On October 27, a bilateral meeting of the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) and the ICANN Board with approximately 400 participants was held as part of ICANN72.
According to the organizers, ICANN Public Meetings provide an opportunity for the GAC to meet and interact with other ICANN groups, organizations and associations to coordinate efforts and deal with specific policy issues, as well as liaise with other groups to address important current issues and facilitate information sharing in future. The joint GAC meeting with the ICANN Board is one such opportunity.
The agenda included:
- Discussion of interaction on geopolitical issues with governments;
- Discussion of GAC topics and questions;
- Preventing DNS abuse – recommendations of the second security, stability and resiliency review team (SSR2);
- Consideration of subsequent rounds of new gTLDs.
During the meeting, participants shared their vision of working more closely with governments around the world and spoke about how to continuously monitor changes in national legislation that could have an impact on ICANN's work.
The experts also discussed nine questions prepared in advance for the ICANN Board. One of the topics under discussion was ICANN's increased involvement in the internet governance ecosystem and the possible investment of the organization's time and resources in the Internet Governance Forum and in maintaining constructive relationships with players such as WIPO, ITU, etc.
When discussing interaction with national governments and parliamentarians, Russia’s representative in the GAC Vyacheslav Yerokhin supported the creation of the GR service in ICANN and expressed hope for its fruitful work. “The lack of harmonization of national legislation is a cause for concern. The systemic and routine work of analyzing national legislation and identifying requirements that have an impact on ICANN's activities should be useful to all parties,” he said.
Following ICANN72, the GAC will issue a communique, with the main points, which we will certainly convey to our readers.
