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Board Activities and Meetings

View records of actions and decisions made by the ICANN Board from recent activities and meetings.

Minutes | Meeting of the Technical Committee of the Board (BTC) | 28 March 2024

Board Member and Liaison Attendees: Christian Kaufmann (Chair), Alan Barrett, Chris Buckridge, Nico Caballero, James Galvin, and Patricio Poblete

Board Members with Apologies: Harald Alvestrand, Edmon Chung, Wes Hardaker

ICANN Organization Attendees: Andre Abed (VP, Relationship & Delivery Management and Interim Head of Engineering and IT), Adiel Akplogan (VP, Technical Engagement), Franco Carrasco (Board Operations Manager), John Crain (SVP & Chief Technology Officer), Matt Larson (VP, Research), and Sarah Zagha (Counsel)

Invited Guests: Matt Thomas (Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP) Working Party (WP) co-chair) - only present for agenda item no. 1

The following is a summary of discussions, actions taken, and actions identified:

  1. Update Session with the Name Collision Analysis Project (NCAP)
    Discussion Group (DG) Admin Co-Chairs – The Committee received an update on the NCAP work from Matt Thomas, the NCAP DG Admin co-chair. The NCAP final Study 2 report is expected to be completed by next Friday, 05 April 2024, and will subsequently be submitted to the Security and Stability Advisory Committee (SSAC) for consideration. The SSAC will then submit the final Study 2 report to the ICANN Board.
  2. Approval of Pending Meeting's Reports – The Committee was informed that the edited Preliminary Report for the 11 January 2024 meeting and the 15 February 2024 meeting had been circulated, and that approval of these Preliminary Reports was pending. The Committee approved both Preliminary Reports during this meeting.
  3. Action Item Review – The Chair established the agenda for the meeting. There were no updates to active action items to discuss.
  4. Propose Technical Topic for the Next Board Workshop: Introduction to Machine Learning and AI – It was noted that questions related to ICANN's use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) came up during the Public Forum at ICANN79. The Chair proposed that the ICANN Board be given a training by ICANN org's OCTO team on machine learning and AI. The Chair invited the Committee to opine on this proposal. Members of the Committee voiced their support of the training. Board Ops tentatively scheduled this training on 05 May 2024, during the upcoming Board Workshop in Paris. Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) was also suggested as a topic for inclusion within a possible second AI training session for the Board (to be held in the future). Furthermore, James Galvin informed the Committee that the topic of DNS Abuse will be discussed by the DNS Abuse Institute on 06 May 2024, during the upcoming Contracted Parties Summit (CPS).
    • Action Item: ICANN org (OCTO) to put together an AI-training for Board consumption, and to present it to the Board during the upcoming Board Workshop in Paris (training tentatively scheduled for 05 May 2024).
  5. Discussion on the NCAP Study 2's Reports Recommendations and the Need to Sync With the Risk Committee – Given the complexity of certain data-protection and privacy risks associated with the NCAP final Study 2 report, the Chair and James Galvin discussed an idea with the Committee to have a either a working session or formal Committee meeting between the Committee and the Board Risk Committee (BRC). The purpose of this joint session or formal Committee meeting would be to discuss NCAP Study 2 under both a technical and a risk-related lens, form an opinion, and issue a joint recommendation to the Board from both Committees. Members of the Committee voiced their support for this joint session between the Committee and the BRC.
    • Action Item #1: The Chair to ask clarifying questions to the BRC Chair regarding the overall structure of the joint BTC-BRC session (which will include a discussion of certain privacy and data-protection related risks associated with NCAP Study 2).
    • Action Item #2: ICANN org (Board Ops) to schedule the joint BTC-BRC session (which will include a discussion of certain privacy and data-protection related risks associated with NCAP Study 2).
  6. Updates From Technical Liaisons 
    • SSAC (James Galvin): The Committee was informed that the work of two of the SSAC's work parties (the Registrar NS Management work party and DS Automation work party) is progressing. The Committee was given a high-level summary of the recommendations each work party will give to ICANN org. The Committee was also informed of the SSAC's third work party (the NCAP work party). Within a cover document that will accompany the NCAP final Study 2 report, the SSAC work party will expand upon and reaffirm certain principles of the NCAP final Study 2 report that it believes (from a security and stability point of view) are especially important.
    • RSSAC (Wes Hardaker): Committee member Wes Hardaker was not in attendance, with apologies. Updates (if any) will be discussed at the next Committee meeting.
    • IETF (James Galvin): It was noted that during IETF 119 two topics were discussed, which may be of interest to the Committee: (1) a new resource record known as DELEG; and (2) Increasing ICANN support to the work of the IETF.
  7. Any Other Business – Nico Caballero informed ICANN org (OCTO) that he will be asking for assistance in having certain Domain Name System (DNS) trainings available on ICANN Learn to be translated into Spanish.

The Chair called the meeting to a close.

Published on 7 May 2024

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