18148: Khelladi: Behind the Scenes of the .ht Redelegation (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Yacine Khelladi <yacine@yacine.net>

Behind the Scenes of the .ht Redelegation

taken from
http://www.icannwatch.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/26/0138212
(see this page for all the links)

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Behind the Scenes of the .ht Redelegation
posted by michael on Sunday January 25 2004, @03:35PM

sbruno writes "As one of the principal actors of the .ht redelegation
from the Haitian side, I feel that I must make some contribution to the
whole story. I will bring some light to some arguments in Kieren
McCarthy's article, 'Haiti kisses ICANN ring, rewarded with control over
own domain', and in michael's IANA Redelegates .ht (No Advance Warning
as Usual). There are some truth in both articles and some incorrect
statements or speculation about what really happened. I will:

- make a brief history of .ht to help understand the context of the
redelegation which explains a lot of things,
- give a few hints about why it took so long,
- answer the question about whether the 'local community' has been
consulted,
- comment on Internet Governance vis-à-vis small ccTLDs like .ht

This article reflects my personal views as a professional that leaded
the .ht project from the beginning to the end, and who is today the
administrative contact of .ht. It does not engage the consortium that is
the legal entity in charge of .ht in Haiti."

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  A brief history of .ht

First, let's make a little history on .ht. The IANA report on the
redelegation of .ht (http://www.iana.org/reports/ht-report-13jan04.htm)
did not mention the previous crisis that existed when they first
delegated the management of .ht to a the consortium REHRED/ACN (an
NGO/private company consortium), not supported by the government at that
time. Based on a correspondance from the Government of Haiti dated March
6, 1997, IANA redelegated the .ht to another private entity. However,
the .ht has never been put into operation. This is very important to
mention, since this context will explain the careful and long
negotiations that took place to obtain a new redelegation to a mixed,
public/civil society consortium, endorsed by the Government.

In 1999, the Réseau de Développement Durable d'Haïti (RDDH),
http://www.rddh.org/
representing the local community interested in the development of ICTs
in Haiti, took the leadership of resolving the .ht issue. Locally, RDDH
had to deal with all parties involved, i.e. the company that had the
management of .ht, and the Government. Internationally, it had to deal
with ICANN/IANA which wanted to carefully treat that issue. Daniel
Pimienta's FUNREDES has a nice compilation of events from 1997 to 1999.
http://www.funredes.org/english/carpeta.php3/temaid/17


The consortium FDS/RDDH has then been created to satisfy the requirement
of the Government that a public entity be involved in the management of
.ht. Enters FDS, the Department of Science of the public State
University. Thus, tedious meetings have been organized with
representants of the Government, mainly people from the Ministry of
Public Works, Transportation and Communications, to finalize, fine-tune
the .ht management procedures, vision and architecture.

Why it took so long ?

- Local negotiations were tedious and carefully planned in order to
restore confidence among all actors, particularly the Government, ISPs
and telecom operators, and the old tender of the .ht which was an ISP
itself. Since 1999, several workshops have been organized to motivate
people and demystify the domain name system
- ICANN procedures for approving a redelegation were also tedious. For
example, we had to find out how to give proof that the sponsoring
organization had the support of the local community
- The fact that all documents and legal papers are only in English made
things worse when the Government had to review them. ICANN should
consider rending those papers in official languages of the countries
- The institutions that would be involved in .ht management had to
improve their technical infrastructure and/or establish outsourcing
strategies that are acceptable to the Government and the parties involved
- We had to establish strategic alliances with outside institutions for
technical assistance, experience sharing, notably with AFNIC, and
secondary DNS services with AFNIC, the University of Montreal and
Princeton University
- In brief, this participatory approach extended the delays, but with
the benefits of restoring confidence

Has the local community been consulted ?

If there is something we did extensively, it is the consultation with
the local community, through national summits, workshops, even the
publication of proceedings outlining the vision, approach and economic
benefits of the management of our own domain name space. In his article,
michael seems to suggest that ICANN should have consulted the Internet
community at large before taking the decision to redelegate .ht.
Although I believe that closer communications between ICANN/IANA and the
community that they are supposed to serve should improve, but I think
the principal parties concerned in a redelegation is the sponsoring
organization, the local community and the Government of the concerned
country. Once all these parties have an agreement, ICANN/IANA (or
whatever the body responsible) just has to agree.

Haiti 'kissing the ring' of ICANN/IANA ?

Small ccTLDs like .ht have very low weight in decisions about Internet
Governance for now. As a problematic NIC, the focus is on resolving the
internal blockage on .ht and on entering the complex structures around
Internet Governance (ALAC, ccNSO, GAC, etc.) in order to have an active
presence in the debate for shaping the future of Internet Governance.
Some clauses have been contested with ICANN/IANA however, notably about
sharing zone files with them. In .ht organizational structure, we had
already arranged for a body that would serve as a guard for the local
community, vis-à-vis the consortium. This body, in spirit, could play
the role of the 'escrow agent' as suggested by ICANN/IANA. They have
been flexible enough about this requirement (the transfer of zone files
to ICANN/IANA).

Perspectives

Small ccTLDs like Haiti should regroup so they can better defend their
point of view. That meens being always present in international debates,
creating interest groups with shared vision. If we don't do that, we
will be left aside and our cases will drop down on the priority list to
make place for more controversies between the giants. Now that we are
close to the launch of .ht, we really focus on how this thing could
bolster the development of that sector in Haiti, and thus help in the
development effort of the country.