NZOC Report to December 2002 Council Meeting

Office of the Domain Name Commissioner
InternetNZ
Level 4, 4 Bond Street
P O Box 11881, WELLINGTON
www.dnc.org.nz

Status: Adopted at Council Meeting 021214
InternetNZ Council

NZOC Meeting

An NZOC meeting was held on 25 November. A copy of the agenda is appended to this report. Formal minutes will be produced and published on the DNC site. Key outcomes from the meeting included:

• Agreement from NZOC to put a formal proposal to the InternetNZ Council regarding a review of international matters. This review will be chaired by the NZOC Chair and involve representatives from InternetNZ groups and committees that have a legitimate interest in, and experience of, international affairs.
• The NZOC Policy on the .nz Policy Development Policy was agreed by NZOC. It will go to the InternetNZ Council for final overall approval.
• An agreement to proceed with a review of the Second Level Domains policy. This will be chaired by the DNC and will involve a NZOC representative, plus four others. Expressions of interest will be sought for involvement in this. At the time this review is announced, a general notice will be made that any problems/issues with existing policies that people would like to see reviewed, should be notified to the DNC at policies@dnc.org.nz . It was also agreed that the DNC will work with the existing working group on the Dispute Resolution project so that their work can advance, though this is not a priority area at this time.
• An addendum to the InternetNZ Confidentiality of Society Documents Policy, covering the NZOC and DNC was agreed. . A copy of this is appended to this report so that Council are notified of this. The content will be given to the Executive Director for inclusion in the existing policy. NZOC did discuss the merits of including a statement regarding our assertion of copyright but felt this was a matter for InternetNZ to discuss as it is a wider issue than just NZOC.
• Delegations to the DNC were agreed, and a draft budget for 2003/2004 accepted. This budget maintains the current level of management fee payable by NZRS.

SRS Implementation

The SRS continues to perform well. The production environment has had no scheduled outages since its implementation.

Pending registrars have access to the test system and nearly all those who have applied for authorisation have connected to the SRS TEST. No major issues have been identified to date.

Registrar matters

As at the end of November, twenty applications had been received for authorisation as a registrar. These organisations are listed below. Questions have been asked if registrars can be 'closed', in that they are not available for the general public to choose as a registrar. This is an option for registrars and we have already received an application like that from the NZ Defence Force.

By the end of November, eight registrars were authorised (WebAddress, 2day.com, iSERVE, DiscountDomains.do.nz, RegisterDIRECT, Iconz, Actrix and Watchdog Corporation). Of these, four were planning to connect from 7 December with others connecting either later in December or in 2003. It is probable this situation will change as we get closer to the connection date.

General .nz matters

4.1 .bank.nz Second Level Domain

The proposal for the creation of .bank.nz as a new second level domain was the subject of a vote, intended to measure support for the proposal. According to the .nz policy on Second Level Domains, if in the vote the proposal receives support from less than 70% of the votes cast, the proposal will be rejected.

At the completion of the voting period, 481 votes were received. Of these, 267 voted in favour, 206 voted against and 8 were ruled invalid.

Given the threshold of 70% support was not reached, the proposal for .bank.nz will be taken no further.

4.2 .geek.nz Second Level Domain

InternetNZ received an application in August for the creation of .geek.nz as a new second level domain. The process for this application was to commence once the .bank.nz application had been completed. Given .bank.nz failed to gain enough support in the straw vote, the process for .geek.nz can now commence. A Request for Discussion is expected to commence early December 2002.

Office of the DNC

Chris Wild started with the office as expected on 5 November. The amount of work in the Office is sufficient to now recruit the planned third position for the DNC office. It is expected that recruitment will take place through December with any person appointed starting in the new year.

Financial

6.1 Financial situation as at end October 2002

The figures indicate that the DNC budget was overspent in the month of October, both in some line items, and also for the total budget. Expenditure was largely as planned and the indicated overspend reflects the fact there is no phasing in the budget for this current financial year.

Notes:

• Variance for Personnel is due to the one-off final payments due to Beverley Irvine.
  
• High expenditure in Professional Services includes the insurance cover for the .nz market, as well as legal expenses associated with the.nz policies and procedures and the issues around the .maori.nz implementation.
  
• An expense of $11,200 should have been expensed against the Implementation Contingency to cover the costs of the external QA. This is being taken up with InternetNZ.

NZOC November Meeting

4.30pm, Monday 25 November at InternetNZ

AGENDA

1. DNC October report and update
   
2. International
   
3. Policy on setting policy
   
4. Review of policies and procedures / work plan for next period
   
5. Registry/Registrar committee
   
6. Addendum to InternetNZ policy on confidentiality of docs
   
7. SLA with registry
   
8. Delegations to DNC
   
9. Budget for 2003/2004
   
10. General business

NZOC and Office of the Domain Name Commissioner

Section to be incorporated into Confidentiality of Society Documents Policy : Addendum

NZOC and the Office of the Domain Name Commissioner

The default Policy will be assumed unless the NZOC specifies otherwise.

The default policy is:

• All formal documents are public domain. All working documents are confidential to the members of the NZOC and staff of the Office of the DNC.
  
• Documents will be designated public or confidential at the time they are assessed for release following a request for information, unless they are already designated Confidential. Note: the principles set out in the Official Information Act will be used as the basis for decisions on the confidentiality of information.
  
• Where information is received on the basis of confidentiality, the documents will be designated Confidential at that time.
  

  Any material marked as Confidential in a report to NZOC or to Council remains Confidential after the report's adoption unless a unanimous vote determines otherwise.

• Drafts of documents prepared remain confidential unless they are specifically published.
  
• The internal NZOC mailing list is confidential, including working papers circulated on the list.
  
• The archive of the internal NZOC mailing list is confidential.
  

  Agendas and formal minutes are public. NZOC reserves the right to suppress any confidential information from the publicised minutes.

• NZOC and the DNC will respond to specific requests for information. Where they consider the request to be too broad they will seek clarification before processing the request. Where a significant staff effort is required to comply with the request, a charge may be made to cover costs. The person making the request for notification will be advised of this in advance of the work being undertaken.

© 2001 InternetNZ
Last updated 06 December 2002