The United States
Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information
Administration (NTIA) has expressed satisfaction with the criteria to complete
privatization following its findings on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority
(IANA) Stewardship Transition proposal, reports ITRealms.
NTIA spokesperson Juliana
Gruenwald confirmed this saying that the proposal
developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria
NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S.
Government’s stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS)
technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
functions.
The proclamation marks
an important milestone in the U.S. Government’s effort to complete the
transition of the Internet’s domain name system and ensure that the Internet
remains a platform for innovation, economic growth, and free speech.
ITRealms recalls that for
the last 18 years, the United States has worked with businesses, technical
experts, governments, and civil society groups to establish a multistakeholder,
private-sector led system for the global coordination of the DNS.
To accomplish this goal,
in 1998, NTIA partnered with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and
Numbers (ICANN), a California-based nonprofit, to transition technical DNS
coordination and management functions to the private sector. In 2014, NTIA initiated the
final step in the privatization process by asking ICANN to
convene global stakeholders to develop a plan to complete the transition away
from NTIA’s remaining legacy role.
“The Internet’s
multistakeholder community has risen to the challenge we gave them to develop a
transition proposal that would ensure the Internet’s domain name system will
continue to operate as seamlessly as it currently does,” said Assistant
Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E.
Strickling. “The plan developed by the community will strengthen the
multistakeholder approach that has helped the Internet to grow and thrive,
while maintaining the stability, security, and openness that users across the
globe depend on today.”
NTIA said the transition
proposal must have broad community backing and:
·
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; and
·
Maintain the openness of
the Internet.
In addition, NTIA also
said it would not accept a plan that replaced NTIA’s role with a government-led
or intergovernmental organization solution.
In March 2016, ICANN
submitted a proposal that addresses both the technical
performance of the IANA functions as well as enhancements to
ICANN’s accountability. The proposal replaces NTIA’s historic
stewardship under the IANA functions contract with direct agreements between
the operator of the IANA functions and the customers specifying the terms for
performance.
Among the key provisions
to enhance ICANN’s accountability is a proposal to provide the stakeholder
community with enumerated community powers that can be enforced against the
ICANN Board to ensure that ICANN remains focused on its limited technical
mission. Most important, the plan does not replace NTIA’s role with a
government-led or intergovernmental organization solution.
NTIA, working with other
U.S. Government agencies, conducted a thorough review of the
Internet community’s proposal to ensure it met the criteria
NTIA outlined in its March 2014 announcement. NTIA also evaluated the proposal
against relevant internal control principles, as recommended by
the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), and found that the proposal
adequately addresses those principles. In addition, an expert panel of
corporate governance experts reviewed the ICANN accountability proposal and
concluded that it is consistent with the sound principles of good governance.
The Internet is a
network of networks that operates based on a system of voluntary standards,
best practices, cooperation and trust. It has been led for the last two decades
by the multistakeholder community, which includes technical experts,
businesses, academics, civil society, governments, and other stakeholders who
have worked together to solve policy and technical challenges on a consensus
basis.
Implementation of the
transition plan and completion of the transition will help ensure the continued
leadership of the private sector in making decisions related to the technical
underpinning of the Internet. It also will counter attempts by some foreign
governments that have used the U.S. government’s legacy role related to the DNS
to argue that governments should control the Internet domain name system.
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