ICANN Highlights From Six Months of RDRS Operations and MetricsEleeza Agopian

After six months of operations, the ICANN organization (org) has shared with the community some key statistics from the new Registration Data Request Service (RDRS). Launched in November 2023 as a two-year pilot program, RDRS introduces a more consistent and standardized format to handle requests for access to nonpublic registration data.

Since the launch, ICANN org has worked to engage with relevant organizations and events around the world in order to encourage participation from both registrars and requestors and provide support. Some of these events include:

• ICANN APAC-TWNIC Engagement Forum (Taipei)
• Contracted Parties Summit (Paris)
• Middle East DNS Forum (Rabat, Morocco)
• Eco - Association of the Internet Industry RDRS Webinar (online)
• International Trademark Association Annual Meeting (Atlanta)

While outreach and engagement efforts are ongoing, we now have six months of system usage data to help us gauge demand and inform policy decisions related to a System for Standardized Access/Disclosure to Nonpublic Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Registration Data. Notable metrics include:

• 4,018 unique requestor accounts
• 1,215 requests submitted
• 1,096 total closed requests
• 88 registrars participating
• 57 percent of gTLDs covered through participating registrars

The ICANN Board and the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) Standing Committee have closely tracked these metrics to assess next steps on both the service and the pending policy recommendations. More detailed data is available in the monthly RDRS Usage Metrics reports.

Over the past six months, feedback from the GNSO Standing Committee and broader ICANN community have led to several changes to how metrics are reported. The GNSO Standing Committee, requestors, and the ICANN-accredited registrars that have volunteered to participate in the program have also provided valuable feedback on how we can improve the user experience. Recent system enhancements based on their feedback include clarification on the list of supported gTLDs, improved error messaging for unsupported gTLDs, and an updated "Help" function.

We are also working on future enhancements to further improve the system's functionality. These updates, which will be rolled out when ready, include:

• Requiring requestor address and phone information.
• Adding an optional data field to capture the requestor organization or affiliation.
• Allowing all requests to be viewed without the need for a filter and adding request date.

Several good suggestions for additional enhancements came from discussions at ICANN80 and are being explored with the GNSO Standing Committee. Those discussions also provided more insight into how registrars evaluate requests and the information they need from requestors.

If you are a registrar or requestor, please continue to fill out our user satisfaction surveys, as these surveys are an important mechanism for collecting feedback that helps us improve. The second RDRS Quarterly Registrar Survey will go out 1 July. If you are in North America, you may also wish to register for our webinar on 8 August. To learn more about the service, visit the RDRS webpage.