Summary/analysis of comments

["Kieren McCarthy" <kieren.mccarthy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Posted by Kieren McCarthy, General manager of public participation, ICANN

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Summary of comments on the draft Strategic Plan July 2008 - June 2011

 

 

Background

 

As part of the process of developing the July 2008 - June 2011 Strategic
Plan, ICANN published a draft strategic plan for community comment on
October 19.  A general invitation was issued to all Supporting Organizations
and Advisory Committees to engage in consultation sessions at the Los
Angeles meeting.  At the Los Angeles meeting, sessions were held with the
GNSO, SSAC and with the ISP, Registry, Registrar, Intellectual Property and
Non-Commercial constituencies.  A public consultation session was conducted
with simultaneous interpretation in English, French, Spanish and Russian.
Members of the Board provided input during a specially convened consultation
session and at the Board meeting.  Comments were also received through an
online forum.

 

 

Major themes from the consultation

 

The major themes in the comments were the following:

 

1.         Need for clearer outcomes: There was clear feedback from the
community that the plan needed to contain clearer outcomes in the form of
goals and timelines. (Board)

 

2.         Desirability of a clear statement of vision: Several members of
the community suggested the next step in the development of the Strategic
Plan was to articulate a clear, shared vision of what the organization wants
to look like in three years. (Board)

 

3.         Support for the importance of security: There was very clear
commentary that security was a very important issue for ICANN over the life
of this plan.  The business community saw it as the first priority.  The
security community were supportive of the initiatives laid out in the plan.
All respondents encouraged ICANN to work cooperatively with other Internet
stakeholders to tackle security issues that are broader than the remit of
any individual organization.  SSAC suggested that the implementation of
DNSSEC should be a major initiative in the plan. (Board, GNSO, Schmidt,
Purdy, Donahue)

 

4.         Importance of IPv4/IPv6: A strong theme of the feedback was that
monitoring the depletion of the IPv4 address space and providing leadership
towards IPv6 adoption needed to have greater importance in the plan.  

 

5.         Support for importance of new gTLDs and IDNs: Members of the
community were supportive of the importance given to IDNs and new gTLDs in
the plan.  There was recognition of the large amount of work that needed to
be done to complete these projects, both from a policy and a management
perspective. (Board, SSAC, ISP)

 

6.         Need for support and resources to undertake and manage an
increasing volume of policy work: Following on from the point above, many
respondents expressed concern about the volume of policy work that needs to
be undertaken over the life of this plan.  Successful completion of this
policy work will require appropriate levels of support. (Board, GNSO, Cade)

 

7.         Need to improve consumer confidence in the domain name
marketplace: Some commentators felt that, at the strategic level, more
importance needed to be given to the needs of the end user.  In particular
there was a view that ICANN needed to continue to improve compliance and
business practices (e.g. data escrow) to provide certainty for domain name
registrants. (SSAC)

 

8.         Importance of continuing the internationalization of ICANN and
moving towards independence: There was strong support for the continued
internationalization of ICANN as expressed in the plan.  Many saw this as a
critical step in the move towards private sector management.  There was also
a suggestion that the work of the President's Strategy Committee needed to
be more visible in the plan. (Board)

 

9.         Need for greater detail about financials: The first draft of the
plan contained no detailed financial information.  Members of the community
suggested that the plan needed to contain high level financial targets,
particularly given the size of the budget that ICANN now manages. (Board)

 

10.       Support for measures to improve accountability, transparency and
governance: There was support for the work that had been done on
accountability and transparency and also support for ongoing work in this
area.  There was also support for communication initiatives to help the
community digest the large amount of material available.  (Cowley,
Registrars, Non-commercial)

 

11.       Other comments: Many other comments were received during the
consultation.  Much of the feedback was supportive of the initiatives in the
plan and the planning process that developed them.  Some of these were
comments about particular words and phrases used.  Others were to do with
layout and grouping of the text.  Some were about linkages between parts of
the plan.  These comments have all been noted and were reflected in the next
draft of the plan. 

 

 

Outcome of the consultation

 

Based on this feedback, the plan has been redrafted with greater emphasis
given to outcome statements, IPv4/IPv6 transition, inclusion of dates for
all major deliverables, inclusion of a timeline and changes in format. Some
additional comments will be addressed through the Operating Plan (financial
forecasting), and in subsequent Strategic Plans.