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A Conversation with Community Leader Lise Fuhr

14 March 2017
By Lise Fuhr

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Lise Fuhr is a leader in the Internet community in Denmark. Here, she reflects on what ICANN58 means for Denmark – and what are the key issues she will focus on at the meeting.  

Tell us a little about yourself and your involvement in ICANN.

I’m currently Director General at the European Telecommunications Network Operators' Association (ETNO), the association that includes Europe’s leading providers of telecommunication and digital services. In ICANN, ETNO is an active in the Internet Service Providers and Connectivity Providers (ISPCP) and the Business Constituency (BC).

I’ve had several roles in the ICANN community, as a member of the Second Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT2) and as co-chair of the Cross-Community Working Group that developed the proposal for the Internet Assigned Names Authority (IANA) stewardship transition. At present, I am a Board member of the ICANN affiliate Public Technical Identifiers (PTI), which is responsible for the operation of the IANA functions.

In the past, I was COO of Danish registry DIFO and DK Hostmaster, the entities responsible for the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .dk. I have also worked for the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and for Telia Networks.

ICANN is all about the multistakeholder model. We actively seek participation from diverse cross-sections of society. From your perspective, what does the multistakeholder model of governance mean for the Denmark?

Having ICANN58 in Copenhagen will help build an even stronger awareness of the role of Internet governance and of the multistakeholder model in Denmark. Today’s Internet ecosystem is broad – most societal and industrial sectors rely on the Internet. Almost every sector needs to take part in how the Internet is governed.

What relationship do you see between ICANN and its stakeholders and how would you like to see it evolve?

ETNO has always advocated for an active role in Internet governance. For this reason, we support the multistakeholder model, embodied by ICANN and its activities. We want to support ICANN as it takes its first steps after the transition. The multistakeholder model is an opportunity to bring positive values to the global Internet community. Freedom to invest and freedom to innovate both remain crucial to a thriving and diverse Internet environment.

What issues will you be following at ICANN58?

The discussion around the new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) will be very important. The program should be balanced and consider both the opportunities and the risks to be addressed. In addition, the work on enhancing ICANN’s accountability will also be essential to rounding out the good work done so far with the transition. Another important issue is the debate on the migration from Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). Last but not least, trust is a top priority, so it’s important to participate in the discussions around security.

Authors

Lise Fuhr