[governance] IANA contract to be opened for competitive bidding on November 4

[John Curran]

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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