ICANN’s  Christine Willett just gave an update  on the New gTLD program from the first session at the ICANN meeting in Durban:

“As Yesterday my team has published results for through priority number 1,200 of the application. so we’ve released 1,100 initial evaluation results.

Over 1,000 applications having passed initial evaluation. we have had 13 applications identified as eligible for extended evaluation.

There have been 49 withdrawn applications out of that first 1,200 prioritized.

Two have not been approved, in part because on advice from the GAC.

Other applications are on hold and we haven’t really released results yet because they are still in an evaluation process. so we participation continuing with the initial evaluation process through the end of august and releasing the results for all 1930 initial applications in total we have had 97 applications withdraw.

Today that leads us with 883 active applications. so that’s what we’re working on.

Another significant activity since our Beijing meeting was the objection and dispute resolution work done by the dispute resolution service providers.

ICANN staff really simply shepherds and monitors the objection and dispute resolution process that is not for us to interview in those proceedings. we had a total — the community filed a total of 263 objections that were found admissible and filed.

Just in the last few days we had the first resolutions of those proceedings published. several, four of the legal rights objections were finalized and published by wipo this week.

So the objection and resolution work continues to be an active area for our providers and we are keeping a close eye on that.
As of  July 3rd we initiating the contracting process with applicants through prior to number 50 who were eligible to proceed to contracting.

So 31 applications received what we are calling a contracting information request. so they were invited to submit documentation to proceed into contracting.

So we’re working with those applicants to move towards contract signing as quickly as possible.

For those interested and who meet all of the criteria to sign registry agreements.

Our intention is to continue to fill our pipeline with contracting requests, so to invited applicants to participate in the contracting process in the coming weeks, based on the capacity of the team as well as considering all of the many other issues that are still being discussed at the present time around security and stability.

So pending the outcome of that work we will continue to invite applicants into the contracting process.

As we look ahead to extended evaluation, we do have some applicants who are eligible for extended evaluation.

We expect to expedite the timing for extended evaluation so we can move those applicants through extended evaluation in the most timely and efficient manner, hopefully by the end of the year is our plan.

“I’ve also been shepherding a number of projects around rights protection mechanisms, our trade mark clearinghouse, our URS system, uniform rapid suspension service, as well as a number of other operational support mechanisms, namely our SLA monitoring capabilities and our ebero program. i’m pleased to say those projects continue to be on time and we expect they will be operationally ready by the time we delegate the first new gtld later this summer or early fall. that would be the overall update for the program.”