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Nominating Committee | Agreement to Adhere to the Code of Ethics 2010

1. Scope

This Code of Ethics applies to and must be agreed to by:

  1. any and all ICANN Nominating Committee (NomCom) members [http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#VII-2]
  2. any and all ICANN staff members engaged in supporting the work of the Nominating Committee, and
  3. any and all outside consultants who may be retained by the Nominating Committee to assist with any phase of its work.

2. NomCom’s Objectives

The following are the core objectives of the NomCom:

  1. Identify, recruit, and nominate the highest-quality individuals for the positions NomCom is charged to fill;
  2. Advance the core mission, values and bylaws of ICANN [Bylaws Article I, Sections 1 and 2, see http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#I-1 and http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#I-2);
  3. Trust and respect all members of the NomCom;
  4. Pursue diversity in geography, culture, skills, experience, and perspectives from across the global Internet community;
  5. Earn the trust and respect of the Internet community by acting with fairness and integrity, and by providing transparency of objectives, criteria, procedures, and mechanisms for receiving input, while respecting candidates’ privacy and maintaining the confidentiality that is necessary to assure open and frank communications within NomCom;

3. NomCom’s Role

NomCom is responsible for the selection of portions of the members of the ICANN Board of Directors, GNSO Council, ALAC, and ccNSO Council, filling these leadership positions in a way that complements the selections made for such positions by the Supporting Organizations and ALAC.

The central rationale for using a nominating committee to select a portion of the ICANN leadership bodies is to balance those who can represent particular areas of knowledge and interests with those who place the broad public interest of the global Internet community ahead of any particular interests. NomCom’s role is to select individuals of the highest integrity and capability who place the broad public interest of the global Internet community ahead of any particular interests, and who are nevertheless knowledgeable about ICANN’s mission and environment.

To achieve this broad public-interest orientation, the members of NomCom are drawn from across the ICANN and global Internet communities. They act only on behalf of the interests of the global Internet community within the scope of the ICANN mission and the responsibilities assigned to NomCom by ICANN Bylaws. They act as individuals and are not beholden to their appointing constituencies as they work by consensus to derive the NomCom slates of Selected Nominees for these leadership bodies.

The NomCom functions independently from the ICANN Board, Supporting Organizations, and Advisory Committees. The NomCom selections are final; no further approval or ratification is needed.

Together the NomCom and other selection pathways ensure that ICANN benefits from functional, cultural and geographic diversity in its policy development and decision-making as the Internet evolves.

NomCom is responsible for the selection of all ICANN Directors except the President and those selected by ICANN's Supporting Organizations, and for such other selections as are set forth in the Bylaws. [Bylaws Article VII, Section 1, see http://www.icann.org/general/bylaws.htm#VII-1]

4. Integrity and Conflicts of Interest

NomCom members act only on behalf of the interests of the global Internet community and within the scope of the ICANN mission and responsibilities assigned to it by the ICANN Bylaws. The NomCom is designed to function independently from the ICANN Board, the Supporting Organizations, and Advisory Committees.

NomCom members are expected to strictly adhere to the ICANN Conflict of Interest Policy. See http://www.icann.org/en/committees/coi/coi-policy-30jul09-en.htm, which is incorporated by reference herein and shall be an integral part of this Code of Ethics.

Each NomCom member must disclose promptly to the Chair any financial or other relations that might affect (or might reasonably be seen to affect) his/her performance on the Committee, including any financial connections and/or personal non-monetary advantages to any individual under consideration by the NomCom. A subcommittee will be formed by the Chair to review disclosed conflicts or potential conflicts and to determine how to handle them. NomCom members must recluse themselves from participation in discussion and voting where such conflict exists.

NomCom members must not have any pre-existing commitments concerning the nomination of any particular candidates or potential candidates.

Each NomCom member is expected to pursue the stated objectives of the Committee, to comply with the rules and procedures established by the Committee, and to support the decisions the Committee makes.

Each NomCom member is expected to do his/her best to find the highest-qualified candidates for consideration by the NomCom, and to do his/her best to encourage those individuals to serve.

At no time shall any member of NomCom act in a way that would bring the Committee into disrepute or undermine the integrity of the process by which the Committee makes its selections.

5. Confidentiality and Privacy

All NomCom members will safeguard all internal NomCom communications concerning the candidates and treat them as private, confidential, and for the use of immediate Committee members and NomCom staff only, without exception.

NomCom members will not disclose outside of the Committee any of the discussions, deliberations, communications, records and notes, about the candidates. Further, NomCom members will not disclose outside of the Committee the identities of the candidates under consideration by NomCom, unless NomCom as a whole has decided to do so and the explicit consent of the candidate(s) in question has been obtained.

When communicating confidential materials by electronic means, NomCom members agree to:

  1. take all reasonable precautions and use best efforts to maintain the confidentiality of both the storage and the communication of all NomCom information;
  2. not attempt to receive, generate, access or store confidential information on computers that are not under their personal control, unless other conditions of the Code of Ethics apply to equipment controlled by others;
  3. notify the NomCom Chair if a computer used to store confidential material by electronic means has been stolen or otherwise compromised; and
  4. take responsibility for observing the relevant applicable law regarding Personal Data Protection in their respective countries of residence.

NomCom members shall destroy all confidential materials related to the work of the Committee, when the work of the Committee has ended or when no longer serving on the NomCom.

6. Formal Statement of Commitment to the Code of Ethics

I understand the core objectives of the NomCom and fully agree to strictly adhere to this Code of Ethics and the ICANN Conflict of Interests Policy (as may be amended from time to time), and that failure to do so will constitute grounds for my immediate removal from the NomCom.

By my signature below, I certify that I have read and understood the above provisions of the Code of Ethics and that I agree to follow them.

  • _______________________________________

  • Signature
  • ______________________

  • Date
  • _______________________________________

  • Name
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."