[Newgtld-input] Processing of New gTLD Applications

[Cioffe, Christina]

August 17, 2012

ICANN
Suite 330, 4676 Admiralty Way
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
Attention: New gTLD Evaluation Process

Dear ICANN Representative:

This letter provides The City of New York comments on the processing of new gTLD applications.

I am submitting these comments as the Chief Digital Officer for the New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME).  The New York City Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), is responsible for streamlining government communications by making more information accessible, leveraging technology to aid in the transparency of government, and by supporting relevant industries in New York City.
In support of these objectives an application for .NYC was submitted to ICANN by the New York City Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications  in the New gTLD Program.   The gTLD will be used to offer government, organizations, businesses and residents who meet the Nexus policy in the Application, and who comply with other associated policies, to register .NYC domain names.

The City believes ICANN should publish evaluation results as soon as they are available for each contention set, and expeditiously move forward with Transition to Delegation of all applications that have successfully passed evaluation,  entered into contracts with ICANN and completed pre-delegation testing.  Requiring all applications to wait for all applications to complete every step of the process unnecessarily delays the innovation and other benefits associated with the new gTLD program.

Allowing gTLD contention sets to proceed when ready should effectively "meter" and "smooth" delegation.  However, if the number of gTLDs ready for delegation in a given month exceeds 83 (1000/12), priority should be given to Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), Geographic and Community gTLDs.  The need for these gTLD types (those that pass evaluation) are well documented and supported by their respective communities.  ICANN should also monitor the delegation of new gTLDs in the early months with an eye towards increasing the number of gTLDs delegated each month (but not exceeding 1000 in a given twelve month period).

Thank you for the opportunity to comment concerning this important process.

Sincerely,

Rachel Sterne
Chief Digital Officer of the City of New York
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