Buckridge to replace Shears on ICANN board

Chris Buckridge will replace Matthew Shears on ICANN’s board of directors next month.

The Non-Contracted Parties House of ICANN, their arses burned by an August 18 finger-wagging from ICANN chair Tripti Sinha, somehow managed to narrow down a slate of four candidates to just one by Sinha’s end-of-month deadline, despite seeming to be at a very early stage of the election process just last week.

Buckridge will fill seat 14, reserved for a member of the NCPH and one of two GNSO-picked seats.

He was one of the preferred candidates of the Non-Commercial Stakeholders Group, which along with the Commercial Stakeholders Group makes up the NCPH.

The CSG had rejected the NCSG’s original preference to reappoint Shears, who joined the board in 2017, for a third and final term.

Buckridge comes from the Regional Internet Registry world. He was with RIPE NCC from 2006 until this June in a variety of external relations roles, dealing with European governments and regulators, which seems like a pretty good qualification for an ICANN directorship.

Sinha had written to the NCPH leaders last month to complain that they had failed to pick a director, missing an April deadline, and demanded they name a name before the end of August.

Diversity takes a hit as NomCom replaces two ICANN directors with newcomers

ICANN will be left with fewer women and Africans on its board of directors following this year’s Nominating Committee selections, after which apparent community newcomers will take seats.

NomCom last night announced that its three picks for the board, due to take or retake their seats at the Annual General Meeting in Kuala Lumpur next month, are Maarten Botterman, Christopher Chapman and Sajidur Rahman.

Botterman is of course the current chair, and his reappointment was surely never in any doubt. He’ll be entering his third and final term at the AGM.

Less is known about the two newcomers. ICANN has so far provided no biographical information about them beyond the geographic region they represent. Botterman is European and both Chapman and Rahman are from Asia-Pacific.

Both new appointees have very common, google-resistant names, and neither appears to have a track record of vocal ICANN community participation.

Chapman, if I had to guess, would be Chris Chapman, the former long-term independent media regulator from Australia. Sajid Rahman is such a common name I don’t think I could confidently make a call on his identity early doors.

What we do know is that they’re both Asia-Pac, and they’re both replacing one-term African directors.

Leaving the board at the AGM will be NomCom’s 2019 picks Mandla Msimang from South Africa and Ihab Osman from Sudan. This means the sole remaining voting African on the board come October will be South African Alan Barrett.

Msimang leaving and being replaced by a man of course changes the gender mix. After the AGM, there will be six women on the 20-seat board, five out of the 16 voting seats.

Note that I’m not analyzing the picks by some subjective “woke” criteria — ICANN has strict rules about geographic representation in its bylaws and every year its board of directors encourages NomCom to consider the gender mix when making its selections.

The bylaws state that each of the five geographic regions must have at least one seat on the board, and that no one region can have more than five directors.

That said, ICANN doesn’t make it easy to figure out which directors hail from which regions. There’s no published breakdown that I’m aware of and many directors have multiple citizenships and/or are long-term residents of nations outside their birth region.

Two other directors have their current terms ending next month — GNSO appointee Becky Burr (North America), who has been reappointed for a third term, and Akinori Maemura (Asia-Pac) who is being replaced by Christian Kaufmann (Europe) as an ASO appointee.

NomCom broke down the gender and geographic mix of applicants for all the open board and non-board positions here.

Barrett to replace Da Silva on ICANN board

South African internet pioneer Alan Barrett is to replace Ron Da Silva as one of the Address Supporting Organization’s members of ICANN’s board of directors, the ASO’s Address Council said yesterday.

The pick comes after multiple rounds of interviews, which whittled down an initial slate of 10 nominees to a long list of eight, and then a short list of four, which included Da Silva.

It’s a selection, rather than an election, with the Address Council doing the hiring.

The handover will happen following ICANN 72nd public meeting, taking place this October either in Seattle or virtually, at the conclusion of Da Silva’s second three-year term on the board.

According to his bio, Barrett was co-founder of South Africa’s first commercial ISP in the early 1990s. He has served as a software consultant for the last 14 years and was CEO of Afrinic until 2019.

There are currently two other directors on the ICANN board, which has geographic regional quotas, hailing from Africa. Da Silva represents the North America region.

It’s pandemic continuity versus gender diversity in ICANN’s board wish-list

ICANN’s Nominating Committee will be asked to pit two fundamentally opposed principles against each other when they pick three members of the organization’s board of directors this year.

Board chair Maarten Botterman has asked NomCom to prioritize continuity — keeping experienced directors in place — while also increasing gender diversity in the male-heavy current line-up.

Botterman this week sent a letter (pdf) to NomCom chair Ole Jacobsen, offering guidance virtually identical to that found in a December 2019 letter (pdf) to his predecessor.

The two most significant changes concern the impact on the board’s work of the coronavirus pandemic.

Noting that it typically takes a year or two for new directors to learn the ropes, and that it’s useful to have a staggered mix of tenures among the board, Botterman goes on to say:

Continuity is particularly important this year given the recent departure of the Board’s longest-serving, term- limited member and the ongoing challenges arising from the pandemic, including uncertainties about when the full Board may be next able to move from its current remote schedule to in-person meetings.

The long-serving member who left was presumably Chris Disspain, certainly one of the most active directors in recent years.

Later, Botterman’s letter contains an entirely new paragraph explaining what a time vampire ICANN directorship can be:

We underscore the significant time commitment required of Board members. Applicants must be able to devote weeks and long hours throughout the year to Board service, and even more because of the challenges caused by the pandemic. Among many other key initiatives, one focus in the upcoming year will be understanding and evaluating the expected recommendations from the policy development process on Subsequent Procedures regarding the next round of new gTLDs (as well as implementation of several Board-approved recommendations from community groups).

That, at least, should provide some comfort to those champing at the bit to get the next round of new gTLDs up and running — ICANN clearly expects it to happen at some point in the next four years.

So there’s a definite, newly emphasized focus on continuity at ICANN.

That’s good news for Lito Ibarra, Danko Jevtović and Tripti Sinha, the three NomCom appointees whose current terms end this coming October. Ibarra is on his second three-year term, the other two on their first. All are eligible for reselection.

The Botterman letter is less encouraging for Ibarra and Jevtović, who are men. ICANN is still seeking to increase gender diversity on its board, which only currently has five female voting members of 16 total directors.

While the wording is slightly different to the 2020 guidance, the essence is the same:

The ICANN community has also expressed strong support for efforts to increase diversity along several axes, especially including gender diversity, across the ICANN eco-system. Without compromising the fundamental requirement to have Board members with the necessary integrity, skills, experience, the Board would find it helpful to have greater gender diversity on the Board.

NomCom may find this pressure is relieved slightly by the fact that current ccNSO representative to the board, Nigel Roberts, is being replaced by Katrina Sataki of the Latvian ccTLD registry this October, following an election last month.

The Address Supporting Organization’s rep, Ron Da Silva, is also ending his current term this year. He’s up for reselection against nine other candidates, three of whom are female.

Here’s why two ICANN directors opposed extending Marby’s CEO contract

ICANN CEO Göran Marby’s personality came into question when the organization’s board of directors voted to prematurely extend his contract last year, it emerged this evening.

Back in October, the board voted to add two years to Marby’s current contract, which had been due to expire May 23, 2022, saying it would help with continuity and provide a “sense of calm” at the org.

But one director voted against the extension, and another abstained. Today, with the publications of the October 7 meeting’s minutes, we found out the whos and and whys.

Ihab Osman was the director who voted against the deal, telling the rest of the board that there should have been a formal review and plan to address Marby’s “communications style”, which has apparently come in for criticism.

He added that there should have been a global search for a CEO after Marby’s first six years (that is, in 2022). The minutes read:

Ihab stated that the decision to extend the President and CEO’s contract was taken without, in his view, a formalized professional performance review process reflecting on the past four years of the CEO’s service. He stated that he believed that not doing so was inconsistent with best practices for an organization of the size and importance as ICANN. Ihab noted that comments had been expressed about the CEO’s communication style and did not believe there was a formal plan to work on this issue. Ihab stated his belief that extending a contract that has two years before it is completed is premature, noting that organizations generally benefit from a global search for a CEO after a six-year tenure.

Osman is a Sudanese businessman who currently lists his employers as Saudi agricultural company NADEC and the US-Sudan Business Council.

The director who abstained from the vote was Mandla Msimang. She had procedural concerns, saying that the decision should have been subject to more input from other stakeholders. The minutes read:

Mandla explained that her abstention is not a reflection on the President and CEO. Mandla indicated that she abstained from voting because she did not agree with the process that has been followed to arrive at the decision. Mandla noted that she believes the process lacked a performance-based approach and lacked a more extensive input from key stakeholders, namely the org staff and the community.

South African Msimang is CEO of Nozala Investments, an investment vehicle focused on female-owned businesses.

Both she and Osman are Nominating Committee appointees whose first three-year terms on the ICANN board end in 2022.

While the minutes do not elaborate on the apparent criticisms of Marby’s “communications style”, it’s probably fair to say he’s a bit more confrontational and abrasive when compared to his predecessors.

Fadi Chehadé sometimes came across like a used-car salesman hiding behind a dubious veil of servile humility; Rod Beckstrom had baffling New Age hippy tendencies and often appeared out of his depth when it came to the minutiae of ICANN’s function.

As for Marby’s style… what do you think? Answers in the comments or privately to the usual address.

ICANN’s .org decision was NOT unanimous, and it was made in secret

When ICANN announced its decision to deny Public Interest Registry’s request to be acquired by Ethos Capital at the end of April, I felt a little foolish.

I’d confidently predicted just days earlier that the decision by the board would not be unanimous, but ICANN, in announcing the decision, said “the entire Board stands by this decision”.

But it turns out I was right after all. Three directors voted against the consensus and one abstained.

The dissenting votes were cast by industry policy consultant Avri Doria, Serbian internet pioneer Danko Jevtović, and former Sudanese ccTLD operator Ihab Osman.

Doria and Jevtović voted against the first resolved clause, which rejected PIR’s request. All three voted against the second resolved clause, which would have allowed PIR to file a second request.

Sarah Deutsch, a private practice lawyer, abstained from both votes, presumably because she also sits on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the civil liberties group that can, via California’s attorney general, probably be credited most with getting the transaction killed.

All three dissenters and Deutsch are Nominating Committee appointees.

According to the preliminary report of the April 30 meeting, “Doria indicated that she would be voting against the resolution and explained her views about how the public interest would be better served by ICANN granting its consent to PIR’s request.”

What her reasons were are not reflected in the record.

It also seems likely that any substantive minuting of ICANN’s decision is likely to be limited, as it appears to have been made at a different, off-the-books session at an unspecified earlier date.

The preliminary report notes the “the Board discussed and considered alternative draft resolutions for potential Board action as part of an earlier briefing”.

No such earlier meeting is listed on ICANN’s web site. The board’s previous formal meeting, two weeks earlier, had PIR’s request removed from the agenda at the last minute.

So it appears that ICANN’s board decided to reject the deal basically in secret at some point between April 17 and April 29, during a meeting of which ICANN has no obligation to publicly release the minutes.

Nice transparency loophole!

There’s always the Documentary Information Disclosure Policy, I suppose.

Poblete to replace Disspain on ICANN board

Chilean registry manager Patricio Poblete will join ICANN’s board of directors this October, replacing longstanding member Chris Disspain.
The Country Code Names Supporting Organization confirmed Poblete as its new nominee at the weekend following a lengthy election process also fought by Australian Nigel Phair and South African Calvin Browne.
Poblete is the director of NIC Chile, the ccTLD registry for some almost 600,000 .cl domains. He’s been involved in ICANN since its very beginning.
In the election, he received 57 votes compared to Browne’s 42 and Phair’s eight.
Disspain, a very influential member of the board who was vice-chair for years until he stepped aside last September, is being forced out due to term limits in ICANN’s bylaws. He’s almost done serving his third and final three-year term.
Poblete will become one of two ccNSO-selected directors. The other is Nigel Roberts, who runs the Channel Islands ccTLDs. Roberts’ term ends next year.
The nomination frees up a spot for a possible future director from Asia-Pacific, while reducing the available spots from Latin America.

Botterman is new ICANN chair

ICANN has announced that Maarten Botterman has been selected as its new chair.
He, along with newly selected vice chair León Felipe Sánchez Ambia, will take their seats after a formal board vote to come at the end of ICANN’s annual general meeting in Montreal next month.
Botterman replaces Cherine Chalaby, who has been in the role for two years. Chalaby is term-limited, having joined the board nine years ago, and will leave ICANN after Montreal.
Chris Disspain and Ron da Silva also stood for the chair, Chalaby said in a blog post last night. Becky Burr stood unsuccessfully for vice chair.
Disspain, currently vice chair, has stepped aside immediately to be replaced for the next month by Botterman. Disspain’s nine years come to an end next year.
Botterman is Dutch, based in Rotterdam, where he works as an “independent strategic advisor” at his own company, GNKS Consult.
He’s also on the board of the non-profit NLnet Foundation, which funds internet research, and is a former chair of Public Interest Registry, which runs .org.
He’s got a background in the Dutch government and the European Commission.
He was put on the board by the Nominating Committee three years ago and renewed for another three years last month. Theoretically, he could stay as ICANN’s chair for the next six years.

ICANN names new directors, replaces Facebook exec

ICANN’s Nominating Committee has picked two new directors to join the board of directors this November.
They are: Mandla Msimang, a South African technology policy consultant, and Ihab Osman, a serial director who ran Sudan’s ccTLD two decades ago but whose main current gig appears to be managing a Saudi Arabian dairy company.
Dutch domain industry figure Maarten Botterman, who had a stint heading Public Interest Registry, has been reappointed for his second three-year term.
But Tunisian Khaled Koubaa, head of public policy for North Africa at Facebook, who joined the board with Botterman in 2016 and also previously worked for PIR, is not being asked to return.
Msimang and Osman replace Koubaa and Cherine Chalaby, the current Egyptian-born chair, who after nine years on the board is term-limited.
Basically, it’s two Africans out, two Africans in.
In a statement, NomCom chair Damon Ashcraft noted that the committee had received 56 applications from Africa, more than any other region. Only two applications were received from North Americans.
This is perhaps unsurprising. NomCom had been duty-bound to pick at least one African, in order to maintain ICANN’s bylaws-mandated geographic balance, but there were no spots available for North Americans.
Replacing one male director with one female may also go some way to appease critics — including the ICANN board itself — who have claimed that the board needs to be more gender balanced.
The switch means that, after November, the eight NomCom appointees on the board will be evenly split in terms of gender. However, only seven out of the total 20 directors will be women.
The other directors are selected by ICANN’s various supporting organizations and advisory committees.
NomCom received applications from 42 women and 85 men this year.
ICANN has not yet published the official bios for the two new directors, but here’s what the internets has to say about about them.
Mandla Msimang. Msimang’s career appears to show her playing both hunter and gamekeeper in the South African telecommunications market, first working for the national regulator, and later for leading mobile phone operator Cell C. In 2007 she founded Pygma Consulting, a boutique IT consultancy, which she still runs.
Ihab Osman. Osman’s day job appears to be general manager of NADEC New Businesses, a unit of Nadec, a foods company partly owned by the Saudi government. He’s also president of the US-Sudan Business Council, which seeks to promote trade between the two countries. He has a long career in telecommunications, and from 1997 until 2002 was in charge of Sudan’s .sd ccTLD.
Both new directors will take their seats at the end of ICANN’s annual general meeting in Montreal this November.
There’s no word yet on who’s taking over as chair.

KSK vote was NOT unanimous

ICANN’s board of directors on Sunday voted to approve the forthcoming security key change at the DNS root, but there was some dissent.
Director Avri Doria, a Nominating Committee appointee, said today that she provided the lone vote against the DNSSEC KSK rollover, which is expected to cause temporary internet access problems for potentially a couple million people next month.
I understand there was also a single abstention to Sunday’s vote.
Doria has released a dissenting statement, in which she said the absence of an external, peer-reviewed study of the risks could prove a problem.

The greatest risk is that out of the millions that will fail after the roll over, some that are serious and may even be critical, may occur; if this happens the lack of peer reviewed studies may be a liability for ICANN, perhaps not legal, but in terms of our reputation as protectors of the stability & security of internet system of names.

She added that she was concerned about the extent that the public has been notified of the rollover plan, and questioned whether the current risk mitigation plan is sufficient.
Doria said she found comments filed by Verisign (pdf) particularly informative to her eventual vote, as well as comments from the At-Large Advisory Committee (pdf), Business Constituency (pdf) and Registries Stakeholder Group (pdf).
These groups had called for more study and data, better outreach, more clearly defined success/failure benchmarks, and more delay.
Doria noted in her dissenting statement that the ICANN board did not have a chance to quiz any of the minority of the members of the Security and Stability Advisory Committee who had called for further delay.
The board’s resolution, apparently arrived at after two hours of formal in-person discussions in Brussels at the weekend, is expected to be published shortly.
The rollover, which has already been delayed a year, is now scheduled to go ahead October 11.
Any impact is expected to be felt within a couple of days, as the change ripples out across the DNS.
ICANN says that any network operator impacted by the change has a simple fix: turn off DNSSEC. Then, if they want, they can update their keys and turn it back on again.