Since the beginning of 2020, the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) and its Technical Engagement (TE) team have started a transformation with the objective of reinforcing the ICANN organization's engagement on technical topics globally. In a blog, I highlighted the series of papers that we are publishing under the OCTO documents series to promote best practices and technical research to further understand new trends related to the unique identifier system that ICANN helps coordinate. In parallel to these publications, we have also started restructuring our team to increase the focus on how we engage on technical topics with the community. One of our first realizations was that the type of engagement and level of resources needed are not uniform across the globe; hence a need for a more regional approach.
Although the need is vivid everywhere, the level of maturity is not the same across the board. The Asia Pacific (APAC) region for instance, was privileged over the past few years to have a talented, well-respected, and dedicated trainer and advocate, whom we have been using often for other regions. Early in 2020, ICANN's CEO, Göran Marby, in line with that observation, approved to further regionalize the Technical Engagement function in support of the already active regional Stakeholder Engagement teams. As a result, three specialists have joined the TE team to extend our coverage to the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC), and Africa and the Middle East (MEA) regions.