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LOS ANGELES – 2 June 2017 – The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) today issued an update on the review of the Community Priority Evaluation (CPE) process.
Community Priority Evaluation is a method to resolve string contention, described in full detail in section 4.2 of the Applicant Guidebook (AGB). The evaluation determines if the community based application qualifies to earn priority and eliminate all non-community applicants in the contention set as well as any other non-prevailing community applicants. In CPE, the application is evaluated against the following four criteria: Community Establishment; Nexus between Proposed String and Community; Registration Policies, and Community Endorsement. The evaluations were conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). The EIU was selected for this role because it offers premier business intelligence services, providing political, economic, and public policy analysis to businesses, governments, and organizations across the globe.
At various times in the implementation of the New gTLD Program, the ICANN Board has considered aspects of CPE process, including certain concerns that some applicants have raised regarding the process. On 17 September 2016, the ICANN Board directed the President and CEO, or his designees, to undertake a review of the process by which ICANN has interacted with the CPE provider. In his letter of 26 April 2017 to concerned parties [PDF, 405 KB], Chris Disspain, the Chair of the Board Governance Committee, provided additional information about the scope and status of the review. Below is additional information about the review, as well as the current status of the CPE process review.