[NCUC-DISCUSS] ICANN slashes millions from its budget

[Arsène Tungali]

Some interesting reading here with regards to ICANN's FY19 Budget:
http://domainincite.com/22559-icann-slashes-millions-from-its-budget

ICANN has cut $5 million from its annual budget, warning the community
that difficult decisions have to be made amid a slowing domain name
market.

Staff and community members will all be affected by the cuts, whether
in the form of less generous pay raises or fewer travel opportunities.

Cuts have also been proposed to international outreach, tech support,
contractual compliance and translation services.

The organization at the weekend published its proposed budget for
fiscal 2019. That’s the year that begins July 1, 2018.

It would see ICANN spend $138 million, $5 million less than it expects
to spend in fiscal 2018.

Four of the five top-line areas ICANN reports expenses will be cut for
a total of $12 million in savings, while one of them — personnel — is
going up by $7.3 million.

This rounds out to a $5 million cut to the total FY19 ICANN budget.
Here’s the breakdown:

Personnel costs going up from $69.5 million to $76.8 million, up $7.3 million.

Travel and meetings costs are to go down from $17.8 million to $15.6
million, a $2.2 million saving.

Professional services costs will go down from $27.7 million to $23.4
million, a $4.3 million saving.

Administration and capital costs will go down from $22.5 million to
$17.8 million, a $4.7 million saving.

The contingency budget is going down from $5.3 million to $4.5
million, a $800,000 saving.
Personnel costs are going up due to a combination of new hires and pay
rises, but the average annual pay rise will be halved from 4% to 2%,
saving $1.3 million, ICANN documentation states.

Headcount is expected to level out at about 425, up from the current
400, by the end of FY19.

The travel budget is going down due to a combination of cuts to
services provided at the three annual meetings and the number of
people ICANN reimburses for going to them.

The Fellows program — sometimes criticized for giving people what look
like free vacations for little measurable return — is seeing the
biggest headcount cut here. ICANN will only pay for 30 Fellows to go
its meetings in FY19, half the level of FY18. The Next Gen program, a
similar outreach program for yoof participants, goes down to 15 people
from 20.

The Governmental Advisory Committee will get its number of funded
seats reduced by 10 to 40. The ALAC and the ccNSO also each lose a few
seats. Other constituencies are unaffected.

At the meetings themselves, translation is to be scaled back to be
provided on an as-requested basis, rather than automatically
translating everything into all six UN languages. Key sessions will
continue to have live interpretation.

Outside of the three main meetings, ICANN is pulling back on plans to
expand its irregular “capacity building” workshops in “under-served”
areas of the world.

It’s also slashing the “additional budget request” budget by 50%.

In terms of compliance, a proposed Technical Compliance Monitoring
system that was going to be built this year — a way to make sure gTLD
registries and registrars are stable and secure — appears to be at
risk of being deprioritized.

ICANN said it “will develop an implementation plan in due time,
depending on the RFP results and, if needed, work with the Board to
identify necessary resources and funds to support implementation of
the project.”

The documents published today are now open for public comment until March 8.

The cuts I’ve reported here can be found from page 19 of this document (pdf).

The reason for the cutbacks is that ICANN’s revenue isn’t growing as
fast as it once did, due to the slower than expected growth of the
domain name industry in general. I’ll get to that a later article.
------------------------
**Arsène Tungali* <http://about.me/ArseneTungali>*
Co-Founder & Executive Director, *Rudi international
<http://www.rudiinternational.org>*,
CEO,* Smart Services Sarl <http://www.smart-serv.info>*, *Mabingwa Forum
<http://www.mabingwa-forum.com>*
Tel: +243 993810967
GPG: 523644A0
*Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo*

2015 Mandela Washington Felllow
<http://tungali.blogspot.com/2015/06/selected-for-2015-mandela-washington.html>
(YALI) - ISOC Ambassador (IGF Brazil
<http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/education-and-leadership-programmes/next-generation-leaders/igf-ambassadors-programme/Past-Ambassadors>
& Mexico
<http://www.internetsociety.org/what-we-do/education-and-leadership-programmes/next-generation-leaders/Current-Ambassadors>)
- AFRISIG 2016 <http://afrisig.org/afrisig-2016/class-of-2016/> - Blogger
<http://tungali.blogspot.com> - ICANN's GNSO Council
<https://gnso.icann.org/en/about/gnso-council.htm> Member. AFRINIC Fellow (
Mauritius
<http://www.afrinic.net/en/library/news/1907-afrinic-25-fellowship-winners>)*
- *IGFSA Member <http://www.igfsa.org/> - Internet Governance - Internet
Freedom.

Check the *2016 State of Internet Freedom in DRC* report (English
<http://cipesa.org/?wpfb_dl=234>) and (French
<http://cipesa.org/?wpfb_dl=242>)