ICANN is immediately seeking expressions of interest for the 2012-2013 Nominating Committee (NomCom) Chair-Elect.

In accordance with the Bylaws, "[i]t is anticipated that upon the conclusion of the term of the Chair-Elect, the Chair-Elect will be appointed by the Board to the position of Chair." See Article VII, section 3.4.

The Chair-Elect is a position created within the Bylaws as an outcome of the independent review of the NomCom. The Chair-Elect position is not a replacement of the Advisor to the NomCom Chair, and is not intended to fill an advisory role. Rather, the Chair-Elect will receive the benefit of training while serving alongside the Chair, gaining skills and knowledge to be applied for the Chair-Elect's anticipated succession into the role of the Chair. Candidates for Chair-Elect should possess the same skills as candidates for the Chair.

For more information about the NomCom see: http://nomcom.icann.org/

Position Description – Nominating Committee Chair

This position blends time management and negotiation skills with the practical aspects of conducting a world-wide search for individuals to fill various ICANN leadership positions. The NomCom Chair will be called on to schedule, organize and lead numerous in-person and telephonic meetings with a large committee of community members. The NomCom Chair is also responsible for managing the candidate identification and statement of interest process, with other committee members, and for managing the due diligence to be performed on nominated candidates, in cooperation with ICANN's General Counsel and any retained outside firm(s). Throughout all NomCom activities, the Chair is responsible for ensuring that all NomCom operating rules and procedures are followed, and that all required documentation and reports are prepared in a timely fashion and provided to the proper parties as necessary.

Skills and Experience

To properly serve as the NomCom Chair, the selected individual must have:

(i) adequate time available to undertake the role;

(ii) excellent communication and negotiation skills to manage a committee of 20-21 members;

(iii) a clear understanding of the duties and responsibilities of each position for which the NomCom is selecting candidates;

(iv) experience on or with a Board of Directors of organizations with similar scale, scope and diversity as ICANN;

(v) strong organization and leadership skills;

(vi) ability to remain unbiased;

(vii) no conflicts of interest, and

(viii) a thorough understanding of, and satisfy, all criteria set forth in ICANN Bylaws relating to the NomCom (see http://www.icann.org/en/about/governance/bylaws#VII).

Specific Duties and Responsibilities

1. Plans and schedules NomCom meetings as required, including ensuring posting schedules for public review. Please see attached for a Listing of the NomCom activities.

2. Appoints non-voting Associate Chair if so desired.

3. Reports to ICANN Board and the community on status of the NomCom.

4. Prepares and publishes the NomCom report.

5. Ensures that NomCom operating rules and procedures are followed.

6. Manages NomCom Selection Process, including:

   1. Approves outreach/advertising methods for attracting candidates.

   2. Conducts outreach with ICANN Constituencies, ACs and SOs (with Chairs of those groups), ICANN Board, and others.

   3. With other committee members, reviews and evaluates candidate Statements of Interest (SOIs) and references submitted during NomCom process

   4. Coordinates due diligence on nominated candidates in cooperation with ICANN's General Counsel and any outside firm(s) retained to perform due diligence activities.

7. Approves posting of NomCom announcements and schedules on ICANN website.

8. Ensures NomCom records are properly established, maintained and archived.

Eligibility Exclusion

No person who is an employee of or is a paid consultant to ICANN (including the Ombudsman) shall simultaneously serve as a member of the NomCom, including the post of Chair or Chair-Elect.

Expenses

All reasonable travel expenses and administrative costs incurred as a result of performing the duties as NomCom Chair or Chair-Elect in accordance with ICANN's policies will be reimbursed by ICANN upon the Chair or Chair-Elect's submission to ICANN of valid receipts and invoices.

Expressions of Interest

Expressions of Interest, which will be maintained as confidential, should be sent to NomComChairElect2013@icann.org no later than 20 June 2012.

ICANN is issuing today a Request for Proposal [PDF, 183 KB] to identify a provider capable of providing an open source reference implementation of a Domain Name RESTful Whois server.

On 15 May 2012, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) chartered a new working group to standardize a RESTful-based Registration Data Access Protocol. In order to facilitate the evaluation and adoption of the replacement protocol for domain registries and registrars, ICANN is seeking proposals for an open source reference implementation.

Whois services, and their effectiveness in the case of Internationalized registration data, are important issues for ICANN. ICANN has been working to make advances in this area, appreciating the technical community's past and present contributions, and committed to collaborating with the technical and policy community to improve the Whois service.

Beginning in 2002, ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) published various advisories describing the needs for improvement related to the Whois protocol, service and data schema, most recently SAC 051 [PDF, 237 KB]: SSAC Report on Domain Name Whois Terminology and Structure. SAC 051 summarizes the previous advisories, and among other things, recommends that the ICANN community evaluate and adopt a replacement protocol that supports the query and display of Internationalized registration data as well as addressing the relevant recommendations in past SSAC advisories on this topic.

Respondents are requested to respond to this RFP by replying to: rws-opensource@icann.org. The period to submit questions about the RFP will close on 5 June 2012. ICANN will provide answers to all questions submitted to all respondents by 7 June 2012. The final response to the RFP is due on 15 June 2012.

In order to participate, please RSVP via email to the GNSO Secretariat
(gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org) to receive the call details.

Whether you plan to participate in the upcoming ICANN meeting in Prague remotely or in person, you're invited to an update on the background and current status of each major policy issue currently under discussion in ICANN.

The ICANN Policy Staff will provide a briefing on Thursday 14 June at 12.00 UTC and Thursday 14 June at 19.00 UTC, summarizing policy issues across the different ICANN Supporting Organizations, namely the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO), Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and Address Supporting Organization (ASO). Amongst other topics, updates will be provided on:

• Inter-Registrar Transfer Policy
• WHOIS
• RAA Improvements
• Consumer Choice, Competition and Innovation
• Study Group on Use of Names for Countries and Territories
• Framework of Interpretation Working Group for the delegation and re-delegation of ccTLDs
• Joint DNS Security and Stability Analysis Working Group
• Participation and Engagement activities in Prague

In addition, staff will provide a briefing on the ALAC's activities related to current policy development issues of the Supporting Organizations.

The two sessions are duplicates, scheduled to accommodate different time zones. Each session, scheduled to run for 90 minutes, will be conducted in English only. The meeting will be run in Adobe Connect with a slide presentation along with a dial-in conference bridge for audio.

Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of each session. During the course of the webinar, questions may be submitted using the chat function of Adobe Connect. If you are not able to participate in either of the live sessions, the recording of the session will be made available shortly after the meeting. The policy staff is always available to answer any questions that you email to policy-staff@icann.org.

In order to participate, please RSVP via email to the GNSO Secretariat (gnso.secretariat@gnso.icann.org) to receive the call details. Please indicate which call you would like to join, Thursday at 13.00 UTC or Thursday at 20.00 UTC (to convert those times into your local time, see: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedform.html). We will send you an e-mail reminder before the event with log-in and dial-in details. Please DO NOT RSVP to any other ICANN staff members e-mail address.

As part of ICANN's review of its conflicts of interest and ethics practices, on 6 May 2012 the ICANN Board approved revisions to the Board Conflicts of Interest Policy, the Code of Conduct and Expected Standards of Behavior. The Board also approved new Corporate Governance Guidelines, a flexible framework document that collects the sources of corporate governance requirements that ICANN follows. For more information on how each of these documents applies within ICANN, please refer to this explanatory memo [PDF, 128 KB].

These four documents were prepared after a review of ICANN's corporate governance documents, and the resulting recommendations as to how the documents could be improved in light of best practices in corporate governance, while still reflecting the needs of ICANN. Each of the documents were posted for public comment in March 2011. They represent just the first stage of ICANN's approach to the Conflicts of Interest and Ethics review. The ongoing work within ICANN on conflicts of interest and ethics practices may result in identification of additional changes to these exact documents. Further, in approving these revised or newly created documents, the Board has recognized that further modifications may be necessary – these are living documents that should be reviewed and amended from time to time to reflect changes within ICANN, as well as to best practices in corporate governance.

Other Work on Conflicts of Interest and Ethics

As reported by ICANN, there are two other portions of its review of conflicts of interest and ethics practices. One of those portions was asking Cooley LLC, a law firm with expertise in corporate governance issues and that is new to ICANN, to perform a review of ICANN's corporate governance practices. Cooley produced two reports:

• First Report on Corporate Governance [PDF, 401 KB] (3 October 2011, revised on 27 April 2012) and
• Second Report on Corporate Governance [PDF, 767 KB] (17 April 2012)

The action items arising out of the first report, including compiling ICANN's corporate governance document in one section of the ICANN website, providing dates of amendment for documents such as the Code of Conduct, have been adopted. In addition, ICANN asked Cooley to undertake recommended research, which resulted in the Second Report.

In the Second Report, Cooley conduced a comparative review of ICANN's documentation to the governance documentation of leading institutions. While Cooley noted that ICANN's policies are aligned with essential governance principles, it also noted that there may be room for improvement. Two specific recommendations for improvement followed: ICANN should consider revising its guidebook for employees to ensure that policies covering unethical behavior and complaints are satisfactorily covered; and ICANN should consider adopting a policy to deal with repeat offenders of its ethical and governance standards. ICANN has already begun work with outside counsel to review its employee policies and procedures, which will take Cooley's recommendation into account, and work is ongoing to determine how the recommendation to address "repeat offenders" can be implemented.

The ICANN Board has ratified the Global Policy Proposal for Post Exhaustion IPv4 Allocation Mechanisms by the IANA as sent by the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) Council to the ICANN Board on 13 March 2012. The proposal was posted for public comment from 14 March 2012 through 4 April 2012, during which time no comments were submitted. The Global Policy allows the Regional Internet Registries to return IPv4 address space to an IANA-managed pool from which equal parts will be allocated to all five RIRs in a deterministic manner on a regular schedule, once triggered. http://www.icann.org/en/news/in-focus/global-addressing/allocation-ipv4-post-exhaustion. ICANN staff will be taking all necessary steps to implement the Global Policy.