First meeting of the working group was in August 2013.

The working group was tasked with answering two chartered questions:

Is mandatory transformation of contact information in the WHOIS database to a single common language and script desirable?
Who should, in the view of the working group, bear the burden of transformation?

The working group solicited input at an early stage in its deliberations and received input from:

ALAC
The European Commission
The Government of Thailand
The People’s Republic of China
NCSG
IPC
FICPI (International Federation of Intellectual Property Attorneys) - This input was received very late, and was decided to be included as input to the public comment on the initial report

All input was discussed in great detail by the working group members.

Special attention was given to the ongoing work of the EWG on registration data services as well as the EWG on internationalised registration data services, both of which were relevant to the work of this working group.

After review of community comments and extensive working group deliberations, the recommendations provided in the working group's initial report were provided for public comment. This was done in the absence of a formal consensus call, however, with the understanding that a majority of the working group members support these recommendation. They are also provisional recommendations pending review of comments submitted in the public comment period.

That translation and transliteration of contact information should not be mandatory.
Any new RDS contemplated by ICANN should allow for non-Latin script to be usable.
Registrants should provide their contact information in the language/script appropriate for the language the registrar operates in
Registrars and registries should assure that data fields are consistent and correctly tagged to facilitate future transformation if ever needed
If registrars wish to transform contact data, this should be displayed in the WHOIS as additional fields along with the original information provided by the registrant
The field names in the WHOIS should be translated into as many languages as possible
Based on these recommendations, the question of bearing the burden of transformation is moot. The working group is asking for input specific to this question, especially from those providing input in favour of mandatory transformation.

A formal consensus call of the working group members will be taken following discussions of any and all input provided during the public comment period, which will close on February 1st 2015.

An announcement was made about a webinar to be held on January 16th 2015 (today at UTC 14:00) covering the findings in the initial report of the working group (http://gnso.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-09jan15-en.htm).