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Preliminary Report | Special Meeting of the PTI Board | 18 January 2017

Formal Minutes are still to be approved by the PTI Board.

Note: This has not been approved by the PTI Board and does not constitute minutes but does provide a preliminary attempt setting forth the unapproved reporting of the resolutions from that meeting. Details on voting and abstentions will be provided in the Minutes, when approved at a future meeting.

NOTE ON ADDITIONAL INFORMATION INCLUDED WITHIN PRELIMINARY REPORT – ON RATIONALES – Where available, a draft Rationale for each of the Board's actions is presented under the associated Resolution. A draft Rationale is not final until approved with the minutes of the Board meeting.

A Special Meeting of the PTI Board of Directors was held in Los Angeles, California on 18 January 2017 at 9:00 local time.

Jonathan Robinson, Chair of the PTI Board, promptly called the meeting to order.

In addition to the Chair, the following Directors participated in all or part of the meeting: Akram Atallah, David Conrad, Lise Fuhr and Elise Gerich (PTI President).

Secretary: Samantha Eisner (PTI Secretary).

The following Executives and Staff participated in all or part of the meeting: Michelle Bright (Board Operations Content Manager (ICANN)); Xavier Calvez (Chief Financial Officer (ICANN)); Vinciane Koeningsfeld (Board Operations Content Manager (ICANN)); Trang Nguyen (Senior Director, Strategic Programs (ICANN)); Wendy Profit (Board Operations Specialist (ICANN)).

This is a Preliminary Report of the Regular Meeting of the PTI Board, which took place on 18 January 2017.

  1. Minutes from Annual General Meeting
  2. Operations Reporting
  3. Financial Review
  4. PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget
  5. Update on PTI Audit Committee
  6. Organizational Items
  7. ccTLD Delegations and Transfers
  8. Advice to Nominating Committee
  1. Minutes from Annual General Meeting

    The Board agreed to review the Minutes from the Annual General Meeting for online consideration, with a call for approval on 27 January 2017.

  2. Operations Reporting

    The PTI Board received a series of reports on PTI's operations, including: Meetings and interactions with the Customer Standing Committee and considerations on the SLAs set for PTI's performance; review of the IANA Department's 2016 Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey and how to increase customer response; an update on Root Zone Maintainer performance and deliverables; the status of the annual review of IETF Supplemental Agreement; and the status of performance reporting to the Regional Internet Registries.

  3. Financial Review

    The PTI Board received an update on the FY17 finances for the first five months of FY17, noting that PTI is performing slightly under budget due to some open positions.

  4. PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget

    The PTI Board reviewed the modified PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget as revised after public comment, including the staff report prepared to respond to the public comment. The PTI Board also received a report on the consultations conducted to arrive at the budget. The Board then took the following action:

    Whereas, the draft PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget was posted for public comment in accordance with the Bylaws on 24 October 2016, which was based upon community consultations, and consultations with PTI and ICANN organization, during the current fiscal year.

    Whereas, the PTI Board reviewed the inputs received on the FY18 Operating Plan and Budget during public comment and how PTI management addressed those comments.

    Whereas, the public comments received, as well as other solicited community feedback were taken into account to determine required revisions to the draft PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget.

    Resolved (PTI2017.01.18.01), the PTI Board adopts the PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget. The PTI Board directs the PTI President, or her designee, to submit the adopted PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget to the ICANN Board as required under the ICANN Bylaws.

    All members of the PTI Board approved of Resolution PTI2017.01.18.01.

    RATIONALE FOR RESOLUTION PTI2017.01.18.01:

    In accordance with Article 9, Section 9.2 of the PTI Bylaws, the Board is to adopt an annual budget and submit it to the ICANN Board. On 24 October 2016, a draft of the PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget was posted for public comment. This version was based on numerous discussions with senior members of PTI and ICANN Management, and extensive consultations with the ICANN community, including the customers of the IANA Functions. Subsequent activities, including face-to-face meetings during ICANN's 57th Public Meeting in Hyderabad, India and email communications, as well as comments received through the public comment forum, resulted in minor revisions to the draft that was posted for comment.

    In addition to the public comment, there were also consultations with the community on the PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget before, during and after ICANN 57. These included sessions with the ccNSO, with the constituencies and stakeholder groups within the GNSO (including the Registries Stakeholder Group), discussions with the Regional Internet Registries and representatives from the IAB. The leadership of all ICANN Stakeholder Groups and Advisory Committees also received communications regarding the PTI FY18 Operating Plan and Budget, separately and in addition to any participation in the community Budget Working Group.

    This FY18 Operating Plan and Budget will have a positive impact in that it provides a proper framework pursuant to which PTI will be operated, in accordance with the multistakeholder community's proposals. It also provides the basis for the organization to be held accountable in a transparent manner. This will have a fiscal impact on ICANN, its affiliate PTI and the community as is intended. Approving this Operating Plan and Budget is key to maintaining the security, stability and resiliency of the domain name system (DNS), as it is core to maintaining PTI's operations.

  5. Update on PTI Audit Committee

    Lise Fuhr, as chair of the PTI Audit Committee, provided a short update on informal meetings with ICANN's CFO and the PTI Treasurer about the audit committee needs, including work plan and a need for the PTI Audit Committee to soon recommend an independent auditor.

  6. Organizational Items

    The PTI Board had a brief discussion on schedule setting and organizational matters for upcoming PTI Board meetings.

  7. ccTLD Delegations and Transfers

    Akram Atallah informed the PTI Board of an upcoming conversation with the ICANN Board on the ICANN Board's continuing role in ccTLD delegations and transfers.

  8. Advice to Nominating Committee

    The PTI Board had a brief discussion on providing some inputs into the ICANN Nominating Committee for consideration in selecting two nominees to the PTI Board. The Board agreed to review a revised informational document and provide feedback online so that the document could be provided to the Nominating Committee in time for the kick off of its PTI selection work.

    The Chair called the meeting to a close.

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."