ICANN and Governance

Chalaby To Be New ICANN Chair, Disspain Vice Chair

cherine_chalaby_imageIn a wrap of the recent workshop ICANN held in Montevideo, Uruguay, the current Chair Steve Crocker posted a blog with a few updates on what came out of the workshop. The most noteworthy was the announcement that there was unanimous support for the future election of Cherine Chalaby as the next Chair of the ICANN Board.

The formal election will take place at ICANN’s Annual Meeting at ICANN60 in Abu Dhabi, to be held from 28 October to 3 November. Crocker noted the Board has also indicated its support for the future election of Chris Disspain as the next Vice-Chair.

Chalaby has had an extensive international career encompasses leadership roles in banking and technology and was selected by the Nominating Committee (NomCom) to serve on the Board. He’s a citizen of Egypt and also holds a British citizenship. He attended the French Jesuits School of Cairo, holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Cairo University and an MSc in Computing Sciences from the Imperial College of London. He is fluent in English, French and Arabic. As well as his extensive career, he’s also served on seven separate boards of directors.

In his post, Crocker wrote that a few things discussed were:

  • The need to establish long term financial planning during the upcoming strategic plan development process. The Board requested the ICANN organization develop an approach for long term financial planning, including how to engage and inform the community.
  • The details of the work the ICANN organization is undertaking with the Community, and in its own internal assessments, related to the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
  • An update to the Board on the background of .HOME, .CORP and .MAIL applications, where the organization shared the current status of the applications, followed by a discussion of the possible options available to the Board given the requests of the applicants to move the applications forward.
  • A presentation by the Executive team on opportunities and priorities they see for the year ahead, including discussion on some challenges the organization is facing. This included topics ranging from resource demands vs. funding through to the implementation of the Thick Whois policy vs the implications of the GDPR and data privacy law changes globally.
  • A discussion on FY18 Board Priorities, what they are and how to measure and track them.
    Final review of the Board resolution addressing the GAC Advice from the ICANN59 GAC Johannesburg Communiqué. The Board agreed on a draft proposal put forward by the Board-GAC Review Implementations (BGRI) working group Co-Chairs on clarifying the definition of GAC Advice, and the Board reviewed all GAC Communiques from ICANN46 to ICANN59, including responses or actions to address GAC Advice.
  • A briefing and discussion about the Root Zone and related issues and developments.

An update about the Root Zone Key Signing Key (KSK) roll, resulting in direction from the Board to the ICANN organization to roll the DNS root KSK as soon as is practical, so long as there are no significant observed effects on the security, stability, or resiliency of the DNS as a whole.

The full post by Steve Crocker is on the ICANN blog at:
https://www.icann.org/news/blog/chairman-s-blog-the-montevideo-workshop-wrap-up