Tag Archives: Cherine Chalaby

ICANN and Governance

ICANN Facing Budget Cuts as Expected Income Doesn’t Materialise

Lower than expected domain name registrations are forcing ICANN to make significant budgetary cuts, CEO and President Göran Marby explained in his recent post on the ICANN Blog. In the first quarter of 2018 ICANN’s income was $1 million lower than expected and income for the year is expected to remain flat compared to 2017. Marby says ICANN is forecasting lower funding for 2019 compared to the approved 2018 budget.

ICANN is also concerned about depletion in their Reserve Fund. Cherine Chalaby, ICANN Board Chair, in another end of year blog post says that following a public consultation on an “updated rationale and target level for the Reserve Fund … it looks like there is a general consensus from the community that the Reserve Fund should have a target level of a minimum of 12 months of operating expenses.”

Chalaby continues there’s currently a “discussion and debate inside ICANN org and the Board on the options available for replenishing the Reserve Fund. As of the end of September 2017, the Reserve Fund was at the five-month level. We are therefore facing a shortfall of approximately seven months, equivalent to $80 million U.S. dollars, based on our current budget.”

To deal with the drop in forecast income and building up the Reserve Fund, there will be cuts in spending. There will be a closer look at replacing staff and whether new staff are required, staff travel and other commitments, reviewing language services support levels and a consolidation and possible reduction in the volume of reports. There could also be projects that are delayed or stopped. All tinkering at the edges in trying to deal with such significant budget shortfalls.

ICANN and Governance

ICANN Has New Leadership Team With Chalaby as Chair, Disspain Vice-Chair As 60th Meetings Ends

ICANN announced a new leadership team to head the ICANN Board of Directors at the organisation’s 60th public meeting held in Abu Dhabi last week. The 19th Annual General Meeting, Cherine Chalaby and Chris Disspain were officially appointed as the new Chair of the ICANN Board and Vice-Chair respectively.

ICANN's 60th Public Meeting (ICANN60), held in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries for the first time, featured a tribute to Dr. Stephen Crocker, who retired from the ICANN Board after this meeting. A number of tribute videos are available at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQziMT9GXafXYZhNuVpS6kT5lxjq3vWdv.

Data protection and privacy rules, particularly the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), were a hot topic during the meeting. Many discussions across the community focused on gaining an understanding of the main concerns for various stakeholder groups and calls to action for ICANN org and Board. They also focused on encouraging the community to continue discussions, and find a balanced path forward in the shorter term, including as part of related current policy work.

However no resolution was made regarding GDPR and the directive becomes enforceable from 25 May 2018, with only one ICANN meeting to be held in the intervening period.

In addition, the community's policy and advice development work continued, and many community groups welcomed new leaders and participants.

For Chalaby, the Nominating Committee first selected him to serve on the Board in December 2010. He was elected as the Vice-Chair in 2015, and is succeeding Crocker, who served as ICANN Board Chair since 2011.

The country code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) selected Disspain to join the ICANN Board in June 2011. He is an active ICANN community member and served as the Chair of ccNSO from 2004 to 2011.

“I'm deeply honoured to be elected as the Board Chair,” said Chalaby. “The Board had enough confidence in ICANN's maturity to elect me even though I do not come from the long and distinguished line of 'Masters of the Internet Universe.' I look forward to the future with great hope and enthusiasm, particularly to the partnership we will continue to build with the ICANN community.”

“Cherine has been an excellent Vice-Chair over the past two years. This is evident from the unanimous support from all members of the Board in his election as the next Chair of the ICANN Board. I'm proud and excited and will work with him closely for a smooth and orderly transition of responsibilities,” said Crocker.

The Board also welcomed new Board members León Sanchez (LAC), Matthew Shears (EMEA), Avri Doria (NA), Sarah Deutsch (NA), and Manal Ismail (Egypt) as the Governmental Advisory Committee Liaison to the Board. They replaced outgoing Stephen Crocker, Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Asha Hemrajani, Markus Kummer and Thomas Schneider.

A total of 1,910 participants attended 325 public sessions at ICANN60. It was the first time at an ICANN meeting for 704 of them. There were 277 attendees from the Middle East region.

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