[governance] Following up on Vilnius City-TLD Governance and Best Practices Workshop

[Thomas Lowenhaupt]

A report on the City-TLD Governance and Best Practices workshop in Vilnius.

Let me first offer my thanks to the IGC for its role in assisting me 
with organizing the City-TLD Governance and Best Practices workshop in 
Vilnius. And in particular, I'd like to thank the workshop participants: 
Izumi Aizu, Sébastien Bachollet, Bertrand de La Chapelle, 
Wolfgang**Kleinwächter, Dirk Krischenowski,  Ana Neves , Thomas 
Schneider, Jonathan Shea, Werner Staub, and Hong Xue. As well, a big 
thanks to Olivier MJ Crepin-Leblond, our Remote Moderator who, among 
other feats, enabled Jonathan Shea to participate from Hong Kong. //Each 
thoughtfully addressed the issue at hand and made significant 
contributions. Thank you all.

After consulting with the above I've posted a detailed report on the 
workshop on our wiki 
<http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/vilnius-workshop-report>. 
The further comments of all are welcomed. (After overcoming a technical 
glitch I'll also post it to the IGF site.)

Of the needs identified at the workshop the following stand out:

    * Issues relating to the proposed city-TLD pricing and technology
      /registrar requirements must be addressed for smaller cities - and
      especially for the global south.
    * The need for global outreach to inform cities about the utility
      and requirements for their TLDs.
    * The efficiency of assigning dedicated ICANN staff for processing
      city TLD applications.
    * The desirability of a cities list to facilitate ICANN with
      identifying legitimate city TLD applications, as ISO-3166 helped
      at an earlier time.

Today I'd like to begin to addressing this last issue, a cities list, by 
soliciting this mighty list's assistance with a preliminary step - 
defining a public interest city-TLD. To have meaning withing the scope 
of ICANN's responsibilities, such a list must indicate cities that will 
use their names in the public interest. A first task in that regard 
requires a definition of a public interest city-TLD.

In support of that effort I've created a wiki page where I've posted 
some defining characteristics that might enable the identification of a 
city-TLD operated in the public interest, see 
http://www.coactivate.org/projects/campaign-for.nyc/public-interest-city-tld-definition. 
For your convenience I've copied that page below.

I look forward to your considered thoughts on this and other matters 
relating to city-TLDs.

Best,

Tom Lowenhaupt

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Draft Definition of Public Interest City-TLD

(from wiki, as of November 4, 2010)

Cities are frequently ancient and always complex institutions that 
provide basic food, housing, health, safety, and cultural needs for more 
than half of humankind. They can best serve their residents and 
organizations if they have access to the most advanced technology. Until 
now cities have been prohibited from effectively using good Internet 
Domain Names, requiring residents and organizations to use national or 
global TLDs for local communication. The ICANN's 2008 new TLD policy 
opened the door for the issuance of city-TLDs.

The development of city-TLDs as public interest resources will be 
transformational, providing cities with a Critical Internet Resource, 
and empowering them to develop their digital infrastructure to the 
direct benefit of residents and organizations.

The utility of a list of cities seeking the development of public 
interest TLDs was expressed at the recent IGF Vilnius workshop on 
City-TLD Governance and Best Practices, where the ICANN's chair 
suggested that a cities list would facilitate ICANN's operation. The 
creation of a definition of a Public Interest City-TLD is a first step 
in developing such a list, with outreach to identify interested cities a 
next step.

Definition: Public Interest city-TLDs are those which serve the long 
term interests of city residents and organizations. They serve those 
interests when:

    *

      they use the name-space to facilitate geographic awareness
      enabling residents and organizations to readily locate one another
      to optimize the exchange of services, products, and ideas and
      revivify the traditional networking role of cities;

    *

      they facilitate the availability of civic collaboration tools --
      calendars, maps, mail lists, polling, and other organizing tools
      -- making them available for civic benefit on a public access basis;

    *

      they reserve and advocate for the use of domain names for unbiased
      portals for government, civic, and development use;

    *

      they commit a significant portion of their resources to
      eradicating digital divides by facilitating civic collaboration,
      education, and training;

    *

      they allocate names for the civic benefit of geographic sub areas
      (neighborhoods), civic activities, and public issue resolution;

    *

      they provide names in support of all ethnic populations;

    *

      they strive for name allocation practices that will maintain a
      flow of good domain names for the life of the TLD;

    *

      they establish allocation policies that avoid pitfalls such as
      hoarding and typo-squatting using pricing and nexus requirements.

Additionally, public interest city-TLDs are those that:

    *

      are operated in close cooperation with the extant local
      institutions, to provide a secure experience suitable for
      residents, civic, cultural and business organizations, and visitors;

    *

      exchange experiences and best practices with other cities
      operating TLDs in the public interest;

    *

      operate within a broad "urbanismo" framework that considers their
      geographic, economic, political, social, and cultural impact on
      their environment;

    *

      commit to develop appropriate channels for inter-city sharing of
      vital Internet enabled city resources in areas such as education,
      health, safety, and sanitation;

    *

      commit to working in collaboration with relevant local and
      national public authorities;

    *

      commit to engaging all segments of the population in the
      management of their TLDs;

    *

      commit to the allocation of name spaces that promote sustainable
      cities;

    *

      commit to the use of graphic design practices that facilitate
      cross cultural understanding;

    *

      commit to support their city's branding and external promotion
      activities;

    *

      commit to engage all segments of the population and the technical
      operators of the TLD in a collaborative governance structure.


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