NOTES | UAC | 2 July 2025 (6 UTC)
1. Welcome
Welcome by Abdalmonem
2. Admin Matters
a. SoI update
Abdalmonem: any updates?
Please let staff know
b. ccNSO appointee ICANN’s UA Expert Group
Abdalmomen refers to changes. UASG ended, work continues in the Expert Group. Change of focus makes sense. He is appointed on behalf of the GAC
Bart: Sami was selected. Strong slate of candidates. It was very close. Sarmad has been informed about the appointment. Have they met already?
Sami: I believe first meeting will be mid July
Bart: Would it make sense to include a monthly update from the Expert group? Not sure about frequency
Abdalmomen: would be good. Monthly, yes. Knowledge transfer.
Seda: We are waiting for the nominations. The meeting will likely be weekly. Specific tasks, to prepare guidance. Nominees can share knowledge in their respective groups.
Bart: ok. Monthly update
Abdalmomen: GAC has one main appointee, and one backup. What about the ccNSO
Seda: one nominee, and no alternates
Bart: GAC in a special position.
Abdalmonem: Are changes to the UAC charter needed?
Now that UASG has ended?
Bart: suggestion is to continue as is. We will check. UAC may interact with any group of relevance, which includes UA Expert Group.
Abdalmomen: Do we need to have additional liaisons?
Bart: charter allows this
Joke: liaisons are appointed by council
Maria: do not forget about us. I am chair of one of the local initiatives.
The group will finish its work in February 2026, if I remember well. With the report to CEO.
3. Community consultations: what are next steps?
c. Looking back at ICANN83 session
Bart: packed session. What was your general sense of the session?
Regina: went well. Good testimonials by Sami and Gudrun
Masha: I attended remotely. Well organised, comprehensive. Glad to see more participants this time. Long trend: only half of the ccnso membership is interested. No demand. We should look deeply into this. What can we change? Do we want to change anything? We see the same on the ground.
Sami: Good session. Can we have a different approach in ICANN84. Have a panel, instead of 1 by 1 presentations. Different approach to deliver. You all have many solutions already. Can we propose them for a trial basis? The members could benefit from these solutions as a practical trial solution.
Bart: a mix is good, to get more engagement by the community.
Abdalmonem: I support this. Would be more engaging for the audience.
Qing Cai: I attended the 10-year celebration of UASG online. That was a success. Comment by Ambassador from China. Recognising IDN domain names. Access by search engines. The global UA Day in Hanoi. I attended in person. There was lots of coding to support UA. difficult to push the global internet companies. I missed the last UASG meeting. In China, we want to hear the news from Sami and Abdalmonem.
Maria: We usually get good feedback from sessions, when we show the user problems and show examples. We should take a user problem, and talk about how to solve these problems, by developers and software manufacturers.
Abdalmomen: me and Sami from the Arab region, Masha from AP, Andrew from AF. different regions, different scripts. Show the challenges. Identify gaps and issues to increase awareness.
Maria: make one practical presentation per session, with tech background
As logical continuation of UAC work
Walter Wu is a good presenter
Sami: I would like to share a solution like EAI setup deployment etc at lest at the ccTLD office supported by UAC.
Maria: there are several docs that describe a ccTLD software infrastructure with modules and how each module should support UA
Sami: But lets make it part of deployment support and practical success by doing it through UAC for universities, ccTLDs etc.
Bart: you already identified some work items. Need to be captured and discussed going forward.
d. Going forward: combining the outcomes of the consultations
See mentimeter results ICANN82 and ICANN83 shared as PDF’s together with the agenda for today’s meeting
Bart: ICANN83 and ICANN82 results differ.
Important role of digital inclusion in light of WSIS+20. Recurring theme.
Lack of demand as the main barriers. A bit of chicken and egg problem.
Regina: selling point towards WSIS. if IGF gets a permanent mandate, it will get back to ccTLDs, from the policy makers. Let’s be ahead of the curve. In combination with what Masha mentioned, to have from time to time sth practical.
We released the IDN World Report. Also had surveys with ccTLDs. Contains some interesting numbers. Help ccNSO members to get ready.
Bart: sounds like an excellent theme for one or 2 sessions going forward
Maria: regarding other potential steps. Interesting for ccTLDs would be, who from the companies that provide registry services, are UA ready? Nobody knows. We could create a catalogue about such companies. If a registry uses a service provider from elsewhere, it would be good to know who prepared the solutions in a correct way.
Bart: maybe UAC is not the best vehicle. Might be better suited for the Expert Group.
Maria: we could invite a speaker and explain
Difficult to influence governments. Very clear motivation topic, for others, how to develop language things in each country. Problem to be considered globally, but to be considered in each country. GAC might be right place to discuss. But to influence gvt, it will not be the only one way. Many problems in political space. Another option is to communicate with IT giants. Once one giant implements it, everyone will know. Has a big impact. And inspires smaller companies. Small manufacturers do not have enough experience and resources. We should explain them that to implement UA, it is an easy task.
Bart: wouldn’t that something for the Expert Group to consider/do?
Maria: i hope so.
Qing cai: regarding EAI. share a chat who has an email address. Test with each other. Deal with the issues. Big internet companies. Push the internet companies to make action
Maria: UASG has the list of testing emails in different scripts. but except this there are availabilities to make tests with other ccTLDs who provide EAI Tesbed
Abdalmomen: one person saying always that he does not like sessions
Bart: happens. For all members meeting sessions
e. What’s next?
Bart: will prepare a strawman. Observations from the consultations.
Bart: regina made some suggestions. We do have the ICANN84 meeting. We have a possible meeting, a working session between UAC and the GAC UA Group. Potentially, have a session during the members meeting as well, like we had in Prague
4. Next meetings
In 2 weeks, Regina to speak about the IDN World Report and IGF discussions, at the next UAC meeting
Maria: several years ago, our ccTLD responded to IDN survey by CENTR. We suggested technical questions to be included in the survey. Whois, email, database aspects related to cctld infrastructure. Also an aspect of the IDN World Report.
16 July 2025 | 13:00 UTC
Meeting every 2 weeks, until ICANN84
Rotation between 07:00 UTC and 13:00 UTC
5. AOB
none
6. Adjourn
Joke Braeken
joke.braeken(a)icann.org<mailto:joke.braeken@icann.org>
