[governance] Sense of the Senate Resolution

[Danny Younger]

Adam,

We all know that press releases are often known to
contain a fair amount of hyperbole.  

Senator Coleman (who co-sponsored the UN Reform bill)
is a leader who is keenly aware of the culture of
corruption that has permeated U.N. program management.
 The Oil for Food scandal in particular has soured
Americans on the prospect of the UN being charged with
any major caretaker operations until such time as
reform is implemented and audited.

The issue in his mind (and in mine) is responsible
stewardship.  Whomever holds stewardship over the root
has to be a trusted entity.

In my view a steward, whether it's a country-code TLD
manager or a root-zone manager, necessarily has a
pre-eminent role; I therefore disagree with the
position that castigates a nation for acting in a
pre-eminent capacity.     

That said, there are certain actions the USG can take
to ameliorate certain concerns:

1.  The Public Summary of Reports Provided Under
Cooperative Research and Development Agreement Between
ICANN and US Department of Commerce states:

"Step 3: Deployment and testing of an alternate
distribution master.

Arrangements have not yet been made for a facility to
house an alternate distribution master. However, the
security environment of the alternate facility will be
similar to those for the primary facility. 

One option for an alternate facility would be having
an organization other than ICANN operate it, thereby
providing organizational diversity for the operation
of the zone-distribution function. This diversity
would ensure that the function of a distribution
master would be available not only in the event of a
technical failure of the primary systems, but also in
the event of an organizational failure of ICANN
itself. Although a distribution master operated by
another organization would not achieve the goal of
minimizing the potential for clerical errors to the
same extent as an ICANN-operated alternate facility,
this trade-off for the organizational diversity is
likely worthwhile in view of the fact that the
distribution master would only be employed in the
event of failure of the ICANN-operated primary
distribution master."
http://www.icann.org/general/crada-report-summary-14mar03.htm

I would propose having the USG turn over management of
the alternate distribution master to the ITU.

2.  The IANA functions -- the most recent IANA
functions purchase contract was tendered as a matter
of sole-source provisioning.  We know that there were
several organizations that wrote to the DOC expressing
their sentiment that the IANA functions could readily
be performed by a number of other technically
qualified candidate organizations.  

I would propose that the USG engage in a open bidding
process on a $0 contract with respect to the IANA
functions when the current contract expires.

Are there any proposals that you have in mind to make
the US stewardship less preeminent?

Best regards,
Danny Younger


		
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