Laurence Strickling, US Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and the NTIA's (National Telecommunications and Information Administration) Administrator has sent a letter to ICANN Chairman Steve Crocker on the new gTLD program.

The letter is dated January 3, 2012. Nine days before the scheduled launch of the program on January 12.

I am very impressed by the letter.

The US government clearly gets the unique multistakeholder governance model that ICANN embodies. The letter is a statement of staunch support for that model, right down to the constructive criticism of the new gTLD program it puts forward.