Barbara Wanner Archives

ICANN Makes Progress on GDPR-Compliant Framework for Access to Domain Name Data

Published on July 6, 2018

USCIB Vice President for ICT Policy Barbara Wanner played a leadership role representing USCIB commercial interests at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ ICANN 62 Policy Forum, which wrapped up on June 28 in Panama City, Panama. The four-day meeting brought together participants from business, government, civil society, and the technical community from throughout the world to focus on policy priorities for the Internet domain name system.

This year’s forum was especially timely, coming on the heels of ICANN’s May 17 issuance of a temporary specification for global top-level domain (gTLD) registration data. This action would enable “tiered access” to domain name registrant data, ensuring that ICANN and the industry of more than 1,000 gTLD registries and registrars comply with existing ICANN contractual requirements concerning the collection of registration data and meet the new EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect on May 25.

Also in the spotlight was ICANN’s proposed framework to enable third-party access to non-public domain registration data for legitimate law enforcement, consumer protection, brand management and intellectual property protection purposes. The General Names Supporting Organization Council, ICANN’s policy making body, spent virtually the entire forum developing a charter for an “expedited policy development process” (EPDP), which aims to replace the temporary specification within one year. Wanner noted that the council made significant progress and set an ambitious timeline to complete the charter and launch the EPDP by the end of July. “The charter ultimately will define the scope of the policymaking process,” she said.

Wanner also highlighted that notwithstanding the intense focus on GDPR/data access, the ICANN community realized another important milestone at the policy forum. The Cross-Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability completed its work on the second phase of issues related to the March 2016 transition from the U.S. government to ICANN stakeholders of oversight of certain domain name functions. “The hours of tireless volunteer input very competently moved forward important community work on the IANA transition, representing a notable achievement for ICANN’s multi-stakeholder process,” Wanner said.

Click below to view a video introduction to Wanner and the other members of the Commercial Stakeholder Group.

USCIB Provides Input to OECD’s Work on Digital Economy

Published on May 29, 2018

USCIB’s Vice President for ICT Policy Barbara Wanner, along with several USCIB members, participated in the May 14-18 meetings of the OECD’s Committee on Digital Economy Policy (CDEP) and its Working Parties, which focused on advancing the OECD’s Going Digital project on the digital transformation of the economy, rolling out plans for a Global Forum on Digital Security for Prosperity, and featuring a special Roundtable discussion on privacy interoperability. The Going Digital Project was officially launched in Berlin in 2017 and aims to examine how the digital transformation affects policy-making across a large spectrum of policy areas, including competition, consumer policy, digital economy policy (privacy, security, infrastructure, economic impact), science, technology and innovation, industry and entrepreneurship, insurance and private pensions, financial markets, fiscal affairs and taxation and much more. The project will draw on national experiences and policy experimentation occurring across the OECD’s 35 member countries, its accession countries, key partners and many other economies involved in the OECD’s work.

At the meetings earlier this month in Paris, USCIB members, participating under the auspices of Business at OECD (BIAC), made numerous interventions throughout the five days of meetings, focused on elements of the Going Digital Project, such as projects on Artificial Intelligence, Online Platforms, and E-Commerce. In particular, BIAC Vice Chair Rich Clarke (AT&T) played an important behind-the-scenes role building consensus on two important telecommunications initiatives, and Carolyn Nguyen (Microsoft) offered her company’s perspective in the privacy interoperability roundtable.

Wanner was on the microphone for BIAC expressing business interest and support for the Global Forum on Digital Security for Prosperity. “As the OECD’s Going Digital Project advances, the business community greatly appreciates the opportunities to provide input,” said Wanner. “We look forward to continuing to work with the OECD, through BIAC, to provide value and ensure the success of the project as well as the upcoming Global Forum on Digital Security for Prosperity.”

UNCTAD Highlights Role of Digital Technologies in Sustainable Development

Published on April 24, 2018

UNCTAD’s E-Commerce Week, which was held last week (April 16-20) in Geneva, Switzerland highlighted progress by emerging economies in developing digital ecosystems to support electronic commerce and digital trade and, in turn, drive sustainable economic development, reported USCIB Vice President for ICT Policy Barbara Wanner.

More than 1,000 participants from government, business, civil society, and international organizations convened for the fourth edition of this conference under the theme “Development Dimensions for Digital Platforms.”  Wanner was on the ground for the first half of the week and observed enthusiasm for the potential of digital platforms to create commercial and economic benefits, but also a clear-eyed recognition of challenges to their effective use caused by an array of issues such as lack of sufficient access to ICT infrastructure and services, legal uncertainties, and the absence of e-payment solutions, among other problems.

Concurrently, the Group of 71 nations who agreed to pursue future WTO work on e-commerce at the WTO Ministerial Conference (MC-11) in December 2017, held a second set of discussions on April 18. Although the United States, Japan, Brazil, Singapore and others have introduced proposals setting forth work topics, the April 18 meeting was the first opportunity of the Group of 71 to discuss the substance of these proposals.

“They did not publicly reveal any specifics during the UNCTAD conference,” reported Wanner. “They also were unwilling to engage as a group with the business community about priorities for the future WTO’s e-commerce work.”

Consequently, the International Chamber of Commerce Digital Economy Commission (ICC-DEC) will organize an engagement session with key members of the Group of 71 just prior to their anticipated mid-May round of negotiations.

USCIB Supports US Candidate for Leadership Position at ITU

Published on April 9, 2018
Eric Loeb (AT&T), chair of USCIB’s ICT Policy Committee and Doreen Bogdan-Martin

USCIB and the U.S. International Telecommunication Union Association (USITUA) jointly organized a special roundtable discussion on April 5 in Washington, DC to hear a brief of Doreen Bogdan-Martin’s candidacy for director of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT).

The Roundtable attracted nearly 40 participants from both trade associations, as well as from the U.S. Government and the Washington, DC diplomatic community.

The U.S. Government will formally deposit Bogdan-Martin’s candidature prior to the ITU Plenipotentiary (PP-18), which will take place in Dubai in October. Senior U.S. Government officials have already indicated that one of Washington’s leading goals at the PP-18 is to secure Bogdan-Martin’s election to this post, highlighting her track record with the ITU, including being the chief architect of the Global Symposium of Regulators, coordinating the UN Broadband Commission, and recently launching ITU’s new gender empowerment initiative, EQUALS.

“Doreen’s candidacy is significant because she is the only female candidate for this position,” said Barbara Wanner who leads USCIB’s work on ICT policy. “Importantly, she brings 20 years of experience at the ITU, include 14 years in the Telecommunication Development Bureau, most recently as the Chief of ITU Strategic Planning and Membership. USCIB members strongly support Doreen’s candidacy, knowing that she will pursue the development agenda in a manner that thoughtfully considers all stakeholders’ views.”

During the course of the roundtable last week, Bogdan-Martin noted that the two most significant obstacles to connecting the remaining 3.9 billion people in the world who are still offline are the still-high costs for services and devices, as well as the lack of relevant content to stimulate demand for access and online services. “I envisage the BDT redoubling its efforts on digital inclusion, which is at the core of the 2030 Agenda,” noted Bodgan-Martin. “Together we will make the ITU-D a thriving, forward-looking community of Members served by a BDT known for quality, relevance, and practical solutions.”

Election of the director of the ITU Telecommunication Development Bureau (BDT) will take place at the ITU Plenipotentiary in Dubai later this year (October 29-November 16, 2018).

ICANN Focuses on Compliance of Registration Data and Privacy

Published on March 19, 2018
Barbara Wanner, fourth from left, at ICANN 61 along with fellow ICANN Business Constituency Executive Committee members.:
Steve DelBianco (NetChoice); Phil Corwin (VeriSign); Claudia Selli (AT&T); Barbara Wanner (USCIB); Jimson Olufuye (AfICTA)

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which is responsible for ensuring the security, stability and resilience of the domain name system (DNS), held its Community Forum in San Juan, Puerto Rico on March 10-15. The Forum attracted over 2,000 participants from business, government, civil society, and the technical community from 150 countries, including USCIB Vice President for ICT Policy Barbara Wanner. Over 300 sessions delved into a range of topics relating to the Internet’s addressing and identifier systems. Last year’s implementation of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) drove discussions throughout the week-long meeting.

Wanner, who also serves as the business constituent representative to the Commercial Stakeholders Group (CSG), was able to provide greater input to policy discussions at the executive committee level on behalf of USCIB members and facilitated important meetings with senior ICANN officials and key constituencies.

The focus of the Forum was an ICANN interim model aimed at ensuring that ICANN and the industry of more than 1,000 generic top-level domain registries comply with existing ICANN requirements concerning the collection of registration data (known as the WHOIS database) as well as meet the EU’s privacy protection requirements. Business participants also surfaced a proposal to establish an accreditation mechanism to enable third party access to data for law enforcement, consumer protection, brand management and intellectual property protection purposes.

“The implications of the GDPR on ICANN’s WHOIS database policies dominated discussions throughout the week-long meetings,” commented Wanner. “The clock is running out on the May 25 implementation of the GDPR, so all stakeholders engaged in discussions with a sense of urgency,” she observed.

On March 8, ICANN proposed the so-called Calzone interim model, an approach that ICANN maintained endeavors to strike a balance between proposals put forward by various community stakeholders.

“Commercial business users raised concerns with the interim model, however, maintaining that it is overly broad in scope and does not sufficiently support legitimate public interests in allowing access to certain data for law enforcement, consumer protection and intellectual property protection,” commented Wanner.  “In order to gain access to this non-public data, business users proactively proposed a mechanism that would enable accredited users to gain access to the data they need to pursue legitimate business and public interests.”

Working through the business constituency and Commercial Stakeholder Group, USCIB will engage with other ICANN stakeholders in coming weeks to refine the accreditation model so it can be utilized when the GDPR formally goes into effect in late May.

Private Sector Meets with Governments on Digital Security Risk

Published on February 26, 2018

Addressing digital security across business fields, Business at OECD members participated in an OECD Workshop on Digital Security and Resilience in Critical Infrastructures and Essential Services earlier this month in Paris to contribute to the OECD‘s Going Digital Project.

The OECD Going Digital Project was officially launched in Berlin in 2017 and aims to examine how the digital transformation affects policy-making across a large spectrum of policy areas, including competition, consumer policy, digital economy policy (privacy, security, infrastructure, economic impact), science, technology and innovation, industry and entrepreneurship, insurance and private pensions, financial markets, fiscal affairs and taxation and much more. The project will draw on national experiences and policy experimentation occurring across the OECD’s 35 member countries, its accession countries, key partners and many other economies involved in the OECD’s work.

At the meeting earlier this month, which featured USCIB member Chris Boyer (AT&T), Business at OECD members emphasized the importance of a multi-stakeholder approach to cooperation and information exchange between actors – business, government, civil society and the technical community – to ensure effective and appropriate security and privacy protections.

“Importantly, workshop participants underscored the importance of using existing OECD consensus-based and multi-stakeholder developed security and privacy frameworks – the 2015 OECD Digital Risk Management for Economic and Society Prosperity and the 2013 OECD Privacy Framework,” said Barbara Wanner, USCIB Vice President for ICT Policy. “There is no need for OECD member nations – or non-member nations – who are looking to improve their approaches to security and privacy to ‘reinvent the wheel’ because these two products serve as solid building blocks,” Wanner said.

Wanner Helps Lead ICANN Intercessional Meeting in California

Published on February 12, 2018

USCIB Vice President for ICT Policy Barbara Wanner attended a meeting in Los Angeles, California earlier this month in her capacity as a member of the Business Constituency (BC) Executive Committee of the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

The February 1-2 meeting, known as the 5th Non-Contracted Party House (NCPH) Intersessional, brought together seven delegates from each of the six Commercial Stakeholder Group and Non-Commercial Stakeholder Group constituencies within ICANN. The two-day gathering, featuring Wanner and BC Chair Claudia Selli, AT&T, among other USCIB members, served as a dedicated forum for discussions about domain name policy and procedural “in-house” issues that regular ICANN meetings often cannot accommodate.

“Overall, the meeting was notable in highlighting the two houses’ shared values and potential for collaboration, but also indicating some challenges,” Wanner said. In particular, the meeting enabled the two houses to explore with ICANN CEO Göran Marby and members of the Board many concerns – both shared and differing – about the implications of the May 25, 2018 implementation of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on ICANN’s WHOIS database policies and the contractual obligations of Registries and Registrars.

“These discussions were especially timely in view of ICANN’s plan to select an interim GDPR-compliant WHOIS model in the coming weeks,” Wanner noted. The NCPH and ICANN’s Contracted Party House can be expected to seek clarity about elements of the interim compliance model at ICANN 61, which will be held on March 10-15 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Other topics explored at the NCPH Intersessional included the status of ongoing work aimed at revising procedures for the next launch of new top-level domain names, challenges to improving protective mechanisms for brand names and intellectual property, and expanding transparency at ICANN legal with respect to invoking attorney/client privilege for various processes.

IGF Discusses Gender, Trade, Digital Security and More

Published on January 3, 2018
Speakers from L-R: Heshadharani Poornima (India), Barbara Wanner (US Council for International Business), Jennifer Chung (DotAsia), Louise Marie Hurel (Gender Youth/Youth Observatory), Bruna Santos (Gender Youth/Youth Observatory, Brazil)

More than 2,000 stakeholders from business, government, civil society, the technical community, and academia gathered in Geneva, Switzerland December 18-21 for the 12th Internet Governance Forum (IGF). The four-day conference featured wide-ranging discussions under the overarching theme, “Shape Your Digital Future.” USCIB Members joined global business colleagues under the aegis of ICC-BASIS in urging that the IGF continue to serve as a forum for mulitstakeholder discussions about Internet governance issues and as an incubator of ideas and best practices about how to most effectively address opportunities and challenges in the digital ecosystem.

ICT Policy Committee Chair Eric Loeb, senior vice president, international external and regulatory affairs, AT&T, provided the business perspective on Internet governance issues in a special high-level thematic session, “Shaping our Future Digital Global Governance,” which officially opened the IGF. Paying tribute to the late Joseph Alhadeff, former USCIB board member and ICT Policy Committee vice chair, Loeb highlighted how Alhadeff approached Internet governance with collegiality, collaboration and empathy, with an eye to solving immediate problems but not losing sight of where we need to be. “In this spirit, the IGF facilitates working together across respective and varied interests to achieve progress and share issues,” said Loeb told the standing-room-only opening plenary.

USCIB members and USCIB Vice President, ICT Policy Barbara Wanner made important contributions on leading topics of this year’s nearly 200 IGF workshops. Wanner who spoke on the panel, “Navigating Gender and Youth Challenges: Telling Stories about Women, Technology, and Creation,” emphasized the role of both governments and business in ensuring that the digital gender divide is bridged.

“One of the largest barriers to many women and youth in terms of entering the digital system has to do with culture,” said Wanner. “A government cannot simply have on the books policies that ensure equal rights.  They have to follow up and see that the laws are properly implemented and effectively transcend cultural mores that can hold back women of all ages. I have been very inspired by the various initiatives pursued by USCIB members aimed at developing STEM skills and coding by young women to enable their involvement in the digital economy.  Going to the heart of my topic, though, I would say that business also is keenly aware of the importance of enabling generational exchange as a means of bringing more youth and women into the digital ecosystem.”

Additional topics discussed during the IGF included digital trade, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and the “Internet of Things.” Additionally, the OECD’s Going Digital project was featured in a special session, which enabled USCIB members to reiterate points of support and concern offered by Business at OECD (BIAC) at the November meeting of the Committee on Digital Economy Policy.

USCIB Presses for Clarity on GDPR Impact at ICANN Meeting

Published on November 14, 2017
Barbara Wanner speaks at ICANN 60 meetings

ICANN 60, the Annual General Meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), wrapped up on November 3 in Abu Dhabi, UAE with no further clarity for the ICANN community about the implications of the May 25, 2018 implementation of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on ICANN’s WHOIS database, a system that provides information on entities that register domain names.

USCIB members, who participate in both contracted and non-contracted constituencies, took advantage of virtually every opportunity for engagement with the Board and senior management to press ICANN for guidance on the implications of the GDPR on their data collection responsibilities.

“Although ICANN 60 concluded with no definitive answers about the fate of WHOIS, the Board set forth an approach that may serve as an interim solution to contractual compliance,” said USCIB Vice President for ICT Policy Barbara Wanner who also serves as the ICANN’s Business Constituency’s representative to the broader Commercial Stakeholders Group. “ICANN further urged the community to submit additional questions about possible models for GDPR/ICANN contractual compliance for additional legal analysis. USCIB members will join fellow business constituents not only in pressing insightful legal analysis but also shaping the over-arching policy discussion about the future of WHOIS via the work of the Registry Directory Services (RDS) Working Group.”

In addition, the nearly 2500 participants from business, government, civil society, and the technical community who participated in the week-long meeting tackled the long-running dispute concerning Amazon’s application for the .Amazon generic top-level domain (gTLD). Nearly five years ago, Brazil and Peru, with support from Argentina, objected to the USCIB member’s application on grounds that a company should not profit from an address that refers to an important geographical. The ICANN Board deferred to this advice and did not approve the .Amazon application. Amazon pursued legal recourse and won an appeal.

Speaking before a packed room, Amazon representatives underscored that the company took great care to ensure that its gTLD applications met all the applicant guide book requirements, receiving perfect scores on all questions. They further noted that ICANN’s geographic names panel determined three times that .amazon is not a geographic name that requires government approval. Importantly, they indicated the company’s willingness to discuss a practical compromise that allows use of .amazon for its commercial purposes, while fully respecting the cultural people and ecology of the region. The ICANN Board asked the Governmental Advisory Committee to re-consider the .amazon application and notify the Board whether the application may proceed by the conclusion of ICANN 61, 10-15 March 2018.

“Concerning the GDPR/WHOIS issue as well as the Board’s handling of the .amazon application, members of the ICANN community are flexing their new accountability powers as part  of the post-IANA transition Empowered Community,” added Wanner. “The community wants to ensure that the Board and ICANN management is transparent in its consideration of critical issues affecting the community and appropriately hold them accountable to processes that were carefully negotiated as part of the IANA stewardship transition. The engagement at ICANN 60 is indicative a greater activism by USCIB members and other ICANN community members on a host of domain name issues going forward.”

USCIB Supports an EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework

Published on September 18, 2017

On the occasion of the first joint review of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework, USCIB reaffirmed support for the Framework and issued a statement underscoring its importance in ensuring continued robust and reliable transatlantic data flows, which have proved vital for healthy U.S.-EU commercial relations.

In just one year, nearly 2,500 U.S. business entities have self-certified with the Department of Commerce and publicly committed to comply with the Framework requirements – with many of them already in the process of re-certifying.

“This impressive ‘track record’ substantiates our view that many U.S. companies see the potential of the Framework to provide greater legal certainty and consumer confidence in data transfers,” said Barbara Wanner, USCIB’s vice president for ICT policy. “In the longer term, this will promote commercial activities and investments yielding increased economic and societal benefits on both sides of the Atlantic,” she added.

USCIB highlighted three important points for consideration in the Annual Review: (1) the Framework is realizing stronger personal data protections; (2) the Framework is serving as an effective mechanism for certification by Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs); and (3) the longevity of the Framework remains important.