[council] Leader Named for Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services

[Glen de Saint Géry <Glen@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-14dec12-en.htm
Leader Named for Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services
14 December 2012

13 December 2012... ICANN's President and CEO, Fadi Chehadé, is launching a 
comprehensive effort to examine and redefine the purpose and provision of gTLD 
registration data (referred to as "WHOIS"). As part of this strategic 
initiative, an expert working group will be created to provide a foundation for 
the ICANN community to create (through the Generic Names Supporting 
Organization, GNSO) a new global policy for gTLD directory services. Chehadé 
has tapped a seasoned executive, Jean-Francois Baril, to serve as the group's 
Lead Facilitator, and invites interested individuals with the requisite 
experience to indicate their interest in serving as volunteer working group 
members (more information 
here<http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-2-14dec12-en.htm>).

Baril will serve as a neutral chair of the working group. He has no direct 
professional involvement in domain name services, and brings extensive 
business, standard setting and consensus building experience to this role. 
Baril helped create new global standards as part of RosettaNet, a global forum 
in which suppliers, customers, and competitors come together to create industry 
specific standards. He is a leading authority on supply chain and procurement, 
is the founder of Connecting Partners SA, has over 30 years of professional 
experience, and has held executive positions at Nokia Corporation and Compaq, 
among others.

"Jean-Francois' abilities to bring together stakeholders representing divergent 
interests to find common ground are unparalleled," said Fadi Chehadé. I am 
confident that his experience in the standards setting arena makes him the 
ideal candidate to lead the effort to identify solutions for the difficult 
WHOIS issues faced by ICANN and the Internet stakeholders."

The report of the 
community<http://www.icann.org/en/about/aoc-review/whois/final-report-11may12-en.pdf>
 [PDF, 1.44 MB] WHOIS Policy Review Team encouraged ICANN's Board to seek a new 
approach to WHOIS (gTLD registration data). In addition to launching this new 
effort, ICANN's Board 
directed<http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/resolutions-08nov12-en.htm>
 the CEO to fully enforce existing WHOIS policy, increase efforts to 
communicate, conduct outreach on, and ensure compliance with existing WHOIS 
policy. The Board provided detailed 
guidance<http://www.icann.org/en/groups/board/documents/briefing-materials-1-08nov12-en.pdf>
 [PDF, 266 KB] on implementing the objectives and recommendations issued by the 
Review Team.

The working group is the first step in fulfilling this directive and will focus 
on redefining the purpose of collecting, maintaining and providing access to 
gTLD registration data, and will consider safeguards for protecting data, as a 
foundation for new gTLD policy and contractual negotiations, as appropriate. 
The output of this working group will feed into a Board initiated GNSO policy 
development process, and will serve as a starting point to focus the GNSO's 
future efforts to create a new policy for gTLD registration data.

As explained by Dr. Stephen D. Crocker, ICANN Board Chair, "WHOIS was developed 
over 25 years ago. It is critical that this comprehensive effort to examine and 
overhaul WHOIS be successful. The appointment of Jean-Francois Baril, and the 
launch of the Expert Working Group, affirms ICANN's commitment to dedicating 
the resources necessary to evolve WHOIS into a tool that more effectively meets 
the needs of today's Internet."

More information on the Expert Working Group on gTLD Directory Services is 
available 
here<http://www.icann.org/en/news/announcements/announcement-2-14dec12-en.htm>.


Glen de Saint Géry
GNSO Secretariat
gnso.secretariat@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://gnso.icann.org