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ICANN’s Development and Public Responsibility Work

Supporting ICANN's development and public responsibility work through specific and measurable tracks.

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Stemming from community input and the recommendations of the Strategy Panel on the Public Responsibility Framework,  the Development and Public Responsibility Department (DPRD) strengthens existing programs and has established new programs that respond to Community and Regional needs. These efforts are designed to strengthen the multistakeholder model by addressing participation needs. 

If you would like more information on any of the below programs, please contact the Development and Public Responsibility Team >

  • Dprd icannlearn

    Supporting Education and Academic Outreach

    This focus aims to build a global public audience that is knowledgeable of the greater Internet ecosystem through training, panel discussions, internships, archiving, and online services.

    ICANN Learn

    ICANN Learn is an online learning platform designed to help the global community better understand how ICANN and the Internet work. Courses are built for various skill levels, nationalities, and languages.

    Academic Outreach

    In an effort to help members of the next generation of Internet users and leaders, ICANN regularly organizes in-person and online meetings for the academic community.

    For more information, click the title above to reach the team. 

  • Dprd nextgen

    Supporting the Next Generation

    As part of its public responsibility, ICANN has established programs to raise awareness and encourage the participation of those not currently involved in ICANN and the Internet governance ecosystem.

    Newcomer Program

    The Newcomers Program provides a starting point for Newcomers to understand what ICANN is and where it fits in the Internet Governance ecosystem.

    NextGen@ICANN

    The NextGen@ICANN program’s goal is to help unlock new opportunities and understanding for members of the next generation of Internet users.

    Fellowship Program

    The Fellowship program seeks to create a broader and more regionally diverse base of knowledgeable constituents by reaching out to the less developed regions of the world to build capacity within the ICANN Multistakeholder Model.

  • Dprd participation

    Cooperation to Strengthen the Ecosystem Around the Domain Name System

    Along with other organizations, ICANN has a public responsibility to ensure that the Internet governance ecosystem is representative, transparent, and accountable, and that it evolves in such a way that promotes these three qualities.

    Trust in the Internet more broadly, as well as trust in the Internet governance ecosystem must be established and nurtured by ICANN through this priority.

    As an actor within the global Internet ecosystem, Internet governance needs to remain healthy so that ICANN can continue to carry out its technical role, and help ensure the stability of the DNS. Additionally ICANN recognizes that one single and frictionless Internet is important for development across the globe.

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Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."