As you may be aware, the ICANN board has directed staff to develop an implementation plan for the GNSO Recommendations on the Translation and Transliteration (T/T) of Contact Information (https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2015-09-28-en#1.b). More recently, the ICANN Board further directed staff to incorporate the recommendations of the Internationalized Registration Data (IRD) Working Group Final Report’s into the T/T implementation plan where appropriate (https://www.icann.org/resources/board-material/resolutions-2016-03-10-en#1.e)

Considering our overarching goal to minimize impact on affected parties and to bundle related implementation where possible (per the GDD’s policy change calendar at: https://www.icann.org/en/system/files/files/gdd-policy-change-calendar-13may15-en.pdf), we are considering merging the implementation of the T/T and IRD recommendations into the Consistent Labeling and Display (CL&D) work stream of the Thick Whois Implementation.

We’ve identified a number of synergies between CL&D, RDAP, T/T and IRD that we believe will lower the marginal costs of implementation for both affected parties and ICANN:

T/T Implementation will primarily affect RDDS output
T/T Implementation will require new extensions to EPP (language tag and T/T flag) as may be the case from CL&D (depending on the final implementation proposal)
T/T Implementation is recommended to be coordinated with the roll-out of RDAP (which is already synchronized with implementation of CL&D)
The data model for the T/T implementation is relatively consistent with the RDAP model and a “harmonization exercise” between the two was recommended in the IRD Report
Instead of creating and managing a specific IRT for the T/T implementation, we could leverage the expertise we have gathered already in the Thick Whois IRT
Ultimately, contracted parties would be tasked with implementing a single package of consensus policies rather than several discrete one

While we don’t expect that such a merger would impact the transition from thin to thick of .COM, .NET and .JOBS, we have estimated that it would add at least 6 months to the timeline of the CL&D implementation. Ultimately, we believe that this is a more time- and resource-efficient option than recruiting a separate IRT for T/T and carrying out a separate implementation.

Before we request that the GNSO Chairs include this proposal as an item on their Consent Agenda for their meeting on 12 May, we would like to gather your thoughts.

We would appreciate if you could share your thinking in relation to the above proposal by next Thursday 28 April COB in your time zone.

Thank you for your consideration

Best Regards

Fabien Betremieux

Sr. Registry Services & Engagement Manager

Global Domains Division, ICANN