At a special meeting of the ICANN Board on Thursday 14 January, the Board decided that ICANN70 will be the fourth Public Meeting to be held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to Thursday’s Board meeting, ICANN org staff presented the Board with an initial...

Happy New Year! As we look ahead into the new year, I would like to take the opportunity to say that I am proud to be part of the Internet community, working with you through what has been a most challenging 2020. As we are not out of the woods yet with regard to the...

With the year coming to an end, I would like to take a moment to provide an overview of ICANN's efforts regarding the European Union's (EU) General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and what to expect in 2021. EPDP Phase 2 Recommendations As I wrote in October, the...

On 21 December, the U.S. Congress passed a bill providing a $900 billion stimulus package for COVID-19 relief and to fund government operations (the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021). In an accompanying set of instructions, Congress directs the National...

The Cross-Community Working Group on New gTLD Auction Proceeds (CCWG-AP), formed in January 2017, was tasked with developing a proposal on the mechanism to allocate the proceeds generated from auctions of last resort used to resolve string contention in the New gTLD...

Designed to shape ICANN's priorities, the Five-Year Strategic Plan establishes a vision and a set of objectives and goals in service of ICANN's mission. Every year, new trends or shifts in existing trends have the potential to impact our plans. The pandemic has...

National, Regional, Subregional, and Youth Internet Governance Forums (NRIs) have emerged organically around the world. Similar to our recent evaluation of the Schools on Internet Governance, the ICANN organization (org) has conducted a review of NRIs around the world and...

I am pleased to announce that the ICANN Board has approved ICANN organization's first Risk Appetite Statement. The Risk Appetite Statement articulates the level of risk that the org is willing to take and retain in order to fulfill its mission. The Board also approved...

The year 2020 started like any other year with normal face-to-face activities. First on our calendar was Praia (Cabo Verde) followed by Bujumbura (Burundi). This quickly changed dramatically with the onset of COVID-19. Like the rest of the global community, many of our...

Over the past few months, the Domain Name System Security Facilitation Initiative Technical Study Group (DSFI-TSG) has progressed its work by discussing various past breaches and attack campaigns that either utilized or directly impacted the Domain Name System (DNS). The...

This week, the European Commission published important initiatives relevant to the Domain Name System (DNS) including domain name registration data and DNS services providers. ICANN org would like to bring this to the attention of the community. The Digital Services Act...

As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, the ICANN Board of Directors conducts a self-evaluation every two years to assess our effectiveness and ability to work together in support of ICANN's mission. Through the evaluation, we identify areas of strength,...

As noted in the previous blog, ICANN organization (org) has been taking action to protect registrants during insolvency proceedings involving the registrar Net 4 India Limited. I want to give the community an update on recent ICANN contractual compliance activity, and a...

ICANN's Bylaws-mandated reviews are an important accountability mechanism that enable us to maintain a healthy multistakeholder model. The Accountability and Transparency Review is one of four Specific Reviews anchored in the ICANN Bylaws. It is a thorough examination of...

As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted physical events across Europe in early 2020, the Internet community quickly came together to explore new ways of engaging. Key engagement events, such as those organized by the National and Regional Initiatives (NRIs) on Internet...

In an October 2020 blog post, ICANN President and CEO Göran Marby outlined the steps that the ICANN Board and the organization (org) are taking, at the community’s request, to help facilitate a dialogue on improving our support for ICANN Public Meetings. Through this...

In September 2020, the ICANN org's Information Transparency Initiative (ITI) team announced that we had added new content and improved previously released content to https://preview.icann.org. We also announced that we would hold two webinars on Tuesday 1 December 2020 to...

This week, the ICANN organization's Registrant Program published Volume 4 of the ongoing 'Issues and Challenges Impacting Domain Name Registrants' report series, which contains updated data collected by the ICANN org's Global Support Center (GSC) and Contractual...

In April 2019, the ICANN organization (org) became aware of the insolvency proceedings commenced against the registrar Net 4 India Limited (IANA 1007), located in India. In response, ICANN org has been taking actions to protect registrants. These actions include enforcing...

Last month, the ICANN community convened its Annual General Meeting (AGM), which was also our third virtual ICANN Public Meeting. We continue to make the best of the circumstances, and I want to thank you for joining and working together constructively and effectively...

During the recent ICANN69 Prep Week Q&A with the ICANN org executive team, I was asked how the Engineering & Information Technology (E&IT) function prioritizes its work overall, and in particular how work on the Centralized Zone Data Service (CZDS) was...

On behalf of ICANN, it is with great sadness that I offer condolences on the passing of Marilyn Cade. Marilyn was a long-time member of the ICANN community and a strong and constant advocate for our work. Through more than 20 years of involvement in ICANN, she was active...

In July 2020, we published a blog in which we presented one of ICANN's research initiatives – the Identifier Technology Health Indicators (ITHI) – describing why it is important for the Internet ecosystem and why we are keen to welcome more participants and to collect...

The Fifteenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which will be held virtually due to COVID-19, officially opens on 9 November and closes on 17 November. Pre-events and other working sessions will be held from 2 to 6 November. Members of the ICANN...