After months of consultations, open public comment processes and discussion, the ICANN Board of Directors made several resolutions at its 23 June meeting. These included authorization of renewal of its agreement with Verisign for operation of .COM, adoption of ICANN‘s operating budget and plan for fiscal year 2013 and approval for delegation of a new internationalized country code top-level domain.The proposed .COM renewal Registry Agreement significantly improves security and stability of the Internet by modernizing requirements in order to meet up-to-date stability and security standards such as support for Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6) and Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC). DNSSEC is a security protocol developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force to protect Internet users by incorporating public key cryptography into the domain name system to digitally “sign” data.
The Board also approved the operating plan and budget for the fiscal year beginning 1 July 2012. The US$82 million budget reflects operational plans for implementation of strategies developed through ICANN‘s planning process. Key priorities include execution of the IANA functions contract, implementation of the New gTLD Program and the stability and security of the domain name system.
Other Board actions included the approval for delegation of a new IDN ccTLD for Oman to the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority, and implementation of two Accountability and Transparency Review Team recommendations related to Ombudsman and Nominating Committee activities. The Board also approved Beijing, China, as the location for ICANN‘s April 2013 Asia Pacific Meeting.
