UASG Oct 2024

Dear UASG community members,

Greetings!

ICANN 81 with ICANN Annual General Body meeting is round the corner. ICANN community will 

Meet,Discuss and decide several issues/topics from 9th Nov,24 to 14th Nov 2024 at Istanbul Turkey.

UASG will start its discussions from 30th Oct,24 with Community update during Pre ICANN sessions. This meeting is Online and I request all of you to kindly register with ICANN81 and join this meeting in large number. In addition to UASG, this session will also be addressed by leaders from ccNSO UA committee, IDN/UA WG of ICANN Org etc. 

Following sessions will discuss UA related subjects during ICANN 81.

All above sessions are going to be a treat to get updated about UA and your chance to interact/ Give feedback and shape UA in coming years. So be ready, block your calendar and be there.

UASG with ICANN has released “ Annual UA Readiness Report 2024” recently. This report is available on UASG.tech website. This report is a detailed update summary of UA readiness with Internet Industry including Emails, Websites, Operating Systems, Programming languages and other specialised softwares. This report is expected to be useful to entire Internet fraternity, Governments, Industries, Civil Societies, Technical community, Research scholars , academia etc. I urge you to go thru this report and share with your friends, community and colleagues.

Third Edition of UA day , A special and largest event of UASG community, is planned from 1st march 2025 to 20th may,2025. This time 110 applications from 63 countries have received. These events are organised as Global, Regional, National and local events. Most of these events are supported by UASG Local Initiatives and UA Ambassadors. Applications are being scrutinised by a specially constituted UA Day WG . 

During October 2024, ICANN and UNESCO have joined hands to work jointly on promotion and adoption of UA. To start with UNESCO is participating in UA Day 2025 celebrations. UNESCO is part of UA Day WG. I think this is a BIG step in realising dreams of Universal Acceptance jointly by ICANN & United Nations.

In continuation with my earlier emails to community, let me remind that We have taken special steps

In following areas.

1. Drafting 5 Year strategy plans for UASG thru its working groups. These plans were recommended by all Working groups and handed over to ICANN to workout legal aspects and operational procedures. 
2. Shifting focus from mere ‘Awareness to Adoption’ thru training, workshops etc. 
3. Focus on four groups namely Government, Big Techs ( like Google, Apple, Meta Etc) , Social Media and DNS community ( Registry, Registrars, Registrants Etc)to include UA as part of their long term strategy.
4. Finalising and Implementation of statement of Interest (SOI) in UASG to bring more transparency. SOI is implemented within UASG and final results are expected shortly. However some more measures are recommended by Community and ICANN. In last Coordination meeting, it was informed that ICANN is working on reforming SOI for all SOs/ACs. We decided to go with ICANN wholistic approach and adopt common SOI approach which will get finalised shortly.Till that time existing SOI will continue wishing UASG.
5. Several Governance Issuse were reported to us. We had long discussions on all Governance issues which were being discusssed since 2017, decided and submitted. We will re submit these outcomes with Coordination WG once we finalised “ Decision Making process” for Coordination Working Group.
6. It was reported to us that we have to frame norms for UASG members to strictly follow ICANN Standard Behaviour. We discussed and finalised the same. Submitted to ICANN Org to get legal wetting before final implementations.
7. As coordination WG is expected to take major decisions as per provisions under UASG Charter,We decided to draft “ Decison Making Process” within Coordination Working Group. We discusssed all aspects of decision making , consensus, raising concerns, reporting not consideration of points raised etc,finalised the same and submitted to ICANN org for legal wetting and also to ensure that it meet expectations of ICANN at large.

On 7th Oct,2024, Coordination WG had discussions with Ms Theresa, Sr VP ICANN, Ms Elena, VP ICANN, Sarmad Hussain Sr Director IDN/UA ICANN and discussed progress on all above issues within UASG. ICANN senior management was very satisfied with speedy progress being made by UASG team. I must congratulate each one of you for wonderful decisions taken by all of you. KODOS TO UASG TEAM SPIRIT.

All Working groups are working very hard to ensure that they all meet expectations of community. It is difficult to detailed out each and every aspect of Working group agendas, work in progress and final outcomes but I would like to familiarise you with major work undertaken by every group.

1. Tech Working Group have finalised a survey report on ‘Gaps on why UA adoptions is not fast in Organisations’.
2. Measurement WG has finalised UA course material for academia to adopt the same. ICANN has already started publicity of the same and conducting sessions for awareness.
3. EAI WG, after finalising Self Testing tools and guidelines, have started working on Vedios to educate and popularise these tools to larger community. 

Please visit WiKi pages of WGs to know more about their work.

I request you all to motivate more members thru your circle to join UASG Community to ensure “ Inclusive Growth of Internet”  by Breaking Language barrier.

On this Occasion, I would like to extend DIWALI GREETINGS to one and all. May this festival bring happiness globally.

Thanking you all,

Sincerely Yours, 

Anil Kumar Jain