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Methodology

Organizational reviews are part of ICANN's program of continuous improvement and are intended to ensure an independent examination of the role and operation of key structures of ICANN.

The process of organizational review includes an assessment of the structure under review, conducted by an external and independent consultant, under the Board's Structural Improvements Committee (SIC)’s oversight, and with the opportunity for public comments on findings and proposed improvements.

The Bylaws and the systematization of OR processes [PDF, 671 KB] prescribe the following methodology:

Reviews Process Methodology

For full methodological reference, please consult the SIC’s systematization of the OR processes [PDF, 671 KB].

The Review Working Group (WG) is formed:

  • To help ensure that the evaluator's final report (independent review) contains the data and information needed to perform the review;
  • To inform the Structural Improvements Committee and the Board of the continuing validity of the reviewed constituency within the ICANN structure and of any structural or operational change that would be desirable in order to improve its effectiveness;
  • To recommend a comprehensive proposal to enhance the involvement of the individual Internet user community in ICANN.

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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."