The Plan, provided to the US government almost a year ago but kept under wraps until now, reiterates ICANN’s mission statement, outlines core principles and identifies priorities for the next three years.
The four principles ICANN stands for are stability and security, competition and choice, independent bottom-up coordination and global representation, Twomey said. Each principle has a list of tasks and priorities associated with it.
The document will stand alongside ICANN’s memorandum of understanding with the US Department of Commerce, which runs until 2006. The MoU has tasks in it that ICANN must execute before it achieves full independence, which are reflected in the plan.
This plan gives people greater certainty about what ICANN will be doing for the next few years, Twomey said. People should read it and tell us if they think different.
The plan comes as ICANN finds itself increasingly wading into international waters. Moves by the UN to consider its own role in internet governance have been characterized as a power grab for ICANN turf.
The Plan touches on the UN’s World Summit on the Internet Society, saying it will likely reinforce that the Internet will not function without the cooperation and collaboration of the wide range of entities with interest in its operation.
I don’t think that Internet governance equals what we do, I think that’s an exceptionally narrow view, Twomey said. This misperception could be solved with education, something WSIS will likely accomplish, he said.
That said, ICANN still acknowledges that technical decisions it makes cannot be divorced from their implications. It’s to the point of naivety to believe that you can let ICANN do the technical bit without doing the policy bit, he said.
