SAC114 was published on 12 February 2021. All SSAC publications can be found at https://www.icann.org/groups/ssac/documents.




Recommendation DescriptionCurrent Phase
Recommendation 1The SSAC recommends that the ICANN Board initiate a fundamental review to determine whether continuing to increase the number of gTLDs is consistent with ICANN’s strategic objective to “evolve the unique identifier systems in coordination and collaboration with relevant parties to continue to serve the needs of the global Internet user base.” This review should be considered an input towards updating ICANN’s strategic goals in conjunction with implementing the CCT Review Team’s recommendations. Such a fundamental review should include at least the following areas of study based on prior rounds of the New gTLD program:
  • Impacts on root server operations
  • Impacts on SSR issues
  • Impacts on overall DNS operations
  • Analysis of how all metrics for success were met
  • Risk analysis
Phase 2 | Understand Request
Recommendation 2The SSAC recommends that, as part of the process for creating new gTLDs, ICANN develop and adopt a protocol for measuring progress against stated goals of the program and thresholds, which if crossed, may require mitigation actions. Such measurements and actions should consider the entirety of the DNS ecosystem.Phase 2 | Understand Request
Recommendation 3The SSAC recommends that the ICANN Board, prior to launching the next round of new gTLDs, commission a study of the causes of, responses to, and best practices for mitigation of the domain name abuse that proliferates in the new gTLDs from the 2012 round. This activity should be done in conjunction with implementing the CCT Review Team’s relevant recommendations. The best practices should be incorporated into enforced requirements, as appropriate, for at least all future rounds.Phase 2 | Understand Request
Recommendation 4

The SSAC recommends the ICANN Board take the comments in SAC114, Sections 3.1-3.3 into consideration in the Board’s deliberations on the following items:

  1. accepting the recommendations of the Final Report on the new gTLD Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process;
  2. subsequent implementations of the approved recommendations developing the policy; and
  3. the implementation of the policy
Phase 2 | Understand Request
Recommendation 5The SSAC recommends that ICANN org develop reference materials or a set of tutorials to teach the basics of registry service provision as a prerequisite for new registry service providers. The purpose of the reference materials is to educate potential registry service providers on the requirements and testing thresholds for pre-delegation testing.Phase 2 | Understand Request
Recommendation 6The SSAC recommends that the words “intended use” be removed as a defining characteristic to determine for whether applications should be placed in the same contention set or not.Phase 2 | Understand Request
Recommendation 7The SSAC recommends that the ICANN Board, prior to authorizing the addition of new gTLDs to the root zone, receive and consider the results of the Name Collision Analysis Project, pursuant to Board Resolution 2017.11.02.30.Phase 2 | Understand Request