ICANN Open Data Initiative
The goal for Open Data Initiative (ODI) is comprehensive access to raw data for the ICANN community. The main deliverables for ODI are an open data platform for the ICANN community to use and the processes and support in place to help the ICANN organization share data to this platform.
To ensure free and unfettered access to both the organization and the community, we will enhance access to data. All data that can be published should be published. Procedures and processes will ensure that the organization will be responsible to the community served by ICANN org. Access to data will be strengthened in the coming procedures and processes, methods to engage the community will be enhanced, and standards for higher data usability and reuse will be introduced.
We will build trust in published data, both within the ICANN community and the ICANN org. The success of ODI hinges on our ability to safeguard data from misuse and rigorously protect the public's right to privacy. Privacy will not be considered as an afterthought, but at the beginning of all discussions concerning the release of a new dataset.
Open data in this context means specifically tabular data – that is, data that would normally be stored in a spreadsheet, data file, or database. It does not refer to documents or other free-form information.
Achieving this means implementing a specialized open data publishing platform, which allows anyone to find, search, and download data in a variety of ways, supporting as many open standards as possible. Then behind the scenes, there will be a new system that publishes data to that platform, having first redacted or masked any confidential or sensitive data.
Achieving the goals of ODI requires a shift in the culture of the ICANN org – from protecting data and concentrating on internal use to making open data the default. There is nothing easy about opening data and making it freely accessible to the ICANN community, but the outcome is worth the effort. A major part of the work of ODI will be to provide the support that ICANN org staff needs to deliver this outcome successfully.
As the framework is developed, milestones and progress will be documented on this page.