Dear Councillors, please find below the questions sent by ICANN board for their meeting with us in Kobe. please review them as we are going to discuss that during our council meeting tomorrow. Best Regards, Rafik Dear Constituency and Stakeholder Groups Chairs, *Questions from your Groups to the Board - Please reply no later than Monday 18 February 2019* On behalf of the Board, I would like to wish each and every one of you, a HAPPY NEW YEAR! In 2019, the Board and I are determined to work with you more closely than ever to make it a productive and successful year for ICANN’s future. We are very much looking forward to welcoming you and discussing with you during ICANN64 which will take place in Kobe between 9-14 March 2019. This time in particular, the Board would like to listen to your suggestions in order to make ICANN’s big plans successful. *What does it mean*? In 2018, besides GDPR, the Community, the Board and ICANN org have worked tirelessly on several key plans that are now or soon will be out for public comment: - the draft Strategic Plan 2021-2025 was published a little before Christmas; - the first consultation paper on a 2-Year budgeting process was also published before Christmas; - and the draft FY21-25 Operating Plan & Financial Projections will be posted before this summer. In addition, based on community feedback and discussions at ICANN 63, we will begin a consultation in Kobe on the status of ICANN’s governance’s model, including whether and how it should evolve to continue to serve the global ICANN community. In the aggregate, these plans are comprehensive and address the key challenges ICANN’s faces in the future in the areas of security; governance; unique identifier systems; geopolitics; and financials. Even great plans come with challenges, which we want to anticipate and address as a prelude to implementation. We pulled together once before, galvanized our resources effectively and achieved a successful transition. We need to do it again to address ICANN’s future challenges. Are we ready? Do we, for example, collectively have the leadership, skills, resources, knowledge and commitment required to implement these plans successfully over the next five years? We need your help for this. Specifically, as you prepare for Kobe, we would like your high-level input on: 1. What the Board, ICANN org, and the Community should be doing now to prepare for the successful implementation of these plans? Please make *three suggestions* as concrete as possible, providing one each for the Board, ICANN org, and the Community. 1. While the success of these plans lies primarily within ICANN, we all know that ICANN does not operate in a vacuum, and alliances and partnerships are important to our success. How can we increase the likelihood that important allies and partners in the space are on the same page and working together to achieve common/agreed upon goals? Please provide *one suggestion* of something that could be done externally to improve trust and collaboration. We are looking forward to hearing *your four suggestions* during our face-to-face meetings in Kobe so that we could then work jointly towards a successful implementation of ICANN’s future plans, that you have been involved in formulating. In the meantime, we would be very grateful if you could send to Board Operations (board-ops-team@icann.org) the questions you would like the Board to address during our face-to-face meetings. Given the finite time available for these meetings, we would appreciate it very much if you could list your questions in order of priority. We would also appreciate getting your questions no later than *Monday 18 February, 2019 or sooner*. We thank you in advance for your time on this matter and we look forward to welcoming you in Japan! Best regards, Cherine Chalaby Chair, ICANN Board of Directors