Privacy accreditation: GNSO calls for volunteers to develop policy

ITRealms:

The Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Council is seeking volunteers to serve on a Working Group (WG) to develop policy recommendations on issues relating to the accreditation of privacy and proxy service providers for domain name registrations.

ITRealms the Working Group is tasked to provide the GNSO Council with a set of recommendations regarding issues identified during the recently-concluded negotiations for the new 2013 Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), including recommendations made by law enforcement and GNSO working groups.

Mostly expected to address by the WG are issues not covered during the negotiations and otherwise suited for a Policy Development Process (PDP); specifically, issues relating to the accreditation of privacy and proxy services.

Specific issues to be discussed to be addressed are detailed in the WG’s charter, even as interested parties could join the WG, to contact the GNSO secretariat at gnso.secretariat@icann.org.

ITRealms notes that in October 2011, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board initiated negotiations with the Registrars Stakeholder Group for a new form of RAA, and simultaneously requested an Issue Report from the GNSO on issues not covered by the negotiations and otherwise suited for a PDP.

The Final Issue Report was published in March 2012, and recommended that the GNSO commence its PDP as soon as possible after receiving a report that the negotiations were concluded.

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NCUC digital portal ready for launch

ITRealms Exclusive!

What has been described as digital portal being built by the Non-Commercial Users Constituency (NCUC) of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in collaboration with the Florida-based  St. Thomas University Law Library.

Confirming this to ITRealms, Director, Law Library, St. Thomas University, Prof. Roy Balleste said the NCUC digital portal is a partnership between St. Thomas University Law Library and the NCUC.

This, he said, was created to position NCUC as a globally accessible, unique, research web portal for a wide array of documents. 

“To our knowledge, no other database exists of this kind within ICANN,” he asserted.

Balleste also revealed that at the moment, individual documents are accessible only by visiting individual locations and some of the items are not publicly cataloged for online accessibility.

But this portal, he said, has been designed for the benefit of the individual members.  

“I encourage you to explore the portal once it is launched, immediately after the ICANN Buenos Aires meeting,” Roy urged, stressing that he would soon be sending out a call for the collection of documents of any historical value to the constituency. 

Even as policy documents will be collected directly from website, which will be in a ‘beta’ mode until the meeting in London in June 2014.

Remmy Nweke

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Pix: ICANN president, Fadi.

ICANN unveils WHOIS website beta

ITRealms:

Based on the outcome of the internet community recommendations, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has unveiled a trial version of its proposed WHOIS website.

ITRealms confirms that the beta version is to improve accountability and transparency that ICANN launched the first phase of a new "one-stop" online resource about the WHOIS directory service.

“This new information website provides a clear and easy-to-understand explanation of how to access existing WHOIS information on who has registered domain names. It also makes it easy to notify relevant parties of a data accuracy issue,” ICANN official disclosed to ITRealms.

In furtherance of ICANN bottom-up, members of the community are invited to view the beta site and provide comments via feedback forms, stressing that ICANN staff and the design team would consider all comments and suggestions as we continually improve the site.

ITRealms notes that before now, it was difficult to get a holistic understanding of WHOIS as information was highly distributed over many different websites.

“This new website, whois.icann.org, will be a centralized location for all WHOIS information, making it easier to learn about WHOIS, raise accuracy issues about WHOIS information and how to contribute to WHOIS policies,” official confided in ITRealms, just as ICANN expects to launch an integrated search function in January 2014 as part of the site's second phase.

The WHOIS directory service, ITRealms recalls, is an essential tool used by many people and organizations every day, who needs to know who is behind a website, domain name; could look it up via WHOIS directory information.

Hence, the network administrators, registry operators, domain name registrants, governments, law enforcement, consumer groups, and the international Internet community find it crucial.

So, in addition to identifying domain name holders, WHOIS data also allows network administrators and others to find and fix system problems and to maintain Internet stability.

“With it, they can determine the availability of domain names, combat spam or fraud, identify trademark infringement and enhance accountability of domain name registrants. WHOIS data is sometimes used to track down and identify registrants who may be posting illegal content or engaging in phishing scams,” ICANN stated.

Noteworthy, ITRealms gathered is that Affirmation of Commitments requires ICANN to "maintain timely, unrestricted and public access to accurate and complete WHOIS information...." which also calls for a review of WHOIS policy and its implementation every three years to assess its effectiveness in meeting legitimate needs of law enforcement and promoting consumer trust.

ITRealms learnt that this new website which is on trial version currently is the result of recommendations made by the last review panel.

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Technology giant, CWG warms up for Stock Exchange

ITRealms:

Opinion: 

On November 15, 2013, Computer Warehouse Group Plc (CWG) shall be the first company to be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange following the launch of the new trading engine, X-Gen, which incidentally is the same engine that is used on the NASDAQ. The listing of the shares is expected to boost the market capitalisation of the NSE with about N14 billion, while CWG would be the highest capitalised security in the ICT sector of the exchange.

The NASDAQ and the NYSE have also recently witnessed a boom in Technology listings with Facebook, Google and LinkedIn. Twitter has also recently revealed her listing plans. This seems to be the golden age of technology companies, as the stocks have done outstandingly well post listing. For instance, Google’s shares have gained a whopping 773% post listing while LinkedIn and Facebook have gained 160% and 29% respectively (as at October 04, 2013). Twitter seems set to follow in this trend with quarterly revenues up 105% to $139m from a year ago.

Here in Nigeria, CWG’s story has not been different. With seed capital of about N160,000 in 1992, CWG received a valuation of N6.97billion in 2009 from Vetiva Capital for her private placement. The issue was oversubscribed; with Private Equity firm Aureos Capital LLC taking up a major chunk, defying the gloomy atmosphere of the global economic downturn at that time. The valuation resulted in an increase in invested capital of 4,400 times, meaning that an initial investment of $1000 in 1992 would have yielded a whopping $4.4m within just 20 years. 

This achievement put the company in the bracket of the one of the best global value creators. CWG seems to be on track to repeat this feat on her listing, at a target share price of N5.48, almost doubling her private placement price of N3.40 in 2009 albeit in a very difficult environment characterised by significant slowdown in global economic growth.

It is therefore not surprising that that the Ministers of Finance, Trade and Investment and Communication Technology recently joined hands with the CEO of the Nigerian Stock Exchange to aggressively canvas for more Technology listing towards achieving the goal of the NSE to reach a market capitalisation of $1trillion within a decade.

CWG’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Austin Okere confidently declares that “our best is yet to come”, amidst comment from sceptics that all previous Technology listings on the Nigerian Stock Exchange have lost significant value. Hear him; “the value of the stock is affected by performance and perception of potential. The stock also reacts negatively to swings in revenue, preferring predictability in forecasts”. He continues “CWG has over the years built a large proportion of her turnover into annuities from deploying her own Intellectual Property (IP), to enable financial inclusiveness in Mobility, such as the recently announced Yello Diamond Account, which will bring banking services to over 55 million Mobile phone subscribers, and the MTN XaaS product, which will provide Financial services in the cloud for the over 1000 Microfinance banks and their customers on a pay as you use basis”. The product rides on cloud computing to bring competitive advantage to relatively smaller banks which would otherwise have been disenfranchised. According to him about 12 of the large banks in Nigeria run on the Finacle Core banking Application, which CWG jointly promotes in West Africa with the application developers, Infosys of India, processing over 60% of all financial transaction in Nigeria and used by the likes of FBN, UBA, Stanbic IBTC, Fidelity and FCMB amongst others.

CWG has taken advantage of her early mover status in the surge in ICT outsourcing demands to provide the service for the largest telecommunication company and the largest Downstream Company in the Oil & Gas sector in Nigeria. This further assures annuity income that smoothes revenue swings and brings predictability to income. According to Austin, about 80% of the company’s revenue is from repeat business, and new customers are more likely to be from referrals.

CWG is a strong player in the ATM business, providing and supporting over 30% of the country’s ATM installed base in conjunction with Wincor-Nixdorf of Germany, global leaders in the field.

Being a skills intensive business, CWG has set up an Academy to train brilliant youngsters to boost her talent pool. Currently, the CWG Academy trains over 200 graduates per year in Nigeria and Ghana, and is set to start in Uganda by mid next year. The company currently employs over 650 people, of which about 80% are engineers, with extra certifications in Cisco, Oracle, IBM and other Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) platforms. The Company is ISO 9001:2008 certified across all her operations.

The stellar performance of the Company has been rewarded by her peers and regulators with such awards as Top 50 Technology Business Companies in West Africa, ICT Solutions Provider of the year, ICT Company of the year, and the CEO as ICT Personality of the year 2012.

CWG has garnered a track record over the years as one of the most admired companies in Africa. In 2009, the Columbia Business School in New York published a case study on the Company and appointed Austin Okere as an Entrepreneur in Residence (EIR), while in 2012, the Legatum Entrepreneurial Center of MIT Boston, published a video and written case study on the Computer Warehouse Group as well.

For the second year in a row, CWG was awarded the Most Outstanding Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Technology Company of the year in 2012. The company has continued to support her host communities by ingraining social responsibility as an integral part of her business model, with focus on the education sector.

In the quest to be the leading Pan African ICT Company, CWG has actualised her geographical expansion plans with operation in four African countries; Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Cameroon, and virtual operations in 17 other countries. The Company has 18 offices and support centres across Nigeria, including Lagos, Abuja and Port-Harcourt.

The company seems well set to achieve her vision of being the number one IT Utility enabler in Africa by 2015.

* Success Nmerife, Head, Marketing Communications and Corporate Affairs
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Pix: Okere, GMD of CWG explaining a point to Finance Minister, Dr. Ngozi Okonji-Iwala

PACCI set to host confab’13 in Addis Ababa

ITRealms:

The Pan-Africa Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PACCI) has advanced plans to host its 2013 international conference of the African Chambers of Commerce and Industry in the city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Officials of PACCI confirmed to ITRealms that the event schedule for November 28th and 29th 2013, Addis Ababa.

ITRealms also recalls that in January 2012, at the 18th African Union (AU) Summit, themed Boosting Intra-Africa Trade agreed on fast-tracking the establishment of a Continental Free Trade Area (C-FTA) by 2017, even as it was recommended by the African Union Ministers of Trade meeting held in December 2011 that PACCI holds.

Between the AU Ministers of Trade at their 2010 meeting, tasking the African Union Commission (AUC), with assistance from the United Nation Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the African Development Bank (AfDB), to undertake preparatory work that would support their proposal of a Continental FTA, three key papers on boosting intra-African trade was developed on “Issue paper on Boosting Intra-Africa Trade”, “Action Plan for Boosting Intra African Trade” and “Draft Framework, Roadmap and Architecture for Fast Tracking the C-FTA.”

The AU Trade Ministers officially endorsed these papers at their December 2011 Meeting.

The papers set out a plan to boost trade by at least 25-30% in the next 10 years and to establish the C-FTA by 2017.

The C-FTA will eliminate tariffs on substantially all originating trade between C-FTA member states. Along with measures to further reduce the cost of cross-border trade, it will not only help to increase intra-African trade, but also to improve Africa’s competitiveness in the global marketplace. Ministers have agreed to a number of provisions set out in the Draft Framework, Roadmap and Architecture for Fast Tracking the C-FTA.

The Pan African Chamber of Commerce and Industry is working with the African Trade Policy Center (ATPC) of the UNECA, the AUC, and other partners; National and Regional Chambers of Commerce (RCC), Regional Economic Communities (RECs), Business Councils among others, to strengthen Africa’s capacity to advance the community’s economic well-being, and the general welfare and prosperity of African businesses.

This conference is being organized in Addis Ababa to consult a range of African business stakeholders on the role business can play in building domestic political support for the Continental Free Trade Area (C-FTA).

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