The Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) will participate, with a ministerial delegation headed by the Minister of Communications and Information Technology Yasser ElKady, in ICANN Third High Level Governmental Meeting (HLGM), held on the sidelines of ICANN 55, on March 6-7, in Marrakech, Morocco.

HLGM provides an opportunity to strengthen the role of governments within the organization and encourages them to play a greater role in formulating public policies related to the development of the Internet. The meeting also aims to strengthen consultation and exchange views among the ministerial officials.

HLGM is significant for taking place after the completion of the comprehensive review of the outcomes of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) held in December 2015 at the UN Headquarters. The meeting will also be held in a time when open consultations on the transfer of Internet management, from the United States to an international management under a specific international organization, is due to be completed.

Egypt was invited to participate in the meeting for its leading role in Internet governance issues. A number of bilateral meetings with certain government, senior officials concerned with Internet issues and other organizations including ICANN and the Internet Society (ISOC) are to take place. This is in addition to a number of other meetings due to be held with ministers from other countries to discuss means of future cooperation on securing online networks.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is a non-profit organization and has been internationally established to assume the responsibility of distributing the fields of addresses in the IP, allocating the protocol identifiers and managing the record system of Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) and Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD).

It is also responsible for the functions of server system management. These services were originally provided, under US Government contract, by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) and other bodies but now ICANN performs these duties. Egypt is an active member within the organization.