Operating Plan Workshop
ICANN Meeting
Sydney, Australia
Monday, 22 June 2009

>>KEVIN WILSON:   So I will start.  My name is Kevin Wilson, and I'm
the chief financial officer for ICANN.  And this workshop is on the
fiscal year '10 operating plan and budget.  And fiscal year '10 for
ICANN starts July 1st, 2009 and goes till June 30th, 2010.

Thank you, all, for coming.  And appreciate your coming and look
forward to discussing the operating plan and budget.

So the purpose for this discussion is to update us on the status of
the fiscal year '10 operating plan and budget, on the development of
that plan.

Second is to just provide highlights for those who might not have
heard already of the status of the operating plan and budget.

The third objective is to engage -- to continue the engagement of the
community in the plan, including refining our spending priorities and
alignment with the strategic plan, making sure our choices are correct
in accordance with the community's wishes.

And then, finally, just to ensure that the board, after community
feedback, is prepared to adopt the budget, which would be planned to be
adopted at the board meeting on Friday.

This -- if you walk away with one slide in your mind, this is probably
the most important slide that captures the overview of what we've done.
Actually, these two slides.

The most important line is that the community feedback confirmed our
earlier plans to hold the budget growth to under 5%.  So we've
continued doing that.

The draft budget was posted on May 17th, in accordance with the
bylaws.  The bylaws require that the budget be posted 45 days before
our fiscal yearend, so we did that.  And that draft budget followed the
general plans as described in the framework which were posted and
discussed quite heavily during the Mexico City meeting and subsequent
calls.

This budget and the operating plan development followed extensive and
deeper community consultation.  There was meetings in Mexico City. 
There were online conference, online public fora, and there were
conference calls with community groups set up before and during the
Mexico City meeting, as well as after the posting of the draft budget.

This year, we also experimented with Twitter.  And so we have
officially tweeted the ICANN budget, I think have some statistics on
that in a little bit.

And then, as you know, we further -- any community feedback,
questions, answers, suggestions, we encourage that.

So the -- as mentioned, this includes a expense assumption of under 5%
that the operating expense is at 54.4 million, which is curtailing the
growth that we planned for in prior years.

The revenue assumptions in this budget are $63.6 million, which that
has somewhat of a change from what some of you may have seen in the
framework in Mexico City, in which we reduced revenue for several
reasons, the most important being the registrar fee reduction to 18
cents, in anticipation that those registrars who adopt the new RAA
would be entitled to the lower rate.

Total expenses of $58 million, including bad debt, depreciation, and
contingency.  And that means that the contribution to the reserve fund
of $4.9 million, which is less than the strategic plan, but still
greater than -- still a contribution to the reserve fund.

And then just to highlight that the revenues and the -- from the new
gTLD program, although planned for this fiscal year, are not included
in this budget.  So the revenues and most of the expenses from that
program would be covered in a separate amended budget that would happen
and be brought forth as a proposed budget about 90 days prior to the
launch of the program.

And then as I mentioned, that this would be -- this operating plan and
budget would be voted by the board on Friday at the board meeting.

So I have a couple slide here capturing the community feedback.  And
this is reflecting the strong desire for this operating plan and budget
to be a reflection of what the community wants and requires.

This slide captures the -- who participated in those meetings,
including in Mexico City, we had a number of meetings, five or six
meetings with various constituencies.  After the Mexico City meeting,
there were several calls with the registrar constituency, the registry
constituency, the business constituency, the intellectual property
constituency.  I think we had two or three -- four calls, actually,
with various at-large groups, and then related calls on travel support
and related to that.  So we had a number of conference calls to discuss
the budget and respond to the questions and suggestions.

And I mentioned we also Twittered.  I think we -- I don't think these
statistics are impressive, but it's a start.  I think we had 23
downloads, 15 of them were human, and 11 were from the U.S.

>> (inaudible).

>>KEVIN WILSON:   The other ones were -- the other ones were, I
assume, bots, botnets, or Web crawlers.

The online public forum yielded quite a bit of comments.  There was
about 75 pages of comments, 20 pages on the travel support and 75 pages
on the budget itself.  The new way of reporting, which we'll talk about
in a little bit, yielded some comments as well.  And the expense ICANN
area group reporting, which is currently open for public comment, that
closes next week.  And that -- waiting to hear if there's any comments
on that.

So what was said by the community -- here's a checklist.  I'll walk
through this briefly.  But -- and the tick marks there, the check mark
indicates that we directly responded to that comment or suggestion or
question.  The circle means we indirectly responded to.  So we
acknowledged that and addressed that.  So maybe it would help to kind
of walk through the details of that.

So the -- the first comment that we heard in a number of different
fora and on the conference calls is that the community wants more
details on the budget and they want to see it in different views.  They
don't want to see just the traditional accounting way of capturing a
budget.  And so we responded.  I think the budget is over 50 pages
long.  It's posted on the Web site.  And we've also presented a number
of views in more detail.  We'll talk about that a little bit more later.

There was a strong request by the -- particularly the registrars, but
others as well, to suggest that we lower the transaction fees from the -
- stated at 25 cents.  In the last two years, it's been reduced to 20
cents.  So there was -- the registrars requested that those be
requested -- the fees be lowered, continue to be lowered.

And so as part of the RAA discussion, in other words, as an incentive
to adopt early adoption of the RAA, we have suggested lowering that. 
So we responded to that.

Several people suggested we reduce the contingency, and so we did do
that.

More resources for constituency support.  We indirectly accounted for
that.  And I'll explain that a little bit.

There were questions about our investment policy, questions about
whether the reserve fund, especially in light of the market activity in
the last year.  And we've -- the board finance committee has interacted
with us, and we've commissioned a study on that.  So we're making
progress on that.

There were some -- a number of comments that the at-large support was
slashed.  And you'll see in the draft budget that's been posted, we
actually went through each section to show that it wasn't.  So it was
obviously a communication challenge as opposed to actually slashing. 
In fact, the at-large support is maintained and in some ways improved.

There was a concern that contracted parties may pay more than their
fair share -- percentage of total.  So there's been a lot of work on
this as far as looking at Cs' revenue and Gs' revenue.  There was some
question about why is the CC revenue forecast or budgeted so high for
fiscal year '10 when the forecasted FY09 is not even the amount of the
FY '09 budget.  So we've reduced the CC budget for FY '10 to reflect
closer to what we think the budget will actually come.  So those
discussions will continue.

There was also a request to change the meeting venues and remote
participation to reduce cost not only for ICANN, but for the community
members that need to travel to and pay for their own travel.  And so
those are being addressed strategically, and part of plans to look at
that, this budget includes the meetings costs.  The budget for FY '10
assumes that the meetings will continue as is, with three international
meetings a year, for fiscal year '10.  There was a request for more
travel support, we answered that by providing more travel support for
those groups that specifically requested it.

And with justification.

And then there was a request for more reporting on board travel
support.  And we've responded to that by showing the board travel
requirements.

And then the final thing is outreach for at large.  And indirectly,
we're addressing this, but had not provided more budget dollars for that.

This slide is a -- for those of you who have sat through the operating
plan and budget process at ICANN, is a traditional slide that we always
show to highlight for newcomers the one-year cycle that we have.

So the first six months of the fiscal year, we develop the strategic
plan, a three-year strategic plan.  And that's -- that's obviously
being kicked off right now for the next -- development of the next
strategic plan.

And then once the strategic plan is approved, which in this year was
approved in January of 2009 for the next three years, we then develop
the operating plan and budget for the next fiscal year.

So it's a three-year strategic plan that leads into the development of
the one-year operating plan.

This chart shows how we've -- we've done that each year.  And we've --
for the last two years, we've extended the involvement of the community
by marrying the budget and operating plan together and also posting it
in a framework early on to allow for over four months of community
consultation.

And then in the blue, the last -- the bottom section there, showing
the fiscal year '10, the development of the fiscal year '10 operating
plan and budget, you can see we have even more opportunity for
community consultation and more in-depth documentation to -- to provide
more input on that.

This slide highlights the nine priorities in the strategic plan.  And,
obviously, the implementation of the IDNs, both on the G side and the
fast track, and the implementation of the new gTLD program are top in
terms of financial resources.

But the other eight priorities in the strategic plan are also
addressed and developed in the operating plan.  This is a snapshot of
the operating plan.  As I mentioned, it's about $54.4 million, which
reflects a little less than 5% growth in operating expenses and has
about $8 million in new gTLD and IDN efforts planned for this, which
includes the assumption that those would be launched during the fiscal
year '10 year.  So those are actually less than the fiscal year '09
numbers, but with the intention that those would be -- that there were
some costs that were delayed from this year, and those would be put
into the fiscal year '10 effort to complete the implementation and
prepare for launch.

The areas of growth included contractual compliance.  The community
and the feedback we received very strongly encouraged us to continue
the growth of -- and the buildout plan for that area of ICANN's
operations, as well as some technology operations.  The financial
resources primarily relate to security and backup servers, that sort of
thing, to ensure that our internal systems are robust and strong.

But, generally, the operating plan assumes little or no growth in most
of ICANN's operations, largely in response to the global climate of --
to be responsive to that and not grow unbridled.

This is a snapshot showing revenues and expenses and driving down to
the contribution to the reserve fund.  It's a little bit small up
there, so let me go into -- I've got two or three slides here to
highlight that.

So the first is the revenue.  It's about $63.6 million.  Most of the
growth in revenue is coming from the stepped -- the plan stepped
increase in the dot com VeriSign contract from 12 million to 18 million.

And there -- as mentioned earlier, there's a plan for reduction in
revenues -- reduction in transaction fees to 18 cents for the
registrars.  And this also shows the ccTLD revenue of $1.6 million.

This also -- for those of who you saw the framework, this also
reflects updates in the transaction volumes to reflect the economy. 
There's still -- we still believe and are using in our budget numbers a
small growth rate for that.

Expense highlights.  I think I've covered most of the points here
before that, just given the world economic climate, we're continuing to
look for ways to defer or reduce costs and be very efficient in our
spending.

And then as I mentioned before, those are the focused areas of spending.

The only one I don't think I mentioned before is the two, is to
provide adequate support for DNSSEC and other operational enhancements
on technology and some growth also in -- generally in the topic of
global engagement, particularly increased staffing in the Asia region
to -- in addition to the slight increase in travel support that I
mentioned earlier.

So the bottom line is, although ICANN is a not-for-profit and has no
intention of changing that, there is a contribution to the reserve fund
to build up the reserve fund to what the strategic plan calls for, one
year of operating -- operating expenses in that reserve fund.

Roughly, that translates to about $10 million a year for three to five
years.  We're now at about $30 million.  So you can do the math.

We -- with this plan here, our plan is to have it increase by $4.9
million, which is more than last year's budget, but the thought being
that once the new gTLD and the IDN process are launched, then we can
come back to that, developing that stable rainy day reserve fund.

This operating plan and budget does have some costs for the new gTLD,
particularly the implementation.  There's some cost to prepare for the
launch.  But the believe is that we don't need those budget dollars
right now.

We want to wait until the new gTLD program is closer to being ready
for launch.  So we will have a separate budget amendment approximately
90 days prior to the launch in which we'll go back to the community and
the board and suggest a budget that handles both the revenue from the
application fees as well as the operating expenses to handle the
processing of those applications.

And let's see if there's anything else there.  So most of those costs
are included in the separate budget amendment.

We also did a three-year financial impact analysis and worked with the
board finance committee on this, and will continue to do this.  But I
think the implications of this are that the model, the three-year
impact analysis, shows that the model demonstrates that the revenue --
that the revenue cost-neutral aspect of the new gTLD program is valid
and that we have a model that can account for that.

It also brings up an interesting and important point for ICANN that we
need to have detailed cost accounting and reporting so that the
community feels confident that that revenue is cost neutral as well as
just generally ICANN's methods in cost accounting is appropriate and
that that's clear and transparent, especially with the volume of funds
that would flow through ICANN, and maintaining the not-for-profit status.

As models mature, ICANN should consider opportunities to reduce fees
and mix of revenue sources.  So we believe that the reserve fund will
be fully funded within a year or two, and once that happens, then we
can consider reducing revenue.  There's no reason for us to increase
revenue.  We just need to make sure that revenue covers operating
expenses.

This budget also -- cycle also showed new views of the ICANN budget. 
In addition to the detailed accounting and detail description of the
budget in the 50-page document, we also showed some new ways.

So there's the traditional accounts view, which is how the budget's
been viewed in the past and is how the accountants think in terms of
things like personnel costs, travel costs, administration costs.  This
year, we rolled out a new reporting, which is called the functional
reporting.  And this is in response to the community's desire to have
us be more accountable and continue to be more transparent.

And this shows how ICANN's activities are accounted for.  So instead
of showing things like how much does the new gTLD program cost or how
much did the IDN program cost or how much is contractual compliance,
more along the functional areas, the purposes of the funding.

And that, actually, is on the dashboard, and we're showing actuals.

The budget actually shows this budget in functional reporting view,
and the plan is for fiscal year '10 under the direction of the board
finance committee will be showing that on the dashboard on a variance
of budget to actuals for each of those functional areas.

We've also posted for community comment a way of the -- a view of the
ICANN budget along the lines of interest areas.

Affectionately called the EAG report, the expense area group reporting
view.

And this is aligned more along the lines of the way ICANN's community
groups are grouped.  So the GNSO, the generics is one group.  The
ccTLDs and the ccNSO is another group.  Things like that.

So these charts are a little bit hard to see, but you can see them in
the online document, if you'd like to, but you can see the pie chart of
the traditional accounts view, and then now open for community feedback
is the expense area group, and obviously it shows the various groups.

So what's next?  Further consultations with community in Sydney. 
We're meeting with -- I think we have three meetings tomorrow on the
constituency day, and continuing to accept comments on some of the
aspects of the budget.  And the plan is Board Finance Committee has
approved and recommended that the budget be adopted by the board, and
that that will proceed.  And the plan is to continue through the week
and hopefully have the board adopt it, the budget, at the end of the
week, on Friday.

So I'd like to open it up for any questions or comments.

Yes.

>>DARLENE THOMPSON:  Darlene Thompson.

On this slide entitled "Community Feedback," what was said, the last
point was on outreach for at-large, and you mentioned that it was being
indirectly addressed, but that there was no funding or money being
allocated to it.  So I'm just wondering if you can expand upon that.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Sure.  Thank you, Darlene.

The short answer is we're asking for more specific suggestions.  And
the staff is working with the at-large leadership, my understanding, on
addressing what does that mean.

But there isn't funds right now allocated for attending -- for at-
large leadership, for example, to attend outreach programs and things
like that.

I think the plan is, to the extent we can focus staff energy and
direction on that or at-large volunteers and members, then that would
be great.  We'd encourage that.

But there hasn't been any formal proposal on specifically what that
means for this budget, and so we haven't -- that hasn't been built into
this right now.

Okay?

Thank you.

Great.  Any more questions?  Comments?  Suggestions?

Could you come up to the microphone?  Because we're recording it,
thank you.  And say your name.

>>BLAISE ARBOUET:  Yeah, my name is Blaise.  I am from Haiti.

You have a strategic themes called enhanced security, stability and
resiliency operation.

As I know, each strategic theme is strategic activity.  Can you just
give me an example of what kind of activities you have for that
strategic themes?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Oh, and resiliency, right.  We affectionately call
it internally SSR, strategic, stability, and resiliency.

The financial assumptions -- There are several workshops in the Sydney
meeting that you probably will attend or have attended addressing this
specifically, in coordination with other Internet management groups to
coordinate that.  I know that Conficker exercise in particular is
considered a successful example of that.

So that's focused energy.

But the financial assumptions, and it's a fairly sizable chunk of our
budget, is mostly related to internal security.  I call it internal
security, so making sure that our systems and our backup systems and
our security systems are aptly funded and built up and robust.

Okay?  Thank you.

Any other questions?

>>JANICE LANGE:  And the paper is posted, Greg's paper.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Thank you, Janice.  

On the Web site, on the public comment is the SSR.  I think it has a
more eloquent name, but there is an SSR paper posted, a fairly in-depth
analysis of what our plans are and looking at that in more detail.  So
that's a good place to start to see specifically what the plans are.

Darlene, yes.

>>DARLENE THOMPSON:  One complaint has been made in the past that ALAC
and I'm sure other groups have had a difficult time to see how much has
been budgeted to them, and including staff time and such as that.

Would the expense area group reporting view provide for that?  Is that
something that that's for or....

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Yeah, that's a complicated -- The long answer to
that is a complicated one so I will try to keep it simple for here and
see if this answers your question.

In short, their -- each cost -- there's a direct component of that. 
So, for example, the specific staff that are dedicated to ALAC or to
the ccNSO, the leadership of those groups would know the staff and they
deal with them directly and there are staff dedicated to support them. 
The Secretariat, for example, is the easiest one to see but you also
see policy people that are involved in the development of those.

So those are certainly costs associated with that.

There are also things like travel support for members of those
communities that do receive travel support.

So those would be in that.

So the short answer to your question is, yes, the EAG is intended to
show another view of ICANN to give an indication of how much resources
or, you know, how -- what percentage of the whole ICANN budget is
dedicated to that.

However, I want to caution the early viewer, it's very, very cross
dependent, the cross-functional aspect of it.

So certainly there is the traditional overhead like finance, human
resources, real estate, things like that, administration, go across all
the different areas of all the categories.  But even things like
contractual compliance, who you might not think would be ALAC, per se,
from my understanding is the at-large comments and suggestions to the
policy process really support that, the efforts and contractual
compliance.

So it's a challenging viewpoint.

But it is in community response, and that's why we have it out there,
is to encourage the community to respond, is that the kind of reporting
that you want to see, as well as that paper that's out there describes
the methodology in order to develop that costing.

>>DARLENE THOMPSON:  So those staff, like Nick, say, whose direct job
is to deal with ALAC would be included in that budget.  But say your
time, 5% of which may be dealing with dealing with ALAC, that would not
be in that, too?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   That's right.  That's right.

>>DARLENE THOMPSON:  Cool.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Yes, go ahead.

>>TRACY HACKSHAW:  Hello, Tracy Hackshaw.  What will happen if the
financial crisis worsens and your financial projections do not pan out?
How do you revise your projections and what areas are affected -- How
do you treat the areas that are affected?  Do you have a priority list
that you are going to reduce budget in this area, that area?  Outreach,
example.  How do you treat it and who approves that? 

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Is it Tracy?  Thank you, Tracy.  Your question is
definitely aligned with the Board Finance Committee, and we are
grateful to have Ramaraj from the Board Finance Committee, the chair of
the Board Finance Committee, here.  And he and his other members of the
finance committee have been working with staff on that very issue.

In short, the ICANN revenue model is quite stable, and even in a
turbulent environment, people are still renewing their domains.  That's
sort the short answer.

So our revenue is very, very close to the revenue budget, and you will
see at year end when we finish here in a few weeks that the revenue
numbers I think will come in very, very close to that.

But to answer your question more specifically, we are coming up with
contingency plans and ways to handle that.

Ramaraj, did you want to address that more specifically?

>>RAJASHEKAR RAMARAJ:  You will see from the revenue lines that some
of it is stable, contractual and therefore predictable.  Some of it is
impacted through business circumstances and therefore could be volatile.

We have taken feedback from community and through a market research as
to what is the economic impact that is focused for this coming year,
and based on that is how these numbers have come.

At the same time, the committee meets every month with the staff to
see where we are at and then see how to plan in case there's an
emergency in the market.

So that's every month there is a meeting to take stock of where it is,
as usual, and then see if there is any need for corrected action.

So that's where it is.

And then reset priorities of what should the money be spent, in case
there is.

However, there is also a reserve fund which has in it over $30 million
that the community asked the staff to keep building up.

So that is also there.  So there is a reserve fund that can also chip
in in an emergency.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Yes, go ahead, thank you.

>>NAVEED HAQ:  Hello, my name is Naveed.  The three-year strategic
operating plan said that ICANN is -- if you go to the timelines of
that, ICANN was planning to have the IDN ccTLD by mid of 2009 in the
root, and in the last quarter of 2009 ICANN was planning to start the
new gTLD process as well.  Although the issues are upcoming on the IDN
tables side, and if we talk about the new gTLDs there are intellectual
property issues which are for the betterment of the process,
definitely, and ICANN is working very hardly and strongly on that.

So the annual budget that is for one year could have modifications or
could have the implications on the new gTLD process delay or the IDN
tables delay -- IDN process delay as well.  

So do you have any plans to care to that issue where the delay could
have some implications on annual budget which is towards the new gTLD
and IDNs?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Yes, I think I mentioned earlier that there is a
separate new gTLD budget amendment planned for.  So this budget does
not include the cost for the launch of the new gTLD, for example.

It does have new gTLD costs in it, over $8 million in IDN cost
associated with the implementation, the process that we're going
through right now.  As you say, we're working very hard at, and
community is as well, in getting to the point where that is launched.

So those costs are included in the budget.

So the answer to your question is, yes, we have a very large
contingency plan which is that when that new gTLD program is ready to
launch, whether it happens -- you pick the month, whenever that
actually happens, 90 days prior to that we'll actually submit a
separate budget amendment that would include those costs in it.  Yeah.

Thank you.

>>BLAISE ARBOUET:  May I add something?  I know you are having about
three public meetings a year, and I want to know, can we have an
outbreak of the percentage used from your budget to complete these
activities?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   You're asking the -- Did you say your name by the
way?  I'm sorry.

>>BLAISE ARBOUET:  Blaise.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Blaise; I'm sorry.  You are asking what's the budget
for the meetings?

>>BLAISE ARBOUET:  Can we know the percentage of your budget?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   It's a large -- As you can see, it's a very large
section of our budget, and we are looking at that all the time and
different ways do it.

In rough numbers, it's about a million dollars in core meeting costs
per meeting, the core costs.

In addition to that, there's travel costs and support costs which add
up to about another million.

So it's roughly, if you take all the costs, it's about 6 million.

If you look at the functional reporting, you will see it's in the five
and a half million dollars because we count the core meeting costs plus
the meetings team personnel cost to support that.  So the number I walk
around in my head is $6 million, so it's a very sizable percentage of
the budget.  And that's the reason why that's on the plans, the
operating plans, to look at that, consider other ways to do that. 
Remote participation, in particular, and other ways to structure the
meetings to be more efficient.

>> Blaise.  Okay.

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Yes.  And I should say also, it's not just looking
at the meeting structure for finance.  Obviously I have my CFO hat on,
and I am always looking for ways to save money for the organization. 
But it's about getting the work done as well.  So it's a balancing act
between the two.

Yes, I'm sorry.

>>PAULOS NYIRENDA:  Thank you.  I am Paulos Nyirenda from Malawi.

I wanted to ask about the IANA function and how the operating plan and
the budget are looking at the evolution of the IANA plan with respect
to maybe the launch of the new gTLD and the IDN processes?  What
fraction are we talking about in terms of the evolution of the budget?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   Yes, you're asking what's in -- -- I guess the -- I
can answer that several different ways.

There is some growth in the IANA support functions built into this
budget with the thought being we can't wait until 30 days before launch
before we figure out how to process many more IANA-type activities.  So
there is efforts in that.

We also have in the operating plan, as you might have heard Dr. Twomey
share this morning, and you might hear otherwise, there is plans to
have an IANA excellence, those are my words, but an IANA excellence
initiative to make that happen.  And there's costs associated with
automation exercises, and then other activities associated with IANA,
the IANA function.

So that certainly is a key emphasis in the operating plan and budget,
and you will see there is one line item.

As far as dollar amount changes, it's not -- it hasn't grown as much
as it has in the past, but there is hiring for that area as well as
other key infrastructure to make it more robust and prepare for the
scaling that will be required when the new gTLD and clearly IDNs, both
fast track and for the Gs, when that comes in.

Good.  Thank you for the question.

>>PAULOS NYIRENDA:  Is there a comparison between CCs and Gs in this
area?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   For IANA?  I mean, there -- I'm not sure exactly how
to answer that.

You can see, there's some activities that are based on the TLD, right,
that IANA does.

So whether you have 16 Gs or 250, whatever the number, I forget the
number right now, approximately 250 Cs, so there is a weighting in that
way on just pure IANA activities.

And then the EAG analysis that we -- the EAG reporting that we talked
about has a breakout by the Cs and ccNSO and the ccTLD operators.  And
then there's also another slice which is the Gs and support for the
GNSO activities.

So that gives you some indication of that.

Okay?

The specific IANA staff are, you know -- their time is allocated for
the different registries in accordance with their operating needs.

Any other questions?  Darlene, did you have your hand up?  No?

Great.

Thank you for the questions.  Anybody else have -- anyone have any
more questions?  Sure, Naveed.

>>NAVEED HAQ:  I have been observing since last two, three months that
there have been different solutions to come up with new constituencies.
Like there was a suggestion to have a cybersecurity constituency.  Now
there was a suggestion to have a consumer protection constituency.

So during the time when ICANN will decide whether to have those
constituencies or not, I was just thinking that the budget allocation
for having those constituencies to make up and start working, is there
any separate head for the upcoming expansion of the constituencies in
the budget framework for ICANN?  Is there any separate budget for that?
Or ICANN would have to adjust the cost or the budget of some other head
towards those new constituencies?

>>KEVIN WILSON:   It's a really good question.

The short answer is we haven't budgeted for anything that we don't
know is happening.  So that's -- So we haven't -- you know, we don't
have a new hire associated with that.

Certainly we'll respond to those requirements, and the GNSO
restructuring overall is obviously one that we are starting to think
about.

The little longer answer is from an operating plan standpoint, our
intention is to become more and more efficient in certain areas.  So,
for example, now we might have one Secretariat that supports a specific
S.O. or AC, the thought being we could share those resources and kind
of follow that.  So we are looking at ways to do that.

There's other aspects of that.  For example, translation.  We -- this
past year we've become more and more efficient at translation.  So
although the translation budget increased, the number of words
translated is going to increase at an even greater amount.  So that's
how we are handling that.  If it becomes a huge budget issue, we will
have to bring it up with the finance committee and the board if there
are significant amounts to do that.

Okay.  Good question.

Anything else?

All right.

I am looking around.

Any other questions?  Comments?

No?

Great.  Thank you very much.

Appreciate that.

And as I mentioned, the closing efforts on the budget -- the draft
budget, actually the comment period is closed, but you're welcome to
provide comments during the Sydney meeting.  If you have any questions
or comments on that, we encourage that.

We will be presenting this or something similar about the budget
tailored for each of the constituency groups.  The registrars, for
example, are very interested on the specific aspects of the RAA and how
it affects them, so we will tailor that for them.

And then as I mentioned, Friday is the vote at the board meeting for
the budget and then we will plan to implement, and I'm sure you will
plug into the strategic plan development in the first six months of the
year for the next one.  All right?

Thank you very much.