ICANN appoints Dr Ajay Data as Council member of CCNSO Council Asia-Pacific

Dr Ajay Data, Founder & CEO of Data XGen Plus and a global leader in email linguistic services, has taken the seat as a council member of CCNSO at the ICANN63 meet held in Barcelona, Spain and will represent the Asia-Pacific regions. The ICANN63 Annual General Meet was held in Barcelona, Spain from 20th to 25th October, 2018. He has got two-year tenure. He has been announced as the first Indian to be a member of CCNSO in early July this year.

Dr Ajay Data says, “It is a moment of immense pride for me to be able to represent the Asia- Pacific regions in the CCNSO Council of ICANN.”

On this occasion, Dr Ajay Data has also announced the launch of email services in the French language, empowering people to freely communicate in the language of their choice and comfort.

He has further added that this position provides us the opportunity to bring forward topical issues of concern of Top-Level Domains for India from a global perspective.

Dr Ajay Data says, “Approximately, 170 countries are members of the CCNSO and it provides an opportunity to discuss the future of internet. Single character TLD, IDN, Policy and Name innovation are the key areas of my interest, and I look forward to empowering people across the globe with the Freedom of Language.”

The Country Code Names Supporting Organization (CCNSO) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the policy development body for global issues regarding country code top-level domains (ccTLD) within the ICANN structure. The members of CCNSO, which is ICANN's policy development body for ccTLD (country code top-level domains) issues, are all country code Top Level Domain operators from around the world.

The Nomination Committee had received a total of 109 completed applications – 19 from Africa; 25 from Asia-Pacific; 21 from Europe; 13 from Latin America and the Caribbean; and 31 from North America. There were 33 female and 76 male applicants. Several applicants applied for more than one position.

ICANN meetings are held three times each year in different regions of the globe to enable attendees from around the world to participate in person. One meeting each year is also the organization's annual general meeting, during which new Board members take their seats. There are also a few pre-meeting workshops and working sessions when the volunteer members of the supporting organizations and advisory committees initiate their work.

ICANN meetings provide an opportunity for an internationally diverse group of individuals and organizations to come together to discuss and develop policies for the Internet naming systems. ICANN’s international meetings have been a staple of ICANN’s multi-stakeholder bottom-up consensus-building model since its formation in 1998. At the annual general meeting, the newly-seated members of the Board of Directors take the seat and thank the outgoing Board members for their service.