[discuss] [governance] U.S. to Give Up Oversight of Web Policymaking Body

[John Curran]

On Mar 16, 2014, at 12:59 PM, Shatan, Gregory S. <GShatan at ReedSmith.com> wrote:

> At the most basic level, the NTIA is going to assign the IANA Contract to the new organization created by this process ("NewOrg"), so that NewOrg steps into the shoes of the NTIA.

At a _very_ basic level, I agree that NTIA is definitely looking for a proposal 
(to transition the current role played by NTIA) and if that proposal meets with 
their approval, then something will happen...

> Then the question becomes should the IANA Contract be "revised" or "renegotiated" as part of the process to add to, subtract from or modify the privileges and obligations of NewOrg and ICANN?  By what process and who will be involved?  And -- is this question set even on the table? Or is the contract being assigned "as is "?

Given that NTIA's role has been administrative oversight of the IANA function 
performance and consists primarily of reviewing performance reports (which 
anyone can review here: <http://www.iana.org/performance>), it is unclear to
me if the transition of those duties involves any assignment of the existing
contract, ...

> Also, what will NewOrg look like? What form, what domicile, what governance? This is probably the question set more directly asked as a result of the NTIA announcement.

... nor is it clear that an acceptable proposal would need to involve any form
of new organization (i.e. "NewOrg")

Now, if you want to consider some of the other aspects of the NTIA IANA function
contract (e.g. explicit approval of insertion of entries in the root zone), then
we first need to decide what function exactly is being served by that, and then
how to best satisfy that requirement. 

/John

Disclaimer: My views alone.