We will be finalizing this draft today so changes could be made
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V.4 (July 17, 2014)
The IANA stewardship transition coordination group (ICG) has one deliverable: a proposal to the U.S. Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) regarding the transition of NTIA’s stewardship of the IANA functions to the Internet community. The group will conduct itself transparently, consult with a broad range of stakeholders, and ensure that its proposals support the security and stability of the IANA functions.
The group’s mission is to coordinate the development of a proposal among the communities affected by the IANA functions. The IANA functions are divided into three main categories: domain names, number resources, and other protocol parameters. The domain names category falls further into the country code and generic domain name sub-categories. While there is some overlap among all of these categories, each poses distinct organizational, operational and technical issues, and each tends to have distinct communities of interest and expertise. For those reasons it is best to have work on the three categories of IANA parameters proceed autonomously in parallel and be based in the respective directly affected communities.
The IANA stewardship transition process is taking place alongside a parallel and related process on enhancing ICANN accountability. While maintaining the accountability of Internet identifier governance is central to both processes, this group’s scope is focused on the arrangements required for the continuance of IANA functions in an accountable and legitimate manner after the expiry of the NTIA-ICANN contract. Nevertheless, the two processes are interrelated and interdependent and should appropriately coordinate their work.
The coordination group has four main tasks:
(i) Act as liaison to all interested parties, including the three directly affected communities (names, numbers, protocols)
(ii) Assess the outputs of the three directly affected communities for compatibility and interoperability
(iii) Assemble a complete proposal for the transition
(iv) Information sharing and public communication
Describing each in more detail:
(i) Liaison
Members of the ICG will ensure that the communities from which they are drawn are working on their part of the transition plans. This involves informing them of requirements and schedules, tracking progress, and highlighting the results or remaining issues. The role of a coordination group member during this phase is to provide status updates about the progress of his or her community in developing their component, and to coordinate which community will develop a transition proposal for each area of overlap (e.g., special-use registry).
The ICG members chosen from a particular community are the official communication channel between the ICG and that community. The ICG expects a plan from the country code and generic name communities (possibly a joint one), a plan from the numbers community, and a plan from the protocol parameters community. In addition, the ICG is open for input and feedback from all interested parties. The ICG recommends that all interested parties get involved as early as possible in the development of these plans. No-one should wait until the following stage and bring their input only to the CG.
(ii) Assessment
When the group receives output from the communities it will discuss and assess their compatibility and interoperability with the proposals of the other communities. Each proposal should be submitted with a clear record of how consensus has been reached for the proposal in the community, and provide an analysis that shows the proposal is in practice workable.
The ICG might at some point detect problems with the component proposals. At that point the role of the ICG is to communicate that back to the relevant communities so that they (the relevant communities) can address the issues. It is not in the role of the ICG to develop proposals or to select from among competing proposals.
(iii) Assembling and submitting a complete proposal
The assembly effort involves taking the proposals for the different components and verifying that the whole fulfils the intended scope, meets the intended criteria, that there are no missing parts, and that the whole fits together. The ICG will then develop a draft final proposal that achieves rough consensus within the ICG itself. The ICG will then put this proposal up for public comment involving a reasonable period of time for reviewing the draft proposal, analyzing and preparing supportive or critical comments. The ICG will then review these comments and determine whether modifications are required. If no modifications are needed, and the coordination group agrees, the proposal will be submitted to NTIA.
If changes are required to fix problems or achieve broader support, the ICG will work with the affected communities of interest in a manner similar to what was described in task (ii) above. If, in the ICG’s opinion, broad public support for the proposal as articulated by the NTIA is not present, the parts of the proposal that are not supported return to the liaison phase.
(iv) Information sharing
The ICG should serve as a central clearinghouse for public information about the IANA stewardship transition process. Its secretariat should maintain an independent website, under its own domain, where status updates, meetings and notices are announced, proposals are stored, the ICG members are listed, etc. As the development of the transition plans will take some time, it is important that information about ongoing work is distributed early and continuously. This will enable sharing of ideas and the detection of potential issues.