First IANA Naming Functions Review
The First IANA Naming Functions Review (IFR1) was convened on September 16, 2018, by the ICANN Board, in compliance with Article 18 of the ICANN Bylaws, which concerns the periodic review of PTI's performance of the IANA naming function against ICANN’s contractual requirements.[1]
Process
Over the course of 13 months, 16 ICANN Community members and liaisons reviewed PTI’s fulfillment of its IANA naming functions.
The IANA Naming Function Review Team (IFRT) released its Initial Report for Public Comment in December 2020 and received no objections to the recommendations.
The IFRT submitted its Final Report with four recommendations to the ICANN Board for consideration on April 8, 2021.
On May 12, 2021, the Board accepted all four recommendations in the Final Report and directed the ICANN President and CEO to implement the recommendations after any possible ICANN Empowered Community process concluded.[2]
On May 1, 2022, the ICANN Board resolved to initiate the Fundamental Bylaws Amendment process (under Article 25, Section 25.2 of the ICANN Bylaws) for amendments to Articles 18 and 19 of the ICANN Bylaws relating to IANA Naming Function Reviews and the IANA Naming Function Separation Process. The ICANN President and CEO was directed to initiate a public comment in accordance with the Fundamental Bylaws Amendment process.[3]
Final Report
The IFR’s final report included the following four recommendations:
- PTI publishes the IANA functions transition plan as required by the IANA Naming Function Contract. This recommendation was deemed a high priority and completed on December 11, 2020, when ICANN and PTI published the IANA Services Transition Plan on PTI’s webpage.
- the annual posting of the Annual Attestation of the PTI President that PTI has complied with the requirements of Section 6.1 of the IANA Naming Function Contract at https://www.iana.org/. This recommendation was deemed to be a medium priority and was completed on Decemeber 21, 2020, when ICANN published all Annual Attestations of Compliance and Transparency, posted to PTI’s Agreement page at https://pti.icann.org/agreements.
- the ICANN Board consider removing the redundant section, 18.12.a (ii), as the RAP and the IANA problem resolution process were combined into a single set of procedures (the RAPs) by the CSC. This recommendation was deemed a medium priority. This IFR recommendation called for an amendment to the IANA Naming Function Contract Bylaws. Section 18.6 of the ICANN Bylaws sets out procedural requirements before the Board may consider such an amendment, including a Public Comment proceeding; ccNSO Council supermajority approval (which occurred on February 18, 2021); and GNSO Council supermajority approval (which occurred on March 24, 2021. Then, the Board had 45 days to consider the recommendation. The changes to Article 18 include addressing a 2019 request from the Registries Stakeholder Group to update the geographic diversity selection requirements for future IFR teams and clarifying ambiguities on the IFR following the IANA Stewardship Transition. Making this first change to Article 18 might require changing Article 19 in the event that an IANA Naming Function Separation Process is ever initiated because the geographic selection requirements are identical.
- The statement "The relevant policies under which the changes are made shall be noted within each monthly Root Operations Audit Report" should be removed from the contract as it is a legacy statement from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) contract that is no longer required. Implementation of this requirement has long been recognized as operationally impracticable and its continued inclusion in the contract adds no value to the reports.