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Specific Reviews

Specific Reviews are anchored in Article 4.6 of the ICANN Bylaws. They are conducted by community-led review teams which assess ICANN's performance in reaching its commitments. 

These Reviews adhere to the standards and criteria documented in Operating Standards for Specific Reviews. The Operating Standards ensure that Reviews are conducted in a transparent, consistent, efficient, and predictable manner, while supporting the community's work to derive the expected benefit and value from review processes. A set of proposed improvements to Operating Standards for Specific Reviews were submitted for Public Comment on 23 December 2024. The set of updates, or refinements thereof, will not be presented to the Board for adoption at this time.

The Third Accountability Accountability and Transparency Review (ATRT3) recommended the establishment of a new Specific Review, the Holistic Review, to examine the continuous improvement, effectiveness, and accountability of the ICANN community structures as well as the collaboration among them. On 29 April 2024, the Board initiated a Pilot Holistic Review (PHR), after multiple rounds of community input on scoping to develop the guidelines and methodologies for the future Holistic Review, recommended by the ATRT3. On 19 May 2025, the Board resolved to conclude the PHR to allow for further ongoing work in the SOs and ACs on continuous improvement activities and broad participation in a community dialogue on reviews.

On 19 May 2025, the Board also directed ICANN org to initiate work to design a review program that is fit for the intended purposes of enhancing ICANN's accountability, transparency, and effectiveness. The Board identified a community dialogue to develop a shared understanding of the areas and issues for which reviews will enhance ICANN's accountability, transparency and effectiveness as a first step.

Here is a listing of the existing Specific Reviews and key resources for each:

ATRT

Accountability and Transparency Review (ATRT)

Review Info
Learn more about Review objectives, timeline and implementation progress on the ATRT Review Home Page.
 
Wiki
Find updates on the ATRT3 Wiki.

 

CCT

Competition, Consumer Trust and Consumer Choice Review (CCT)

Review Info
Learn more about Review objectives, timeline and implementation progress on the CCT Review Home Page.
 
Wiki
Find updates on the CCT Wiki.

 

RDS

Registration Directory Service Review (RDS)

Review Info
Learn more about Review objectives, timeline and implementation progress on the RDS Review Home Page. For more information on Registration Data, please visit our Registration Data at ICANN page.
Wiki
Find updates on the RDS-WHOIS2 Wiki.
 
SSR

Security, Stability, and Resiliency Review (SSR)

Review Info
Learn more about Review objectives, timeline and implementation progress on the SSR Review Home Page.
 
Wiki
Find updates on the SSR2 Wiki.
 

 

Quarterly Updates on Specific Reviews Implementation

Domain Name System
Internationalized Domain Name ,IDN,"IDNs are domain names that include characters used in the local representation of languages that are not written with the twenty-six letters of the basic Latin alphabet ""a-z"". An IDN can contain Latin letters with diacritical marks, as required by many European languages, or may consist of characters from non-Latin scripts such as Arabic or Chinese. Many languages also use other types of digits than the European ""0-9"". The basic Latin alphabet together with the European-Arabic digits are, for the purpose of domain names, termed ""ASCII characters"" (ASCII = American Standard Code for Information Interchange). These are also included in the broader range of ""Unicode characters"" that provides the basis for IDNs. The ""hostname rule"" requires that all domain names of the type under consideration here are stored in the DNS using only the ASCII characters listed above, with the one further addition of the hyphen ""-"". The Unicode form of an IDN therefore requires special encoding before it is entered into the DNS. The following terminology is used when distinguishing between these forms: A domain name consists of a series of ""labels"" (separated by ""dots""). The ASCII form of an IDN label is termed an ""A-label"". All operations defined in the DNS protocol use A-labels exclusively. The Unicode form, which a user expects to be displayed, is termed a ""U-label"". The difference may be illustrated with the Hindi word for ""test"" — परीका — appearing here as a U-label would (in the Devanagari script). A special form of ""ASCII compatible encoding"" (abbreviated ACE) is applied to this to produce the corresponding A-label: xn--11b5bs1di. A domain name that only includes ASCII letters, digits, and hyphens is termed an ""LDH label"". Although the definitions of A-labels and LDH-labels overlap, a name consisting exclusively of LDH labels, such as""icann.org"" is not an IDN."