APNIC has today completed an organizational realignment process to help ensure future financial sustainability and to best achieve the goals set out in our Strategic Plan.
At the APNIC 59 AGM in February, I committed that APNIC would return to a balanced budget by 2027 by containing our costs, rather than relying on external factors out of our control, such as potential upcoming Least Developed Country (LDC) graduations.
We commenced the realignment process with consultations across the organization in March and April, guided by our Strategic Plan. The APNIC Executive Council approved the recommended updated strategies in May, which are designed to ensure APNIC delivers on its plans more efficiently, and expenses will be reduced to achieve a sustainable financial position.
I will provide an overview of the updated strategies and corresponding structures.
Updated strategies and structure
The Secretariat’s teams were previously structured to fit the four ‘pillars’ of activity outlined in the 2024-2027 Strategic Plan — Registry, Development, Engagement and Capability. However, we’ve found that structuring teams into the four ‘pillars’ created silos across the organization resulting in inefficiencies.
While APNIC will continue to report its activities against the four pillars, teams will no longer be structured to fit within those pillars. Instead, all teams will contribute to the different goals in the Strategic Plan. The updated areas are as follows:
Engineering
To achieve greater synergies and sharing of skillsets, all technical development and engineering resources across the organization will be pooled into the one area. This covers the development and maintenance of core registry services, MyAPNIC, information products, websites, data governance and the APNIC Academy platform).
Anton Strydom will continue to be the Executive Lead.
Member and Registry Services
The Member and Registry Services team will focus on its core registry role – timely and accurate processing of resource allocations, Member support requests, and maintaining strict compliance with policy and process. There will be a focus on improving service delivery to uplift value to Members.
Tony Smith will be the Executive Lead.
Development
Over the years, Development activities became synonymous with ‘training’. Development will be refocused to improve the deployment and management of Internet number resources in the region, which aligns more closely with APNIC’s By-laws. Development activities will support the deployment of IPv6, RPKI, root servers and IXPs, and improve network security. Training will continue as a means to achieving the above.
From 2026, the proportion of APNIC’s budget dedicated to development activity each year will be fixed at ~5%. It is expected that key projects would need to be funded through other means, such as support from the Asia Pacific Internet Development Trust (APIDT) or the APNIC Foundation.
Tony Smith will be the Executive Lead.
Communication and Community Engagement
Members and the community engage with APNIC via many avenues — conferences, training, the Policy Development Process, Blog, PING, MyAPNIC, and community consultations, to name a few — and bringing Communications and Community Engagement (which includes Members) together allows APNIC to improve how we deliver these. Within this area, resources will be bolstered to better support the work our community does, including Policy Development and Special Interest Groups (SIGs).
Siena Perry will be the Executive Lead.
Strategic Relations
A new Strategic Relations team will be responsible for developing and maintaining relationships with key stakeholders, partners, governments and industry leaders. This team will focus on representing APNIC to respond quickly to issues that may impact APNIC and its Members regionally or globally.
Tony Smith will be the Executive Lead.
Corporate Services
APNIC’s Finance, Governance and Risk Management functions will be joined with other internal Secretariat support functions (IT, Travel and Administration) along with a new Procurement function to form a new Corporate Services area by the end of the year.
Nathan Harvey will be the Executive Lead.
People and Productivity, Legal and APNIC Labs
The People and Productivity (Human Resources), Legal, and APNIC Labs (research and measurement) areas will remain the same. The Executive Leads are Louise Tromp, Jeremy Harrison and Geoff Huston respectively.
Financial sustainability
As I mentioned earlier, APNIC is taking steps to reduce costs as part of the realignment, including technology licensing savings, improved travel management, and more efficient use of resources. The realignment process has also resulted in several staff movements to new roles and some reduction in staff numbers.
APNIC expects to exit its annual deficit position by 2027 with these adjustments. As promised at the AGM, by the end of this year, we will deliver an updated forecast to balance our budget by 2027, and by the end of 2026, APNIC will provide a financial forecast for the five years after 2027.
I am confident that the changes we are making to the organization will set APNIC up for future success, sustainability, and delivery of value to Members.
The views expressed by the authors of this blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of APNIC. Please note a Code of Conduct applies to this blog.
Changes are important to keep the organization dynamic and hopefully towards improvement. The changes in structure looks good on an outset and we would keenly await to see the impact to the members and for the APNIC. Looking forward to working closely for our community. Goodluck!!