Skip to main content
Resources

ICANN Strategic Plan

The strategic plan consists of ICANN's mission, vision, objectives, and goals over a five-year timeframe.

ICANN's mission is its purpose and why it exists as reflected in the ICANN Bylaws. ICANN's vision is the desired future state of the organization, or where ICANN wants to be at a given point in time. The vision and mission work together, with the strategic outlook input, to inform and define ICANN's key strategic objectives. Each objective is then broken down into more tactical goals that the ICANN organization works to achieve over the five-year strategic planning period. By achieving its goals, ICANN is able to meet its objectives and fulfill its vision so that it can continue to deliver on its mission in an ever-changing landscape over the five-year period of the strategic plan.

Current ICANN Strategic Plan

ICANN is currently operating under the ICANN Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2021-2025.

Please find links to the Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2021-2025 in six languages below:

The current Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2021-2025 was adopted by the ICANN Board on 23 June 2019, and went into effect on 01 July 2020.

On 16 November 2022, after considering the FY24 strategic trends assessment, the ICANN Board resolved to keep the Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2021-2025 in force and unchanged.

Introduction to Strategic Planning
Developing ICANN's Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2021-2025
ICANN Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2016-2020

Introduction to Strategic Planning

The purpose of strategic planning is to set out the long-term strategic objectives for the organization, reflecting the ICANN mission and vision.

Strategic planning is a fundamental part of ICANN's governance, mandated by the organization's Bylaws.

Strategic planning is a core element of ICANN's three-fold planning process cycle, namely the Strategic Plan, 5-year Operating Plan, and the Annual Plan and Budget process. Strategic planning helps answer two very important questions: where are we now? And where do we want to be?

Strategic Planning Process

Community engagement

Once the strategic planning process is completed, the next step is to develop ICANN's 5-Year Operating Plan, and Annual Plan and Budget process. These plans answer the questions: how will we get there and who will do what? They help ICANN fulfill its mission and vision by putting the objectives of the strategic plan into action. The cycle ends with ongoing achievement and progress reporting to help us answer the final question: how are we doing?

ICANN's Strategic Planning Process

The strategic planning process can be broken down into two components:

  1. Annual trends identification, Analysis, and Impact Assessment for ICANN (Strategic Outlook Program).
    • The community, Board, and ICANN organization participate in trend identification sessions to engage in a discussion on emerging trends that could affect ICANN. The trend identification process repeats annually to help inform ICANN's strategy in an ever-changing environment.
    • The ICANN Board assesses the impact of priority trends and shares a proposal with the ICANN community for consultation. After receiving community input, the Board defines objectives and goals that will serve as a foundation for the strategic plan.
  2. 5-Year Strategic Plan (drafted every five years, unless significant new trend or significant shift in existing trend require amendments to the current 5-year strategic plan)
    • The Board oversees the drafting of the 5-year Strategic Plan. The ICANN community provides feedback and input on the draft strategic plan via the Public Comment process.
    • The ICANN organization revises the draft strategic plan based on community input and the ICANN Board then finalizes and adopts the new strategic plan.
    • The strategic plan will not go into effect until after the Empowered Community considers whether it will reject the plan. If the strategic plan is rejected, ICANN will consider the reasons for that rejection and propose a revised plan. Learn more about the Empowered Community process here [PD, 188 KB].

Annual Strategic Outlook Program

he three phases of the Strategic Outlook Program; Trend Identification, Trend Analysis, and Trend Impact Assessment.

Every year, new trends or shifts in existing trends impacting the Operating Plans (five-year or annual), and/or budget, will be factored into the annual iteration of those plans as appropriate. This is called the Strategic Outlook Program. Significant shifts could result in appropriate adjustments to the strategic plan, following the strategic planning process described above. Or should trends be less significant but still relevant for appropriate adjustments to the 5-Year Operating Plan, those adjustments will be made through the relevant process. It is essential to have broad participation across the ICANN ecosystem to monitor evolution or shifts and adjust our strategy proactively. Community Trend Session Data, a Trend Impact Assessment, and a Strategic Outlook Trend Report are published annually to create transparency and maintain periodic review.

FY25 Strategic Outlook Trends Data:

Trend Identification:

Trends Analysis and Impact Assessment:

  • To be published upon pending Board Resolution at ICANN 78

Strategic Outlook Trend Report:

  • To be published upon pending Board Resolution at ICANN 78

FY24 Strategic Outlook Trends Data:

Trend Identification:

Trends Analysis and Impact Assessment:

Strategic Outlook Trend Report

FY23 Strategic Outlook Trends Data:

Trend Identification:

Trends Analysis and Impact Assessment:

Strategic Outlook Trend Report

FY22 Strategic Outlook Trends Data:

Trend Identification-:

Trends Analysis and Impact Assessment:

Strategic Outlook Trend Report

Developing ICANN's Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025

The work on the next iteration of the Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2021-2025 began in January 2018 and concluded in June 2019. This section describes how the plan was developed, including key reference documents and other useful links.

On 23 June 2019, the ICANN Board adopted a Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025.

Read the adopted Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025:

Timeline

Progress on ICANN's Next Strategic Plan

As of June 2019:

  • Phase 1 – Strategic outlook/trends identification.
    The ICANN community, the ICANN Board, and the ICANN organization participated in and completed the process of identifying strategic outlook trends in June 2018.
  • Phase 2 – Strategic outlook/trends analysis, prioritization, and impact.
    The ICANN Board and the ICANN organization conducted an analysis of key priority trends and their impacts on ICANN. The next step will be to engage with the ICANN community to share findings for community input and consideration via a webinar, and a public session at ICANN63.
  • Phase 3 – Drafting of strategic plan.
    Following community discussions at ICANN63, a draft strategic plan was posted for public comment on 20 Dec 2018. The public comment closed on 25 February 2019.
  • Phase 4 – Finalization of strategic plan.
    The Strategic Planning Board caucus group and ICANN organization incorporated feedback from the public comment proceeding, as well as the comments received at ICANN64, into a revised document. The revised strategic plan was presented to the ICANN Board for consideration and was adopted on 23 June 2019.

Key reference documents

Date Title Author
22 July 2019

Translated versions of ICANN Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025

 ICANN Language Services
23 June 2019 Adopted ICANN Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025 [PDF, 2.08 MB] Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
23 May 2019 Revised Draft ICANN Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021-2025 [PDF, 199 KB] Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
23 May 2019 Summary of how comments were considered in the revised plan [PDF, 232 KB] Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
29 Mar 2019 Staff Report of Public Comment Proceeding [PDF, 114 KB] Nathalie Vergnolle
20 Dec 2018 Draft ICANN Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021 – 2025 [PDF, 425 KB] Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
20 Dec 2018 Public Comment Backgrounder for ICANN's Draft Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2021 – 2025 [PDF, 511 KB] Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
09 Oct 2018

Results of Trend Outlook Sessions and subsequent analysis

 Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
March-June 2018 Strategic Outlook Trends Identification Exercise [PDF, 648 KB] Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives

Other useful links

Date Title Author

11 Mar 2019

ICANN Strategic 5-Year Planning Session at ICANN64

Session Leader: Nathalie Vergnolle

22 Oct 2018

ICANN Strategic 5-Year Planning Session at ICANN63

Session Leader: Theresa Swinehart
21 Sep 2018 Chair's Blog: A Wrap-Up of the Genval Board Workshop Cherine Chalaby, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors
06 Sep 2018 Chair's Blog: A Preview of the Genval Board Workshop Cherine Chalaby, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors
08 Aug 2018 "Update on ICANN's Strategic Planning Process" Theresa Swinehart, Senior Vice President, Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
03 Jul 2018 Chair's Blog: ICANN62 Meeting & Board Workshop Cherine Chalaby, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors
25 Jun 2018 ICANN's Strategic Outlook Program Helps Identify Trends to Meet Challenges & Opportunities Ahead Theresa Swinehart, Senior Vice President, Multistakeholder Strategy and Strategic Initiatives
14 May 2018 Chair's Blog: A Wrap-Up of the Vancouver Board Workshop Author: Cherine Chalaby, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors
01 May 2018 Chair's Blog: A Preview of the Vancouver Board Workshop Cherine Chalaby, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors
08 Feb 2018 Chair's Blog: The Los Angeles Workshop Recap Cherine Chalaby, Chair, ICANN Board of Directors

ICANN's Strategic Plan for Fiscal Years 2016-2020

On 16 October 2014, the ICANN Board adopted the Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2016 – 2020.

Five Year Plan IconDeveloped through an extensive, collaborative, bottom-up, multistakeholder and multilingual process, the Strategic Plan provides an opportunity for the global community to coalesce around a new overarching vision and long-term objectives. The Strategic Plan: articulates ICANN's new Vision; restates ICANN's founding Mission; and sets forth five Strategic Objectives and sixteen Strategic Goals, each with Key Success Factors (Outcomes), and Strategic Risks.

VISION: ICANN's vision is that of an independent, global organization trusted worldwide to coordinate the global Internet's systems of unique identifiers to support a single, open globally interoperable Internet. ICANN builds trust through serving the public interest and incorporating the transparent and effective cooperation among stakeholders worldwide to facilitate its coordination role.

Strategic Objectives

  • Evolve and further globalize ICANN
  • Support a healthy, stable, and resilient unique identifier ecosystem
  • Advance organizational, technological, and operational excellence
  • Promote ICANN's role and multistakeholder approach
  • Develop and implement a global public interest framework bounded by ICANN's mission.

Read the entire Strategic Plan for fiscal years 2016-2020 online:

Important Links and Information

Questions?

Do you have questions related to strategic planning? If so, please contact us by emailing planning@icann.org.

A note about our terms of service:

We have updated our electronic terms of service to provide greater transparency and align with laws applicable to us. Learn more.

This site uses cookies to deliver an efficient user experience and to help us see how the site is used. Learn more.OK

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."