Preamble on search for Fadi’s replacement:
ON June 21, the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the
Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the global body
that administers domain names and coordinates the internet identifier announced
the search commencement for its new president and chief executive officer by
setting up a committee to that effect.
DigitalSENSE Business News recalls that ICANN current
president cum Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Mr. Fadi Chehadé, had served the
ICANN board his intention to move on from ICANN by March 2016.
To steer this search, ICANN named an 8-man committee chaired
George Sadowsky, comprising Rinalia Abdul Rahim, Cherine Chalaby, Steve
Crocker, Chris Disspain, Markus Kummer, Ram Mohan and Ray Plzak.
Sadowsky revealed that the committee has opened an
electronic mail (email) address for interested parties to make input
viaceo-search-cmte-only@icann.org; in order to collect comments regarding the
search, qualifications of candidates, job description, and special
characteristics of best applicants.
Healso said that the search comment was open until July
12, 2015, urging for Internet community to freely contribute their views.
Reassuring, he promised to revert to the Internet community with the outcome of
the updated job description and qualifications statement for the position by
mid-July. And living up to this, his committee did release details on this
search as promised.
Criteria of ICANN CEO Search Party 2015:
One urgent and clear point of note for any individual
wishing to be considered for the position of ICANN’s CEO with anticipation to
replace the outgoing Fadi Chehade by March 2016, is the deadline for the
submission of application slated for Sunday, September 20, 2015.
Based on the foregoing, ICANN Board of Directors, chaired by
Dr. Steve Crocker, established a search committee to plan and execute a
strategy to identify CEO candidates for submission to the Board, which entails
that all candidate inquiries must be directed to Odgers Berndtson
:icann-ceo@odgersberndtson.be.
Must know about ICANN:
It is vital for any applicant to note that ICANN has a
global public interest mission to promote stability and security of global
Internet through coordination of unique identifiers, comprising its naming and
addressing systems; numbers, names, and protocol parameters.
ICANN’s mission avails engagement with a large global
community of actively participating stakeholders representing the domain name
industry, governments, businesses, academia, NGOs and individuals, dedicated to
keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable. ICANN has three meetings
a year that gather about 1,500 participants each.
Founded in 1998as a Californian public benefit
not-for-profit corporation, ICANN’s current baseline operating expense budget
excluding initiatives is estimated at US$113 million, about N22,515,250,000.00,
mostly derived from fees levied on domain name registrations.
3 years of global expansion:
The past three years saw ICANN as a global organization
with hub offices in Los Angeles, USA; Istanbul, Turkey, and Singapore, and
engagement offices in Beijing, Brussels, Geneva, Montevideo, Seoul and
Washington, but currently has 325 staff spread across 30 countries.
The globalization of ICANN also saw the advent of new generic
Top-Level Domain (gTLDs) Programme, including gTLDs in both Latin and non-Latin
scripts such as Arabic, Chinese, and Cyrillic. Over 1,300 new gTLDs are
expected to be delegated in total.
Characteristics of ICANN:
Organisation-wise, ICANN could pass as a unique
not-for-profit organization which comprises serving broad, global group of
stakeholders from across all sectors that work to develop its policies through
an inclusive “bottom-up” process embedded in transparency, inclusion and
participation formingbasis of its business conduct and accountability towards
stakeholders and the larger public.
ICANN’s open policy development mechanism promote
well-informed decisions based on advice from a diversity of views, so ICANN
staff supports policy development processes by the community, the Board’s
steering cum validation role, and executes the resulting policies.
Noteworthy is that there is a delicate balance of
distributed cum shared responsibilities between ICANN staff led by the CEO,
global volunteer community, Board of Directors and stakeholder constituencies.
Internet Governance Ecosystem:
Recall also that ICANN is part of a broader, distributed
Internet Governance (IG) ecosystem with other major players forming key partners
in the technical community. These actors work together to preserve one single,
interoperable and permissionless Internet, thereby inspiring ICANN work closely
with related technical organizations, and each performs their technical
functions within well-defined and limited remit.
Equally, ICANN works with a growing number of non-technical
players in theIG ecosystem, including International Government Organisations
(IGOs), Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), foundations, governments,
associations, as well as private organizations and participates within its
specific given responsibilities for the Internet’s system of unique
identifiers.
The Candidate we want:
On behalf of ICANN, the Sadowsky-led disclosed that the
candidate they want for CEO of ICANN requires a demonstrable public
interest-minded leadership with a combination of business, diplomatic and
organizational skills to assume this position with highest degree of experience
and skills possible.
The committee disclosed that these have been grouped in no
particular order under several headings that embodies the multi-faceted nature
of the role to consist of ICANN seeking candidates motivated to increase the
effectiveness of the global Internet for the benefit of all.
On the management and operational experience, the ICANN
search party requested a solid record of achievement in respected public,
corporate, academic service, NGOs, foundations, and/or other public service
institutions.
Potential candidates, DigitalSENSE Business News gathered,
must have proven record of strengthening, fostering and consolidating
operational excellence, with previous experience working on boards of
non-profit and/or profit organizations. This is in addition to having the ability
to foster consensus-building, just as significant experience of, and
achievements in, a multi-stakeholder environment, and an understanding of
policy development processes.
The new CEO search party said,experience forms a strong
operational part of running an established organization of substantial size,
like ICANN with ultimate responsibility for all key functions, maintaining that
success in managing the continued evolution of a dynamic organization, with
complex legal issues and significant contractual relationships, as well
as experience in resource allocation and management of competing priorities, of
course without leaving out background in establishing, strengthening and
consolidating business systems and processes, backed with good negotiating
skills to be able to represent ICANN and present it well in potentially
adversarial environments.
For the search party, global experience cannot be left out
as ICANN requires understanding of relevant political and policy processes,
with awareness of current Internet issues around the world, stressing that
global exposure based on experience working in leadership roles in different
countries and with different cultures matters, just as experienced leadership
of dispersed international teams of significant size and active and diverse
stakeholders remain expedient.
Also, the committee seeks candidates experienced in managing
complex and global process workflows and ability to anticipate issues and
advance pre-emptive actions, evolving into strong diplomatic skills, ability to
balance between all facets of a complex ecosystem, including technical,
business, and political aspect, whilst significantly experienced in interacting
and engaging with media.
Leadership Style:
ICANN, the committee said, is intellectually engaging and
contributes to ‘thought leadership,’ which helps to define vision and strategy,
and leverages the organization’s competencies. So, it is crucial to appreciate
the aspects of multilingualism and how this affects many players in the
developed and the developing world by way of handling the geopolitical currents
and pressures that will affect the future of a global organization, even as
they search for a candidate that understands and demonstrates empathy, and
instills that quality throughout the organization as a core part of the values
and mode of operation.
The candidate ICANN is looking for, they said, should thrive
on motivating a high level team of functioning specialists and must be seen as
a consensus builder, catalyst and motivator, who is practiced at, and enjoys,
working in partnership and persuading others. Therefore, the candidate must
embody and practice the inclusive and empowering multistakeholder approach and
encourages significant volunteer involvement.
Personal Characteristics:
As said by the Committee, potential candidates must align
themselves with ICANN’s values, namely integrity, trust, humility, technical
excellence, and public service, as well as multicultural in nature with
language skills, practiced communicator and public speaker. With strong belief
in the value of the Internet: conscious of its role and complexity, fully
embrace to ICANN’s mission, accountability requirements, and bottom-up process.
“Relishes work within a community empowered organization,
while taking into account the different interests of the different communities
in a balanced and fair way,” the Committee underscores, saying that there must
be excellent interpersonal skills at all levels, showing commitment to
strengthening diversity, ability to generate trust with all stakeholders and
respect their input, whereas adept at rapid assimilation and adjustment to new
environments.
Additionally, ICANN new CEO is expected to have passion of
Internet technology and Domain Name Industry (DNI), the market structure and
dynamics while working within ICANN’s technical remit in a rapidly evolving
Internet governance ecosystem by way of ensuring the evolution of the
organization within such a framework.
This is because, familiarity of Internet technologies and,
in particular, an understanding of the global Internet’s systems of unique
identifiers, including domain names, protocol parameters and addresses, and the
functioning of domain name registries and registrars, including issues of
competition, privacy, intellectual property, consumer protection and branding;
Internet addressing challenges and opportunities, including deployment of IPv6,
exhaustion of IPv4, and the implications of IPv4 scarcity on the fundamental
Internet architecture.
Consideration, ICANN search party said, would be given to
those who understand the IG ecosystem, the institutional environment of
Internet and its administrative governance systems, such as Regional Internet
Registries (RIRs), Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), The Internet Architecture
Board (IAB), Internet Society (ISOC), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), among
other organizations.
Whereas, awareness of the international dimensions, and
ability to interact with government and intergovernmental stakeholders as well
as knowledge of the United Nations (UN) system and other international
organizations and processes cannot be said to be less importance.
Good news:
The good news, however, is that the Committee is not
oblivious of the difficulties in finding a unique candidate with all the features,
hence, it gave a proviso that although candidates may not match every single
criterion listed above, but those who reach the final shortlist will satisfy
many of them.
Largely, the candidate will be expected to work at ICANN’s
United States headquarters in Los Angeles, California, with substantial travel
required.
Can Nigeria fill-in the gap?
A cross section of Nigerians was asked what they think about
a qualified Nigerian occupying this position. For Nnenna Nwakanma, there may be
no need limiting it to Nigerians as there are about two Africans in the
corridors of power at ICANN, such as Adiel Akplogan who joined ICANN as Vice
President for Technical Engagement and Anne-Rachel Inne, the Senior Advisor to
the President on Government Engagement, declaring “They are internal already
and they can represent Africa well.”
For the President of the Nigeria Internet Registration
Association (NIRA) Engr. Sunday Folayan lamented that unfortunately, such
positions are not zoned invariably to Nigeria, otherwise he should have
proposed him.
“If the recruitment is zoned to Nigeria, I will back Lanre
Ajayi. He is clued on what ICANN does and is on the GNSO council.
Unfortunately, that is not how they recruit for such positions,” Folayan
decried.
Yet for anonymous analyst, Dr. Jimson Olufuye will not be a
bad candidate after all, he serves presently as ICANN vice chairman, Finance
& Operations at Commercial Business Constituency.
Summary:
As we wait for who the cap of ICANN chief executive officer
fits, developing economies should not fail short of encouraging their experts
to key into the Internet community, especially from Africa.
Yes, the continent may be making some inroads as far as the
Internet and domain name business are concerned, but definitely Nigeria and Ghana
among other African countries could do better in taking their rightful places
as ICANN continues to expand its engagement processes globally.
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