Dear Members,
Welcome to the July operational update. As ever, it has been a busy quarter here at Nominet. I wanted to take this opportunity to share information and progress on a number of fronts.
.UK POLICY
Registry modernisation consultation
Last week we published the feedback from the consultation on registry modernisation proposals. While the team are pleased that the direction of travel was well received by many of you, we know there are also possible improvements we can make, including some relating to the proposed lifecycle and inter-registrar transfer process as well as the operational rollout which would benefit from further consideration.
We are taking the summer to work on the finer details and to refine both the engagement and deployment plans. We will ensure we give registrars plenty of time to make any changes that require development work. Expect more details and a timeline in September. In the meantime, thanks to those of you who contributed and to the UKRAC for their input into this work.
BUSINESS UPDATES
[td]Gov.uk
We have now officially taken over the management of gov.uk, having successfully secured the contract for this work last year. A lot of work went on behind the scenes, as you can imagine, to ensure a smooth transition over to Nominet last month, including over 150,000 lines of code written or changed. We are delighted to be supporting around 3854 important government domains. This is a seven-year contract, worth £1.4m.
PDNS
Our work on the UK government’s PDNS is now in the closing stages: we are continuing to offer this service until September. Meanwhile, our work with Australian government continues. Both services continue to perform a valuable function protecting public services at a time of heightened cyber threat.
EBERO
Nominet is one of a few Emergency Backend Registry Operators selected by ICANN to help in the event of a failure of a generic top-level domain. Our team was called upon to provide support for the .nowruz gTLD, and we expect the transition will get underway this week. While the numbers of domains involved are small, I am pleased that ICANN again chose Nominet to provide assistance to ensure a continuity of service.
INVESTING IN OUR TECHNOLOGY
We are pleased to report that our work to update our infrastructure platforms across on-premises and the public cloud is reaching its conclusion. Our Enterprise platform which was started under the TTP programme is now in final testing, with business application migrations including the Registry itself starting after the summer. We have also designed and built a new Edge infrastructure platform that will be used to host our DNS services in the UK and internationally. The Edge platform is highly distributed in order to deliver an excellent quality of service at low latency.
For public cloud, we have completed a new landing zone for application hosting to the latest security standards and have reduced the number of cloud environments we use overall, which will create efficiencies moving forward. From a security perspective we have improved the monitoring software to detect and inform patching of software vulnerabilities as they emerge and are published.
ORGANISATIONAL CHANGES
As I explained in March, we have taken steps to ensure we can operate as effectively as possible now and in the future. We have combined two business units (registry and cyber) into one and reduced our overall headcount. The key driver was to run as effectively as possible as a team moving forward, responding to cost pressures that I am sure members are experiencing in their own businesses.
These things are not easy, and while we were able to reduce the number of potential redundancies through redeployments, we have said goodbye to 40 colleagues. As you would imagine, it has been an unsettling time for all, and the team are getting used to a new normal. I appreciate the professionalism and contribution to Nominet that those leaving us have made to the organisation.
We have called the combined business unit, led by David Carroll, a customer team to signal our intent to ensure we are focused on making improvements, large and small, to the service we deliver to you, our members, our registry services clients, and our government contracts. As well as ensuring our service is front and centre, David is developing our registry strategy, focused on how .UK meets the challenges of a mature market.
We have also moved a few teams into central functions. Membership engagement and Social Impact will now join the corporate affairs team, working with Elaine Quinn. The legal team will join the CFO team, working with Carolyn Bedford.
While recruitment was on hold pending the restructure consultation, we are now recruiting for roles that we were not able to fill with those at risk, or for roles where the incumbent is moving on to pastures new.
In other team news, I know some of you were kind enough to reach out to wish David Buckle well as he left us after almost three years as our Head of Membership Engagement. It won’t come as a surprise that this remains a key role and we aim to fill that vacancy as soon as we can.
USING TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE LIVES
Micro:bits in primary schools[/td]
[td]One of Nominet’s flagship social impact programmes is a partnership with BBC Education and the Micro:bit Educational Foundation to introduce primary school children to digital skills and coding at an early age. Kits have been delivered to over 90% of primary schools in the UK, and we’re now helping make sure teachers have the training and resources to develop applications in line with the curriculum.
If you have a couple of minutes, you can see how a primary school in Essex is is getting involved.
Deterring online child sexual abuse
Earlier this year, two of our grantees –the Internet Watch Foundation and Lucy Faithfull – shared evidence showing their innovative chatbot has stopped millions of people from searching for child sexual abuse videos. Nominet is funding the continuation of their pioneering research and experimentation as part of 'Project Intercept’.
Net UK
We have also looked at where we can support the wider internet community. Along with LINX and LONAP, Nominet is co-sponsoring the inaugural NetUK conference at IET London which gets underway today. The event is aimed at anyone working in Internet operations and the peering community and will provide a space for participants to share best practices and knowledge, not least with those joining the industry for the first time.
Court case on membership fees – update
In my last update I shared an update on a legal case that was filed against Nominet by a member seeking a refund of membership fees.
The issue of a default judgment (when Nominet was unaware of the details of the claim and unable to defend itself) has now been definitively settled. The default judgment was set aside by the Court in January this year. It was then subsequently challenged unsuccessfully by the claimant at appeal on two occasions, with the last hearing on 14th June.
Unless dropped by the claimant, the case will be heard in court. We'd prefer of course to avoid the time and costs of this course of action, particularly as we are confident that the membership fees paid by members are lawful.
Legislative update
Following the general election, Peter Kyle MP has been appointed Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. Sir Chris Bryant MP is now Minister of State in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
It’s worth highlighting the fate of two pieces of legislation that were on the previous government’s agenda at the time the election was called.
The first was the Criminal Justice Bill, which included a new power for law enforcement to suspend domain names being used for criminal purposes by court order. The Bill only reached Report Stage in the House of Commons, and therefore was not finalised in the parliamentary ‘wash-up’ process.
The second was an amendment to Section 19 of the Digital Economy Act 2020, on which the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology was due to set out – in secondary legislation - a list of misuses and unfair uses of domain names on which registries must act and arrangements for dealing with complaints for domain names.
It will be for the incoming government to decide how they want to proceed with both these pieces of parliamentary business going forward. To keep up to date on public policy matters, you can sign up to the ‘Policy Matters’ briefing by submitting this form.
A Country Code registry coalition
The next two years are crucial for global Internet governance – with new UN processes on the horizon. The first is the Global Digital Compact, set to be agreed in September, and will act as a roadmap for the future governance of the Internet and digital technologies. Second, is the 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which will culminate in 2025 and entail a decision on the future mandate of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum.
To help shape the development of outputs from these processes, Nominet co-founded a techincal community coalition with auDA, CIRA and InternetNZ in April. This group enables us to come together and share insights and formulate joint positions, with the aim of defending, evolving and strengthening this collaborative approach in decision-making about the Internet.
This work is important in protecting Nominet’s vision of a free, open and interoperable global Internet, which we continue to champion.
As ever, a lot of ground to cover. Looking forward to seeing those of you signed up for the next Members call tomorrow (9th July). You can register for the call here.[/td]
Welcome to the July operational update. As ever, it has been a busy quarter here at Nominet. I wanted to take this opportunity to share information and progress on a number of fronts.
.UK POLICY
Registry modernisation consultation
Last week we published the feedback from the consultation on registry modernisation proposals. While the team are pleased that the direction of travel was well received by many of you, we know there are also possible improvements we can make, including some relating to the proposed lifecycle and inter-registrar transfer process as well as the operational rollout which would benefit from further consideration.
We are taking the summer to work on the finer details and to refine both the engagement and deployment plans. We will ensure we give registrars plenty of time to make any changes that require development work. Expect more details and a timeline in September. In the meantime, thanks to those of you who contributed and to the UKRAC for their input into this work.
BUSINESS UPDATES
We have now officially taken over the management of gov.uk, having successfully secured the contract for this work last year. A lot of work went on behind the scenes, as you can imagine, to ensure a smooth transition over to Nominet last month, including over 150,000 lines of code written or changed. We are delighted to be supporting around 3854 important government domains. This is a seven-year contract, worth £1.4m.
PDNS
Our work on the UK government’s PDNS is now in the closing stages: we are continuing to offer this service until September. Meanwhile, our work with Australian government continues. Both services continue to perform a valuable function protecting public services at a time of heightened cyber threat.
EBERO
Nominet is one of a few Emergency Backend Registry Operators selected by ICANN to help in the event of a failure of a generic top-level domain. Our team was called upon to provide support for the .nowruz gTLD, and we expect the transition will get underway this week. While the numbers of domains involved are small, I am pleased that ICANN again chose Nominet to provide assistance to ensure a continuity of service.
INVESTING IN OUR TECHNOLOGY
We are pleased to report that our work to update our infrastructure platforms across on-premises and the public cloud is reaching its conclusion. Our Enterprise platform which was started under the TTP programme is now in final testing, with business application migrations including the Registry itself starting after the summer. We have also designed and built a new Edge infrastructure platform that will be used to host our DNS services in the UK and internationally. The Edge platform is highly distributed in order to deliver an excellent quality of service at low latency.
For public cloud, we have completed a new landing zone for application hosting to the latest security standards and have reduced the number of cloud environments we use overall, which will create efficiencies moving forward. From a security perspective we have improved the monitoring software to detect and inform patching of software vulnerabilities as they emerge and are published.
ORGANISATIONAL CHANGES
As I explained in March, we have taken steps to ensure we can operate as effectively as possible now and in the future. We have combined two business units (registry and cyber) into one and reduced our overall headcount. The key driver was to run as effectively as possible as a team moving forward, responding to cost pressures that I am sure members are experiencing in their own businesses.
These things are not easy, and while we were able to reduce the number of potential redundancies through redeployments, we have said goodbye to 40 colleagues. As you would imagine, it has been an unsettling time for all, and the team are getting used to a new normal. I appreciate the professionalism and contribution to Nominet that those leaving us have made to the organisation.
We have called the combined business unit, led by David Carroll, a customer team to signal our intent to ensure we are focused on making improvements, large and small, to the service we deliver to you, our members, our registry services clients, and our government contracts. As well as ensuring our service is front and centre, David is developing our registry strategy, focused on how .UK meets the challenges of a mature market.
We have also moved a few teams into central functions. Membership engagement and Social Impact will now join the corporate affairs team, working with Elaine Quinn. The legal team will join the CFO team, working with Carolyn Bedford.
While recruitment was on hold pending the restructure consultation, we are now recruiting for roles that we were not able to fill with those at risk, or for roles where the incumbent is moving on to pastures new.
In other team news, I know some of you were kind enough to reach out to wish David Buckle well as he left us after almost three years as our Head of Membership Engagement. It won’t come as a surprise that this remains a key role and we aim to fill that vacancy as soon as we can.
USING TECHNOLOGY TO CHANGE LIVES
Micro:bits in primary schools[/td]
[td]
[/td]
If you have a couple of minutes, you can see how a primary school in Essex is is getting involved.
Deterring online child sexual abuse
Earlier this year, two of our grantees –the Internet Watch Foundation and Lucy Faithfull – shared evidence showing their innovative chatbot has stopped millions of people from searching for child sexual abuse videos. Nominet is funding the continuation of their pioneering research and experimentation as part of 'Project Intercept’.
Net UK
We have also looked at where we can support the wider internet community. Along with LINX and LONAP, Nominet is co-sponsoring the inaugural NetUK conference at IET London which gets underway today. The event is aimed at anyone working in Internet operations and the peering community and will provide a space for participants to share best practices and knowledge, not least with those joining the industry for the first time.
Court case on membership fees – update
In my last update I shared an update on a legal case that was filed against Nominet by a member seeking a refund of membership fees.
The issue of a default judgment (when Nominet was unaware of the details of the claim and unable to defend itself) has now been definitively settled. The default judgment was set aside by the Court in January this year. It was then subsequently challenged unsuccessfully by the claimant at appeal on two occasions, with the last hearing on 14th June.
Unless dropped by the claimant, the case will be heard in court. We'd prefer of course to avoid the time and costs of this course of action, particularly as we are confident that the membership fees paid by members are lawful.
Legislative update
Following the general election, Peter Kyle MP has been appointed Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology. Sir Chris Bryant MP is now Minister of State in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
It’s worth highlighting the fate of two pieces of legislation that were on the previous government’s agenda at the time the election was called.
The first was the Criminal Justice Bill, which included a new power for law enforcement to suspend domain names being used for criminal purposes by court order. The Bill only reached Report Stage in the House of Commons, and therefore was not finalised in the parliamentary ‘wash-up’ process.
The second was an amendment to Section 19 of the Digital Economy Act 2020, on which the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology was due to set out – in secondary legislation - a list of misuses and unfair uses of domain names on which registries must act and arrangements for dealing with complaints for domain names.
It will be for the incoming government to decide how they want to proceed with both these pieces of parliamentary business going forward. To keep up to date on public policy matters, you can sign up to the ‘Policy Matters’ briefing by submitting this form.
A Country Code registry coalition
The next two years are crucial for global Internet governance – with new UN processes on the horizon. The first is the Global Digital Compact, set to be agreed in September, and will act as a roadmap for the future governance of the Internet and digital technologies. Second, is the 20-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) which will culminate in 2025 and entail a decision on the future mandate of the UN’s Internet Governance Forum.
To help shape the development of outputs from these processes, Nominet co-founded a techincal community coalition with auDA, CIRA and InternetNZ in April. This group enables us to come together and share insights and formulate joint positions, with the aim of defending, evolving and strengthening this collaborative approach in decision-making about the Internet.
This work is important in protecting Nominet’s vision of a free, open and interoperable global Internet, which we continue to champion.
As ever, a lot of ground to cover. Looking forward to seeing those of you signed up for the next Members call tomorrow (9th July). You can register for the call here.[/td]
