
One of our biggest challenges is that the pandemic continues to impact not only ICANN's work, but our activities and movement around the entire world. As a fundamentally inclusive institution, we must make sure that all voices can be heard from all parts of the world, and not only the loudest or luckiest voices. There is still a real need for face-to-face interaction; yet we must balance this need with the need to keep the ICANN staff, community, and Board safe.
Goal 2: Set up an interaction point with the community regarding legislation and legislative proposals.
We have seen a growing number of new legislative proposals that impact ICANN's remit and create a complex environment for ICANN stakeholders. The intent of this goal is to improve the flow of information about legislative and regulatory proposals that may impact ICANN policies and processes.
Goal 3: Establish direct relationships with connectivity providers, both service providers and manufacturers. Provide information, knowledge, and interaction so that we can be a part of the conversation, including standardization discussions.
The technical discussions about alternative roots, alternative domain name systems, and alternative Internet protocols (IPs) continue in forums outside the ICANN ecosystem. Some proposals are advanced, and others are based on opinion rather than fact, but all have the potential to change the way the Internet works.
Goal 4: Identify and work more closely with world governments to explain our mission and model.
ICANN's role, mandate, and activities are not widely known. The dependencies between the different actors who produce the Internet on your device are even less well-known. The next billion Internet users will largely come from Asia and Africa, so we should begin our outreach there.
Goal 5: Incident reporting from IANA and IMRS.
Stakeholders and governments have been increasingly interested in the technical performance of the ICANN Managed Root Server (IMRS) and the performance of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA).
Goal 6: Process for the potential implementation of proposals from the Domain Name System Security Facilitation Initiative Technical Study Group (DSFI-TSG).
Information security, cybersecurity, and personal security blended with privacy concerns are all hot topics, but the response to them has been dispersed across various unconnected groups. The DSFI-TSG has developed suggestions to address these issues and has constructed a way to communicate beyond some of the borders that exist in the ICANN ecosystem.
Goal 7: Internal revision of "necessary work." Over time, not all work can be as important as it once was, and this change will be a part of internal prioritizing.
An intense period with new operational assignments delegated to the org has created stress on our resources. We simply cannot do all the work required of us at the same time. We need to work with the community and the Board to enhance our planning and prioritizing.
FY22 Goals – Developed by the ICANN Board
Goal 8: Stimulate Universal Acceptance, including Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)
While stimulation actions have been taking place over the past years, both within the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) and through support and financing of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group, Universal Acceptance still has room to grow to ensure new domain names resolve widely, across regions and applications. With preparations for the new generic top-level domain (gTLD) round underway, an important part of its success will be determined by how much new users are served by domain names written in local character scripts.
Goal 9: Work with Internet governance stakeholders around the world who share the objective of one open Internet for all.
A healthy collaboration between those who share the mission of protecting an Internet that is interoperable, secure, and stable would be a meaningful contribution to creating the best possible global environment for ICANN to fulfil its mission and ensure that activities of those partners who want to work with ICANN complement each other in the best possible way.
You can follow our progress toward fulfilling these goals by reading the periodic CEO Reports to the Board found on the President's Corner of https://www.icann.org. Thank you for your commitment, and I look forward to what we will accomplish together.
