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Role of the GAC
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Operating Principles
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Leadership
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GAC Members
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The GAC is an advisory committee to ICANN, created under the ICANN ByLaws. It provides advice to ICANN on public policy aspects of ICANN's responsibilities with regard to the Internet Domain Name System ("DNS").
The GAC is not a decision-making body. It advises ICANN on issues that are within ICANN's scope.
GAC advice has a particular status under the ICANN ByLaws. Its advice must be duly taken into account by the ICANN Board, and where the Board proposes actions inconsistent with GAC advice it must give reasons for doing so and attempt to reach a mutually acceptable solution.
The GAC appoints a non-voting liaison to the ICANN Board. This is normally the GAC Chair.
Leadership of the GAC and associated groups as agreed by the GAC.
Strategic liaison with ICANN; other ICANN advisory committees and supporting organisations; and with other relevant stakeholders.
Prioritising the work of ICANN staff in support of GAC activities.
Ms. Manal Ismail is Executive Director for International Technical Coordination at the National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA) of Egypt. Prior to her work at the NTRA, she worked at the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), where she has been involved in a number of initiatives that successfully served Egypt's national plan of building its Information Society, and at the Cabinet Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) among the team who first introduced the Internet to Egypt.
Ms. Ismail has been representing Egypt on the GAC for more than 10 years and has served as one of its vice chairs twice, in 2009 and 2017. She has also served as vice chair of the first ICANN Accountability and Transparency Review Team (ATRT1), member of the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), co-chair of the Board-GAC Recommendation Implementation Working Group (BGRI-WG), co-chair of the GAC-GNSO Consultation Group, and member of the ICANN Middle East Strategy Working Group.
Ms. Ismail has led the establishment of the DNS Entrepreneurship Center (DNS-EC) in Egypt mandated to serve the Arab and African regions, contributed to various early community and ICANN efforts on Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), and led GAC discussions until the successful introduction of IDNs. Ms. Ismail is an active member of the global Internet community. She participates to all global Internet Governance Forum (IGF) meetings, the Arab Internet Governance Forum (Arab IGF), the League of Arab States (LAS) Working Group on Domain Names and Internet Issues, and was member of the NETmundial Executive Multistakeholder Committee. She is founding member of the Internet Society Chapter of Egypt (ISOC-EG) and founding member of the Regional Internet Registry of Africa (AfriNIC).
Ms. Ismail holds M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from University of Louisville (UofL), Kentucky, USA, and B.Sc. degree in Electronic and Communication Engineering from Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Egypt.
Mar 2019–Mar 2021
Mar 2021–Mar 2023
Passionate about the implementation and monitoring of information systems projects, through the strengthening of the digital ecosystem throughout Africa, I opted to develop digitalization strategies and their implementation my specialty. I have run many projects at the level of the public Administration and some institutions where I was responsible for development projects and held positions of responsibility. Within the public services, I was able to develop a certain ease in the communication and delivered several training activities at several levels. At this position, my experience will help to consolidate actions to support internet governance in Africa through ICANN, our institution. These actions will be based on:
- Strengthening the strategic capacities of African countries in setting up digital ecosystems and their ability regarding Internet governance;
- Providing strong expertise in internet governance;
- Training actors on rapid changes;
- The development of local organizations to better understand the management of the internet.
March 2021–March 2022
Mr. Jorge Cancio is Deputy Head of the International Relations Team at the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM), Switzerland. As such he has managerial and coordination duties and represents Switzerland in a number of international fora, and processes related to Internet Governance, Digital Cooperation and Artificial Intelligence (notably UN, UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD), UN IGF, Eurodig, Council of Europe Expert Groups, European Union High Level Group on Internet Governance, the UN High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation and follow-up work, the Geneva Internet Platform, or the Swiss IGF). Amongst his duties, he acts as Swiss Representative within the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).
Prior joining OFCOM in 2015, Mr. Cancio held different positions within the Spanish Administration, in the fields of Copyright, Internet Law and Policy, including Internet intermediary liability, Open Data, Internet Governance, and Telecommunications.
He holds a law degree from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid as well as an LL.M. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School, New York. Mr. Cancio is fluent in Spanish, English and German, and has a working knowledge of French.
March 2021–March 2022
Mr Pär Brumark is, since January 2013, the GAC Representative of Niue and appointed Special Envoy for The Government of Niue regarding all matters related to ccTLD .nu. He has a professional private sector background in Intellectual Property protection, ITSecurity, Media industry (Film/Music), Domain industry and Public Relations. He has been nominated twice to the Swedish Parliament (National elections 2010 and 2014) and is currently a Board Member of The Christian Democratic Party (Conservative), Malmö, Sweden. As GAC Representative of Niue, he has attended all ICANN meetings since ICANN47. Pär Brumark was one of five GAC Appointed Members of the CCWG on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (WS1) during the preparations for the IANA Stewardship Transition. Pär Brumark has an educational background in Media Technology, Lund University, Sweden, 1983-86, followed by additional studies at Lund University in Law, Intelligence Analysis and Political Science.
Pua Hunter is the Director of ICT in the Office of the Prime Minister. She is responsible to the Chief of Staff for the responsibilities and management of ICT work in Government that includes the implementation of the ICT policy, overseeing the establishment, security and maintenance of the ICT centralized Government network and providing support to Government employees. Hunter was involved with facilitating and supporting the initial implementation phases of the Manatua undersea cable project and currently leading the introduction of the eGovernment project. She worked in Government for over 20 years.
March 2021–March 2022
GAC members and leadership receive support from ICANN GAC staff team that provides a range of services to all GAC leaders, members and observers, including support for organizing meetings, providing substantive issue briefings, management of the GAC website and email administration, liaison with ICANN Org and other ICANN structures and coordination of a host of operational matters including membership management, working group facilitation support and the coordination of community travel support. Some of the specific support tasks include:
- Maintaining the GAC mailing list and membership records
- Managing incoming and outgoing correspondence for the GAC Chair
- Administration of the GAC website
- Arranging the translation of GAC documents
- Co-ordinating the arrangements for formal GAC meetings including room bookings, liaison with hosts and technical support
- Making arrangements for inter-sessional GAC meetings including call set-up and administration
- Continuously reviewing and improving the way GAC operates
- Providing support and assistance to new GAC members
- Publishing the GAC Communiqué
