.IE Annual Report 2022

Using data to guide supports for digital adoption The Board of Directors in 2021 approved a €1 million investment in the .IE Digital Town programme over four years. The programme was developed to promote awareness, knowledge, use and understanding of the Internet in Ireland by its citizens, businesses and communities. It has three elements: – Big Data for small towns; secondly, the .IE Digital Town Awards – which shines a light on the benefits and possibilities of the Internet and celebrates the digital achievements of local towns. The third element is the .IE Digital Town Blueprint, a digital readiness framework developed to help town leaders and policymakers use empirical data to make evidence-based decisions about town regeneration and to embed digital initiatives within their own digital town action plans. .IE partnered with the Irish Institute of Digital Business at DCU to fully explore the concept and value of the “digital town” through a comprehensive research project. The resultant framework is the first of its kind in Europe and forms the basis of the Blueprint. In designing the programme, the Company has leveraged its many years of experience, research and learnings with its earlier initiatives such as Optimise, Internet Day and Digital Town Gorey (2018) and Sligo (2019). EU Regulatory impact intensifying In response to the ongoing level of cyber threats, the EU regulatory interventions have intensified and continue to reach into the domain market, beyond data privacy into cybersecurity. The objective is harmonisation of cyber defences across Europe. It is clear that .IE will need to allocate increased resources and attention to manage the disruption and cost impact of a rapidly expanding regulatory regime. During 2022, the substantive work of the .IE Policy Advisory Committee focused on understanding the implications of the Article 28 proposals within the NIS2 Directive, and its cyber security obligations. It successfully completed its work on the formulation of a policy response to handling technical abuse or criminal abuse (illegality) which uses the .ie domain name system. Outlook for 2023 Nationally, new registration growth slowed in the six months since the end of 2022, as society, business premises and public services opened up when Covid- related restrictions were lifted on 22 January 2022. The outcome for the first half of 2023 is 25,974 new .ie domains registered, up marginally by 1.7% compared to the same period in 2022 (25,539 domains). This moderate .ie domain growth by mid-2023 is replicated in many ccTLDs across Europe. The future growth is uncertain in this regard. The work of the .IE Policy Advisory Committee is continuing into 2023 in response to developments impacting ccTLD registries, in particular EU cybersecurity regulations NIS2 and CER (Resilience of Critical Entities Directive). The approach here is focused on building Awareness of the new regulations, Alignment with the transposed legislation and Advocacy for stakeholder protections. Appreciation As we implement our Strategy 2024, I look forward to working with our Board of Directors and thank the members and the Board sub-committees for their ongoing support and guidance. I would like to express my sincerest thanks and appreciation to our dedicated staff who deserve huge credit and respect for their outstanding contribution to the continued growth of the .ie namespace, the development of our policies and services and of paramount importance, the protection of our mission- critical systems and the DNS. It is a pleasure to work with a team of talented professionals. Together, we will ensure that the Company becomes the trusted standard bearer in terms of online DNS security, standards and innovation. We look forward to working with our industry colleagues and partners to help with data-driven, evidence-based decisions and Internet policy development. David Curtin Chief Executive 7 July 2023 Chief Executive’s Report .IE is the trading name of IE Domain Registry CLG / Annual Report & Review 2022 6