The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is hoping to boost levels of community engagement by launching a new digital platform that will generate collective experimentation and innovation in the future.
It will be known as ICANNLabs and any member of the public can sign up to receive updates and provide feedback. The organization aims to create a transparent process in keeping with its multi-stakeholder model.
Fadi Chehadé, ICANN president and chief executive officer, said, “It’s all about increasing our reach and relevance to new digital audiences which are engaging us through the web. We are searching for new ways to innovate and stay true to our principles of bottom-up, community-driven policy formation. ICANNLabs is quite simply an open experiment aimed at creating new digital forms of communication.”
The project will focus on four initial “innovation tracks”: conversation, education, communication and discovery. It aims to explore ways in which ICANN can foster greater participation in the Internet policy discussion and encourage new models for content creation, growth and distribution. ICANN is also hoping to increase public awareness of the organization and its processes.
Sally Costerton, senior advisor to Mr. Chehadé on global stakeholder engagement, said the scheme will give ICANN an experimental digital space where it can showcase beta versions of proposed digital tools and assets and then seek community feedback.