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Blogs 

 

Most Recent Blog Update 

IANA: Keeping The Ultimate Objective In Mind

Author:  Kathryn Brown
Date:  20 January 2016

 

Later this week, ICANN’s Chartering Organizations will indicate whether they will support the third draft proposal of the CCWG-Accountability Work Stream 1 Recommendations. This is a significant moment in the IANA transition process. Support for the accountability proposal by the ICANN community will mean that we are very close to a point when the transition can move to its next phase.

Since the beginning of this process, the IANA transition has had many moving parts. In its original announcement, NTIA identified what it called “directly affected parties” – each of whom had work to do to develop a consensus proposal on how the transition could take place in a way that upholds the core principles that NTIA set forward.

On the operational side, this work has been completed by the IETF, the RIRs and, for the most part, by the names community.

The remaining piece is to ensure that, post-transition, ICANN is fully accountable to the community it serves. This work has been ably led by the CCWG.

In Dublin, the community reached a milestone inasmuch as it agreed, in concept, to work within a so-called Single Designator Model. It is understood that this governance model can meet the requirements of the community for accountability while having minimal impact on ICANN’s corporate structure.

There is also agreement on a set of community powers “designed to empower the community to hold ICANN accountable for the organization’s Principles”.

In addition, there is general agreement on the need to clarify ICANN’s Mission & core values; to appropriately reaffirm ICANN’s commitment to human rights; and, to discuss the accountability of the Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees.

Finally, in Dublin, the community agreed to a general set of procedural steps for the exercise of the community powers, namely:

Community powers will be exercised through consensus: Engage, Escalate, Enforce.

In short, there appears to be consensus around a governance framework for how accountability will work inside ICANN going forward.

Let’s not lose sight of this considerable progress.

The open questions that remain to be solved have to do the scope of those powers, who exercises these powers, and the implications for ICANN as a corporation. While these issues are by no means trivial, they are solvable, particularly if the parties stay focused and collaborate in good faith.

It strikes me that we are in a place where we need to grab consensus knowing that the community has done the hard work of satisfying the fundamentals of its Charter -- meeting the criteria for success that has been set forth, not just by NTIA, but by and for itself. I was encouraged by Steve Crocker’s blog earlier this week in which he expressed the Board’s commitment to work with the community to get the transition done on time.

For the past few weeks, there have been intense discussions on how to improve the current draft proposal based on community feedback. This is typical in any consensus process but in working collaboratively towards the ultimate objective, we should make sure that the timeframe of the transition is met.

Importantly, while the discussions about accountability are primarily focused on the ICANN community and its processes, the outcome of this is critical for the IANA transition as a whole and for all the directly affected parties to the transition.

Moreover, seeing this transition through, in a timeframe that is realistic in light of the U.S. political environment, matters for the entire multistakeholder ecosystem. We cannot go back – we cannot simply pretend that the past 22 months haven’t changed the landscape for Internet governance. They have. If we, as a community, fail to deliver, there will be ripple effects throughout the IG ecosystem.

But if we succeed, when we succeed, we will have collectively done the right thing for the Internet.

Date:  10 May 2016
Original Post:  https://www.icann.org/news/blog/iana-stewardship-transition-planning-update-volume-2

 

IANA Stewardship Transition Planning Update (Volume 2)
 

Root Zone Management

The Root Zone Management implementation planning track contains projects relating to changes to the Root Zone Management System (RZMS) to remove NTIA's authorization role, parallel testing of the production and parallel test RZMS systems; and the development, and execution of an agreement with Verisign as the root zone maintainer.

Root Zone Management System (RZMS) Parallel Testing

Status update:

It has been one month since the start of the parallel testing period and everything continues to go smoothly. Click here to view Verisign’s daily Parallel Operations Root Zone Management System Comparison Reports of all the root zone files generated.

In addition to Verisign’s daily reports, ICANN has posted the first of three Monthly Reports on RZMS Parallel Testing Progress during the testing period. The report is available on ICANN’s dedicated Parallel Testing landing page.

In the event that no unexplained differences in root zone files are identified between the production RZMS and the parallel test RZMS, the testing period will end successfully on 5 July 2016.

Documents/announcements posted:

Mailing list:

  • None.

Root Zone Maintainer Agreement (RZMA)

Status update:

Discussions between ICANN and Verisign to finalize details of the RZMA are continuing. The two parties have coalesced around many key elements of the agreement and hope to have a final draft by the end of the month.

Once the draft RZMA is finalized it will be made publicly available on icann.org.

Documents/announcements posted:

  • None.

Mailing list(s):

  • None.

 

Stewardship Transition

The Stewardship Transition planning track contains projects to prepare relationship documentation with the operational communities, creation of a Post-Transition IANA (PTI) entity, establishment of a Customer Standing Committee (CSC) and a Root Zone Evolution Review Committee (RZERC), operationalizing the IANA customer service escalation mechanisms and Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Post-Transition IANA (PTI)

Status update:

ICANN has been working with the Implementation Oversight Task Force (IOTF) on various activities relating to the PTI. Summaries of PTI formation documents (Bylaws, articles of incorporation) as well as the conflict of interest policy have been shared with the IOTF.  ICANN continues to work with the IOTF to finalize the process and timing of review for these documents as well as for the ICANN-PTI contracts.

Documents/announcements posted this week:

  • None.

Mailing list(s):

Customer Standing Committee (CSC)

Status update:

In the CWG-Stewardship proposal, the Domain Names community recommended that a CSC be formed to replace NTIA’s role as it relates to monitoring performance of the IANA naming function. The composition of the CSC will include members and liaisons from all ICANN Supporting Organizations(SOs) and Advisory Committees (ACs).

A Request for Appointment is expected to be sent to SOs and ACs this month to appoint members and liaisons to the CSC using their internal processes.

Documents/announcements posted this week:

  • None.

Mailing list(s):

Root Zone Evolution Review Committee (RZERC)

Status update:

The RZERC Charter (v4) was circulated to the CWG-Stewardship on 4 May 2016. The CWG-Stewardship will discuss the Charter on their 12 May 2016 call, and members and participants of the group are encouraged to provide any comment by 23:59 UTC on 17 May 2016.

Following analysis and incorporation of any input received from the CWG-Stewardship, ICANN will post the Charter for a 30-day public comment period.

Documents/announcements:

Mailing list(s):

 

Accountability Enhancements

The Accountability Enhancements track contains plans to implement enhancements to ICANN’s Independent Review and Reconsideration Request processes, to update ICANN’s governance documents, and to operationalize new community powers defined by the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability).

ICANN's Bylaws

Status update:

ICANN and the community are in the middle of a 30-day public comment period on the new draft ICANNBylaws. Any interested party can submit comments to the public comment forum until 23:59 UTC on 21 May 2016. 

Adoption of the new Bylaws by the ICANN Board is anticipated for on or around 27 May 2016. Once new ICANN Bylaws have been adopted, ICANN will notify NTIA so they can complete their anticipated 90-day review of the IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal.

Documents/announcements:

Mailing list(s):