IANA Functions Stewardship Transition

The IANA Functions Stewardship Transition was a multistakeholder policy-making process and community discussion regarding the transition of IANA functions stewardship from the NTIA to the global Internet community. The process and discussion was spearheaded by ICANN and its various stakeholder groups, and was catalyzed by an announcement in March 2014 by NTIA that they would be relinquishing the stewardship to the Internet community.

Background

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) was first proposed by Jon Postel while he was in graduate school at UCLA. Postel realized that the ever-growing ARPANET would require a "numbers czar" to manage a canonical list of numbers and addresses to avoid address collisions. He was appointed as the first numbers czar by general agreement. As the global Internet emerged, the "czar" position became formalized as IANA.

ICANN was initially a contractor to the NTIA as a service provider for the IANA functions. With its announcement in 2014, the NTIA confirmed and followed through on the U.S. Government's commitment to an Internet free of governmental (or United Nations) supervision.

Reactions and Planning at ICANN 49

The NTIA announcement came a week before the first sessions at ICANN 49 in Singapore. The announcement was a central topic of the meeting.

NCUC Conference on Internet Governance

The Noncommercial Users Constituency hosted a conference on March 21 that featured an address from Larry Strickling of the NTIA. The NCUC conference was focused on issues of Internet governance, particularly in the lead-up to the netMundial conference the following month. As Steve Crocker noted in his opening remarks, "[t]here's an awful lot of buzz, of course, about the announcement from NTIA about the transition of their role with respect to the IANA process."

Strickling, in his "keynote assessment" session, was asked to respond to the panels that had come before through the course of the day, and to also provide context and background for the NTIA's decision. He emphasized that the NTIA intended ICANN to lead a collaborative process with all relevant organizations, both within and outside of the ICANN community:

But on the question of the multistakeholder involvement for all this, we've tried to make it very clear from the outset that this is broader than just ICANN. ICANN is the party with whom we contract for the performance of the IANA functions. ICANN obviously, through these meetings and through its activities, has great experience in terms of running multistakeholder processes and, more importantly, iterative multistakeholder processes where people can work together on an issue over a period of time to reach a consensus decision. So we've asked ICANN to convene, but we've made it very clear that this is something that we expect the Internet society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Architecture Board, the RIRs, all of the technical community needs to be participating in this, and we expect that will be reflected in the session on Monday and will be reflected in the process as it's designed and carried out throughout all of this.

Other Mentions

The Welcome Ceremony and President's Welcome featured the NTIA transition announcement prominently in both Steve Crocker and Fadi Chehade's remarks. Chehade emphasized the seriousness of the task of transitioning the IANA functions to the global internet community, as well as the importance of strengthening ICANN's accountability and transparency. The opening session was followed by a session specifically directed toward the topics of IANA Transition and ICANN accountability. The session featured presentations from ICANN board chair Steve Crocker, as well as Fadi Chehade and others involved in the early coordination efforts for the transition. Initially, it was anticipated that the process would take eighteen months, culminating in the termination of ICANN's contract with NTIA in October 2015 Chehade fielded a number of questions and comments regarding ICANN's role in transition planning.

In addition, a session was held regarding accountability and ICANN's Affirmation of Commitments (AoC) which also bore directly on the topic of ICANN's accountability to its plurality of stakeholders. The session began with introductory comments from Steve Crocker, and then a short presentation from Brian Cute intended to tee up questions regarding the evolution of ICANN's accountability principles, process, and commitments. As Cute emphasized in his presentation, the session was largely devoted to listening to community input and impressions regarding ICANN's accountability and the three questions around the AoC.

Transition planning was conducted among and across stakeholder groups.

According to an article authored by Larry Strickling on August 17, 2015, NTIA's Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and Administrator, the IANA Transition, which was set to begin September 30, 2015 will not be complete until September 30, 2016. The organization believes that while ICANN has made tremendous strides in its transition, it still has more work to accomplish.

ICANN 53 Announcement

At the ICANN 53 Welcome Session, June 22 2015, CEO & President, Fadi Chehadé presented his keynote speech which focused on the IANA Transition and its progress. In his opening remarks, Chehadé outlined three important areas of focus: 1. Strengthening ICANN and preparing it for the transition, 2. Fortifying community support, and 3. Reinforcing bonds with ICANN's technical community.

These three goals are integral to the much larger Transition process. The President then went on to describe the necessary timeline of activities prior to the transition. Phase One includes Cross-Community and Board preparation of a proposal and adoption of NTIA's requested bylaw amendments. Phase Two, according to NTIA's Larry Strickling, will last anywhere between four to five months, which include a period of review between the United State's government and members of ICANN's community. Strickling would then assess whether the proposal meets the criteria set by the NTIA and has adopted all necessary bylaws. After the NTIA delivers a certification letter to congrees, the governmental branch has 30 legislative days to review the proposal. Once the review of the proposal is complete, the implementation and full transfer of stewardship takes place.

NTIA Announcement

In March 2014 NTIA released a statement that they are intent on transitioning their part of the IANA functions away from NTIA and to the global stakeholder community. The first step in this process is for ICANN to convene stakeholders and create a proposal for how the IANA functions will remain secure and unwavering. The press release outlined a number of principles which the ICANN-community drafted proposal must meet:

• Must Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
• Must Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
• Must Meet the needs and expectation of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and,
• Must Maintain the openness of the Internet.

The current NTIA contract with ICANN expires on 30 September, 2014, and members of the ICANN community took that date as a deadline for drafting and agreeing on a proposal.

ICANN subsequently published their own press release that applauded NTIA's announcement and called it a recognition of the U.S. government to ICANN's "maturation in becoming an effective multistakeholder organization".

Global media outlets picked up on the NTIA press release, with many United States media reporting that the United States Government was "giving up control of the Internet".

ICANN Community Discussion

After the NTIA announcement, discussion began among ICANN's various stakeholders regarding how the stewardship of the IANA functions should be transitioned and to what entity or entities. Various sessions and panels focused on this topic at ICANN 49 - Singapore and continued at ICANN 50 - London. It was also a topic of much discussion in organizations and conferences such as NETmundial, ISOC, IETF, Internet Governance Forum, and the United Nations.

Process Development

The NTIA announcement led to an ICANN-spearheaded discussion that began with a "Call for Public Input on the Draft Proposal of the Principles, Mechanisms and Process to Develop a Proposal to Transition NTIA's Stewardship of the IANA Functions" that was posted by ICANN on 8 April 2014. The organization received hundreds of comments, highlighting the need to create a multistakeholder, transparent, and bottom-up process. A process document was published that included next steps and the implementation of a Coordination Group that would lead discussion and process of the IANA transition going forward.

Coordination Group

The Coordination Group was formed by the ICANN community via nominations from 13 community groups, totaling 27 individuals. The current coordination group includes:

• ALAC: Mohamed El Bashir, Jean-Jacques Subrenat
• ASO: Hartmut Glaser
• ccNSO: Xiaodong Lee, Mary Uduma, Keith Davidson, Martin Boyle
• GAC: Heather Dryden (Interim Member), Tracy Hackshaw (Interim Member)
• GNSO: Wolf-Ulrich Knoben, Milton Mueller, James Bladel
• gTLD Registries: Keith Drazek, Jon Nevett
• ICC/BASIS: Joseph Alhadeff
• IAB: Russ Housley, Lynn St Amour
• IETF: Jari Arkko, Alissa Cooper
• ISOC: Narelle Clark, Demi Getschko
• NRO: Adiel Akplogan, Paul Wilson
• RSSAC: Daniel Karrenberg, Lars-Johan Liman
• SSAC: Patrik_Fältström, Russ Mundy
• ICANN Board Liaison: Kuo-Wei Wu
• IANA Staff Expert: Elise Gerich

The first face-to-face meeting of the Coordination Group took place in London from 17-18 July 2014.

Public comment period

On December 2nd 2014, ICANN opened the public comment period on the draft transition document produced by the coordination group.

Legal roadblock

On the 4th December 2014, a large federal funding bill for over $1 trillion passed the United States House of Representatives to which Republicans had attached a rider defunding any attempt by the NTIA to transfer its functions before October 2015. The global internet community reacted with "a combination of weariness and growing cynicism about the United States and its role in Internet governance."

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