Ajay Data: First Indian to get elected as ICANN ccNSO council member

The nominating committee of Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has selected Ajay Data as the new council member of Country Code Supporting Organisation (ccNSO).

• With this, he becomes the first Indian to get selected as a member of ccNSO, which is a policy development body of ICANN for ccTLD (country code top-level domains) issues and represents all country code top level domain operators from around the world.
• He has been selected for a two-year term and will take up the position during ICANN 63 Meet in Spain in October 2018.
• He will be representing India at the global level and will also be the custodian of Asia, Australia and Pacific Islands as a member of ccNSO.

Who is Ajay Data?

• He is the founder & CEO of Data XGen Plus and a global leader in email linguistic services.
• He is the creator of world’s first email address mobile app and email solution for IDN (Internationalized Domain Names) Domains.
• He was awarded the Graham Bell Award for this innovation.
• He has also been credited for giving access to World for Internationalized Email Address in 19 languages which is available through DataMail app.

About ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers):

• ICANN is a private (non-government) non-profit corporation with responsibility of supervising domain names on internet.
• It plays a major monopolistic role in IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management and root server system management functions. 
• It was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States.

ICANN is responsible for:

• Coordination of global Internet systems of unique identifiers.
• Ensuring a stable and secure operation of internet.
• Coordination of the Internet Protocol address spaces.
• Assignment of address blocks to regional Internet registries, for maintaining registries of Internet protocol identifiers, and for management of top-level domain name space (DNS root zone) which includes operation of root name servers.
• DNS policy development for internationalization of the DNS system.
• Introduction of new generic top-level domains (TLDs).

Questions:

Q1. Who has become the first Indian to get selected as a council member of ccNSO which is a policy development body of ICANN for ccTLD (country code top-level domains)?
a. Ajay Bagga
b. Ajay Data
c. Ajay Chopra
d. Ajay Sharma

Q2. Where will the ICANN 63 meet take place?
a. Spain, October 2018
b. Sweden, October 2018
c. Switzerland, October 2018
d. Scotland, October 2018