For the past year, the company that runs the UK’s Internet registry has been the unlikely location for a corporate soap opera, complete with scandals, villains, twists and turns, allegations of corruption, resignations, grand plans thwarted at the last minute and some nasty in-fighting that had left people alternatively amazed, entertained and worried.
The dust finally began to settle in January this year when a second director resigned (loudly) from not-for-profit Nominet and ever since the management team has been frantically trying to tidy up. In an effort to avoid the same problems emerging further down the line, a big spring clean was ordered and an independent expert brought in to assess what had gone wrong and what needed to be done.
Last week, that expert – Professor Bob Garratt - delivered a surprisingly frank and blunt assessment. In it, he told Nominet – and Nominet’s members – that they had to sort out a list of issues, and they had to sort them out fast.
In effect, he gave Nominet three months to live. If the warring tribes can’t find a settlement before then, Garratt warns, the UK government is going to step in and Nominet as it has existed since 1996 will cease to be.
It now rests on the shoulders of Nominet’s CEO, Lesley Cowley, to make enormous progress within an extremely short period of time, and persuade groups that were until recently at war with another to come together and rebuild the organization.
Here’s what needs to be done and how Cowley says she is going to do it.
One day after the first announcement that angrily refused claims made in a resignation letter by former Nominet director Jim Davies, the .uk registry operator put out a second announcement covering in some detail why it believes Davies’ accusations are false and without merit.
The statement providing significant information about the executive compensation package that Davies had complained was providing the CEO with a large sum of money. It also deals with his accusation concerning the chairman’s role on the Renumeration Committee.
Yet another extraordinary statement has come out of Nominet - the .uk registry owner - today. This time, the chairman Bob Gilbert lambastes a “number of false allegations” made in a resignation letter from former director Jim Davies.
The letter was posted on the Nominet members’ private mailing list, nom-steer, and contains “sensitive and confidential board and HR matters”. The letter provides details of an executive compensation package, accusing the CEO of unfairly profiting from the non-profit organization, and also alleges that the previous head of IT - a very nice bloke called Jay Daley - was kicked out the company for raising a concern about the CEO’s behaviour. This is just the latest dispatch in a particular nasty fight at the heart of Nominet.
Nominet very narrowly scraped the 90 percent it needed to be able to expand beyond the .uk registry this morning in Oxford.
In fact, 90.97 percent - which in reality meant that a Nominet member or two either way would have seen the whole thing fall over. I’m very pleased this got through. I think Nominet should be able to move into other areas - particularly ENUM and particularly the next generation of Net infrastructure. The domain name system in itself is a set system now and despite the expansion in new gTLDs, and the upcoming IDNs, it’s not where the growth and Nominet has bigger eyes and better talent than that.
Nominet held a meeting over the IGF on Monday which has attracted a fair amount of attention, most of it revolving around Nitin Desai’s remarks at the end, picked up by the BBC.
I have grabbed the audio from the meeting and produced a series of MP3 files which you can download and listen to here. I will also post them on the IGF200.info blog. All files below:
So Nominet held a big meeting in London on Monday covering the new Internet Governance Forum that will meet for the first time at the end of this month in Athens.
In some ways, it was a sort-of mini IGF in that it took the same free-ranging panel approach and that it explictly held two panels on two of the four main themes of the IGF - “security” and “openness” (Nitin Desai pointed out that had the meeting been in a developing country, the panels and debate would have been on the other two themes - diversity and access).
It was also similar to the real meeting in the role that I have been asked to play: “chief blogger” - meaning scouring the Internet for interesting comments and reading them out to the room. Actually, this term “chief blogger” has led some to ask whether I’m some of kind of official IGF blogger, which I certainly am not, so I will refer to my role as “blog watcher” from now on.
The general feeling is that the meeting was a success.
There is a big meeting on the future of the Internet in London tomorrow, run by Nominet, where I will be acting as the “chief blogger”. As such, I need your help.
In fact, I am the official chief blogger for the Internet Governance Forum itself in Athens at the end of this month. That basically means that I will spend a good chunk of the conference reading what others have to say about the meeting online and I will occasionally be asked to summarise to the room what is being said by the rest of the world. At which point I will read out the most interesting and incisive blog posts to the assembled masses.
I actually see this as a vitally important role as it gives a voice to the people that haven’t flown to Athens and who have nothing more than a Net connection and a good point to make. That’s why I accepted the role and now I need your help to make the most of it.
Update: You can now see exactly what is happening at the IGF meeting, and simply and easily interact with events there through a website at IGF2006.info.
I’ve written two pieces for The Register over the new ICANN contract with the US government, and the Board election shambles at Nominet.
I manage to squeeze in a quick trip to California to finish up my Sex.com book and everything goes crazy.
I arrived in San Francisco an hour ago to no less than four voicemails and 50 non-spam emails - in the spate of 10 hours. I knew ICANN was going to announce its MoU late on [...]
Well, Nominet’s annual general meeting finished an hour or so ago in London and thanks to Rob, we have a clear rundown of what happened.
In a nutshell: a change of accountants because Nominet is getting bigger; another bit of vote chaos that may blow up tomorrow when the result from the Board election is announced; Nominet is making too much money for its own good; a tentative move forward on another EGM to let Nominet get at ENUM and other registry services (maybe.eu, they say).
