In March 2014, the US Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced its intention to transition the oversight role of the
IANA Functions to the global multistakeholder community on 30 September 2015 (later extended to 30 September 2016). The announcement asked ICANN to initiate a multistakeholder process to develop a proposal to be submitted to the NTIA for approval. The proposal requires broad support and follows the following principles:
- Support and enhance the multistakeholder model
- Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS
- Meet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA services
- Maintain the openness of the Internet
In response, ICANN formed the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG), made up of 30 members from 13 constituencies, to develop the structure and timeline for finalising the proposal, which requires proposals from the communities directly affected by the IANA functions. Each of these communities developed their own working groups to develop their proposal:
- The Numbering Resources Community, comprised of the Numbers Resources Organization (NRO), the Address Supporting Organization (ASO) and the five Regional Internet Registries (RIR) formed the Consolidated RIR IANA Stewardship Proposal Team (CRISP Team) to develop their proposal.
- The Protocol Parameters community, comprised of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), formed the IANAPLAN Working Goup.
- The Domain Names community, developed two working groups the CWG-Stewardship and the CCWG-Accountability.
On 29 October 2015, the ICG announced that it had finalised all of the proposals from the community, except for the one from the CCWG-Accountability, which is currently in its final stages. If everything proceeds as planned the community will submit the final proposal to take over stewardship of the IANA functions on 10 March 2016, the last day of ICANN 55.
During initial discussions relating to the
IANA Stewardship Transition, the ICANN community raised concerns about the impact that the transition would have on ICANN Accountability. In response, the Enhancing ICANN Accountability process was launched to develop a proposal, seeking to implement accountability measures that will hold ICANN accountable to the global stakeholder community in the absence of the “accountability backstop” provided by the historical contractual relationship with the U.S. Government. This proposal is the final piece of the
IANA Transition puzzle and when submitted to the ICG will complete the proposal that the U.S. government asked for two years ago, in March 2014.
In December 2014, the CCWG-Accountability began working on the proposal to enhance ICANN Accountability. The process was divided into two Work Streams. Work Stream 1 is focused on accountability mechanisms that need to be in place prior to the transition. Work Stream 2 is focused on accountability measures that can be implemented post-transition. The CCWG identified four “building blocks” for the mechanisms that need to be in place pre-transition:
Principles that form the Mission and Core Values of ICANN;
Empowered Community;
ICANN Board of Directors;
Independent appeal mechanism;
After several iterations, the CCWG released its third draft proposal on 30 November 2015, which was the culmination of two prior draft proposals and almost a year of hard work. This third proposal set forth twelve recommendation for the accountability measures needed to enhance ICANN accountability.
The key elements of the third proposal include:
Revised Mission statement for ICANN Bylaws, that clarifies what ICANN does but does change the scope of its mission of coordinating the Internet’s unique identifiers for the Internet.
Enhanced Independent Review Process to ensure that ICANN stays within its mission.
New community powers to be used to hold the Board of Directors Accountable.
Enforceability of the accountability measures will be supported by the creation of an “Empowered Community,” which will be granted the legal status of a Designator within ICANN and is designed to act on behalf of the ICANN stakeholder groups when they are required to exercise their community powers. The CCWG has stressed that the new community powers are only to be utilized after all other means are exhausted. The community is to follow the model of engagement, escalation, enforcement.
After this proposal went through the public comment period ending on 21 December 2015 and the staff report was released on 7 January 2016 , the CCWG determined that there were only a few outstanding issues that needed to be addressed to reach consensus on a final proposal and planned a rigorous schedule of conference calls over the next few weeks to reach a consensus on a final supplemental report on Work Stream 1 recommendations.
On 23 February 2016, after the necessary changes had been made the CCWG released the supplemental final proposal in time for the Chartering Organizations to deliberate prior to ICANN 55. If it is approved by all of the organizations, the proposal will be ready to submit to the ICANN Board, which will then be able to send the a complete proposal to the NTIA.
