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Blogs

  • Seeing the Big Picture: A Reflection One Year into the IANA Stewardship Transition
    19 March 2015
     

 

Most Recent Blog Update 

Joining the Global Discussion at ICANN 52

With ICANN's 52nd Public Meeting taking place this week in Singapore, I wanted to highlight the numerous opportunities to get involved in the conversation on the IANA Stewardship Transition and Enhancing ICANN Accountability processes. To date, the community has logged more than 90 public calls or meetings, over 5,200 working hours and some 10,000 email exchanges during the various stages of proposal development necessary to transition the

Seeing the Big Picture: A Reflection One Year into the IANA Stewardship Transition

Last Saturday, March 14th, marked the one-year anniversary of the NTIA's announcement of its intent to transfer its stewardship of the IANA functions to the Internet's global multistakeholder community.

Alissa Cooper, Chair of the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), published a well-received opinion piece during which she says, "The efforts of the individuals in each of the operational communities have been nothing short of extraordinary." I couldn't agree more.

The numbers reflect the hard work and dedication that has gone into this transition, but we still have a long way to go.

IANA Stewardship Transition

January 15th was the target date for each operational community of the IANA functions to submit a transition proposal as requested by the ICG. Each community was asked to assess their use of the IANAfunctions with a description of those functions, their existing arrangements, propose post-transition oversight and accountability arrangements and any transition implications.

The Protocol Parameters and Numbering communities met the target date, while the Naming community made good progress but continues its work.

One of reasons for missing the target date is due to the interdependence of the Cross Community Working Group on IANA Naming Related Functions (CWG-Stewardship) interdependence with the work of the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability). The Chairs of both working groups created a schematic illustration of this interrelation with a flowchart that can be found here [PDF, 154 KB].

The ICG has begun its initial assessments of the protocol parameters and naming community proposals both over its publicly archived mailing list and at its two-day face-to-face meeting in Singapore on 6-7 February. In addition, members are working on an updated anticipated timeline to reflect the extended amount of time the CWG-Stewardship needs to complete its proposal.

Enhancing ICANN Accountability

Meanwhile, the CCWG-Accountability held a two-day meeting in Frankfurt, Germany on 19-20 January, attended by more than 50 members and participants with an additional 40 participants and observers attending remotely. The meeting was considered to be a success, leading to an initial agreement on a problem statement, a list of "stress tests" and requirements for Work Stream 1 – those accountability measures necessary to complete the IANA stewardship transition.

Since the meeting, the group has created two new Work Parties to further organize the dialogues of Work Stream 1.

  • Work Party 1: Community Empowerment
  • Work Party 2: Review & Redress

The working group is currently recruiting members and participants for each Work Party, and will continue its discussions further in Singapore.

Lastly, the Public Experts Group (PEG), tasked with selecting up to 7 external Advisors to the CCWG-Accountability selected the last  Advisor to join the working group. Lee Andrew Bygrave will join the discussions of the CCWG-Accountability as an expert in International Law/Jurisprudence.

ICANN 52

In addition to an Informational Session on Sunday evening in Singapore, the ICG, CWG-Stewardship and CCWG-Accountability will be hosting several individual sessions at ICANN 52. Here's the list:

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All of these sessions will be live-streamed, and non-working session meetings will also be interpreted into the six UN languages plus Portuguese. So whether you have the opportunity to join us in Singapore or want to engage in the discussions from home, there are plenty of opportunities to get involved.

You can also follow along with all of these discussions through the ICANN twitter (@ICANN), where we will be live-tweeting many of the events.

I am confident that our community will come out even stronger at the end of this undertaking. As Assistant Secretary of Commerce Larry Strickling reinforced at the State of the Net Conference in Washington D.C. last month, "We all have a stake in this transition and in ensuring the Internet remains an open, dynamic platform for economic and social progress." Remember, it's never too late to have your voice heard.

In the year since, the work and dedication shown by the stakeholders all over the world to develop a transition proposal has been impressive. Yet, I get questions all of the time asking, "What is going on now? Where's the proposal?"

Like many of you, I'm following these processes everyday – whether it's responding to emails, participating in calls or meeting around the world to raise awareness and discuss both the transition and work to enhance ICANN's accountability with stakeholders, and to support the community's engagement. Of course, not everyone is so deeply involved, and the work of the multistakeholder groups can be sometimes be complicated; its progress not always tangible. But what has occurred since the March announcement is remarkable and is a demonstration of the community working together to achieve this historical milestone.

So what has occurred – it's worth taking a step back to highlight what has been accomplished:

The community has developed and is deep into two parallel processes:

  • The IANA Stewardship Transition, focused on delivering a proposal to transition the stewardship of the IANA functions to the multistakeholder community; and
  • Enhancing ICANN Accountability, focused on ensuring that ICANN remains accountable absent its historical contractual relationship with the U.S. Government.

To drive these processes, the community created multilayered, transparent, and diverse working groups to foster discussion and, within those groups, develop working methods and systems for determining consensus. Representatives from more than 50 countries and the global business community are working together to contribute to the discussion.

With some help from our friends in the working groups, SO/AC leadership and internal staff support for the transition we have calculated that as of March 14th 2015:

Calls and Meetings: The working groups have held over 115 group calls and 6 face-to-face meetings. The time in these calls and meetings totals over 245 hours, and that does not include the countless hours of drafting, prep calls, document finalization, public comment assessment and information sharing.

Mailing List Exchanges: The working groups have exchanged over 12,446 emails through the more than 30 publicly archived community mailing lists dedicated to discussions of the transition and accountability processes.

Global Discussions: ICANN's Global Stakeholder Engagement team and ICANN leadership have participated in an estimated 219 events around the world, building awareness among diverse stakeholders and discussing the intricacies of the transition. Its important to note that this number does not count attendance for webinars, multiple sessions conducted at one event, nor events that ICANNstaff was unable to attend.

It's apparent there is no shortage of effort dedicated to this significant undertaking. So let me again thank everyone involved in these processes, including those supporting them within ICANN and in the broader Internet community. We could not do it without you!

As NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling recently said, "I think the IANA transition, by being the most direct and concrete demonstration of the multistakeholder model at work on a difficult issue that engages everybody in the community, whether they come from the United States or any other part of the world, whether they come from business or civil society or from the technical community, is the absolute best demonstration we can make that this is a powerful process, that it delivers outcomes, and that it is a model that we all should aspire to and protect."

Yes, our community is in a fishbowl – all eyes are on us, watching to see if the multistakeholder model works.  NTIA is confident, I am confident and you should be confident too that, together, we will meet this test. We will achieve our historical goal.Safe travels to everyone coming to Singapore, and be ready to work!

-TS