[governance] Digital Agenda: Commission welcomes improvements in new IANA contract

[John Curran]

On Nov 14, 2011, at 3:16 PM, Roland Perry wrote:
> 
> I'm trying quite hard to imagine a situation where the IANA contract/ function is awarded to someone other than ICANN, not because I think it might be, or should be, but the contract terms must make some sort of sense in the eventuality that it is (otherwise the tendering is a sham).

Interesting thought exercise.  Since the IANA Function Contract is predominantly a 
recording entity that operates accordingly to the policies set by various bodies, 
the theory may be that nothing would significantly change. When ICANN goes to implement 
nearly any change to a registry (e.g. root zone change, or delegation of space from the 
IPv6 free pool, or making an entry in one of the protocol registries), they would need 
to write up the change to send to the IANA operator.

That's a very simplistic view of the situation, however, and it would indeed be 
a rather confusing time on day one should the IANA Function Contract be awarded 
to a new entity.  As I noted on this list a few weeks back (attached), it would
take significantly effort to establish the necessary "close constructive working 
relationships" called for in the statement of work, but it's not inconceivable.

FYI,
/John

(personal views only)

===

Begin forwarded message:

> From: John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org>
> Subject: Re: [governance] IANA contract to be opened for competitive bidding on November 4
> Date: October 24, 2011 4:29:08 PM EDT
> To: Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>
> Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org
> Reply-To: governance at lists.cpsr.org, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org>
> 
> On Oct 24, 2011, at 6:59 PM, Norbert Bollow wrote:
> 
>> John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:
>> 
>>> I know that the multiple interacting agreements can be somewhat 
>>> confusing at first, but they really do exist.
>> 
>> My main source of confusion, what caused me to think that perhaps
>> the US government is trying to take some authority back that it
>> had previously given away (I don't think this anymore) was that I
>> have read enough RFCs that in my mind the name "IANA" is very
>> strongly associated with what RFC 2860 is about, while the US
>> Government's concerns are probably mainly about the DNS root zone
>> (a topic that is explicitly excluded in RFC 2860). I was quite
>> aware that the US government had always wanted to retain some
>> control about that, I was just associating other topics with the
>> name "IANA".
> 
> If one uses the term "IANA" to refer to the classic "Internet Assigned 
> Numbers Authority" of IAB/IETF/RFCs, and always use the "IANA Functions"
> as the tasks that ICANN performed under contract for DoC/NTIA, then it
> becomes slightly less entangled.
> 
>>> One pleasant side effect of this fact is that all of the parties
>>> need to work with each other in order to build consensus before
>>> taking action.
>> 
>> Good point! So the practical path towards a potential transfer of
>> the IANA function to another entity would presumably involve both
>> the US government and IAB agreeing about the new entity that it is
>> suitable.
> 
> Actually, it's an interesting exercise left for the reader... Note
> that USG has two relationships with ICANN: 1) the AoC, which commits 
> DoC to "a multi-stakeholder, private sector led, bottom-up policy 
> development model for DNS technical coordination" and ICANN to be
> such an organization, and 2) the IANA Functions contract, whereby
> ICANN provides specific set of technical recording functions under
> clear NTIA oversight.  It is not inevitable under a hypothetical
> award to a non-ICANN party that ICANN's role in technical policy
> coordination would change in any manner. What is clear is that the 
> final result of any process which required a change to the root zone 
> file or central address registry would ultimately go to a Contractor
> team other than the current IANA team at ICANN.  The establishment
> of comparable relationships with the affected parties is uncertain
> and risky at best (see IANA NOI comments filed by IAB, NRO & ISOC),
> but that does not mean it couldn't happen with careful preparation
> and planning.
> 
> Note that the draft SOW says: "the Contractor, in the performance 
> of its duties, has a need to have close constructive working 
> relationships with all interested and affected parties ... to ensure 
> quality performance of the IANA functions."  I expect that is actually
> somewhat of an understatement of the requirements in this area.
> 
> FYI,
> /John
> 
> (my views alone - feel free to use, forward, or delete as desired.
> Only free electrons were disturbed in the creation of this email)

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