[cooperation-wg] IANA Stewardship and ICANN Accountability Dominate ICANN 52 Discussions

Dear colleagues, 

The 52nd ICANN meeting was held in Singapore from 8-12 February, attracting around 1800 participants on-site, as well as numerous remote participants. The issues surrounding the transition of IANA stewardship and ICANN accountability were again at the top of the agenda, and RIPE community members and RIPE NCC staff contributed to these discussions.

Discussion of the CRISP Team Proposal
As discussed in the RIPE Cooperation Working Group and elsewhere, the Internet numbers community submitted its proposal for future stewardship of the number-related IANA functions to the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group. This proposal, and the counterpart proposal regarding the IANA protocol parameter registries developed within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), were discussed in various ICANN 52 sessions, with representatives of the CRISP team, including Izumi Okutani (CRISP team Chair), Alan Barrett (CRISP team Vice-chair) and Nurani Nimpuno (RIPE CRISP team representative) contributing to discussions and ensuring all aspects of the numbers community IANA stewardship proposal were correctly understood.

The meeting provided opportunities for the RIR senior staff, CRISP team members, members of the ICG, ICANN staff, NTIA staff and representatives of the other IANA affected communities to discuss implementation and operational questions arising from the community proposals already delivered. It also provided an opportunity for initial discussions between legal personnel from the RIRs and ICANN regarding development of the Service Level Agreement covering operation of the IANA Numbering Services (as defined in the numbers community IANA proposal).

Links to all of the sessions dealing with IANA stewardship transition are available at:
https://ripe.net/iana-discussions

ICANN Accountability
The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) met numerous times during the week to continue its work identifying and developing solutions to accountability concerns, with a particular focus on those issues which the group identifies as critical ahead of the IANA stewardship transition. The link between these accountability solutions and a successful transition of the IANA stewardship was again emphasised by participants including Lawrence Strickling, the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and Administrator with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

RIPE NCC’s Athina Fragkouli is participating in the CCWG-Accountability as an ASO representative (alongside Izumi Okutani, Fiona Asonga and Jorge Villa), and will seek feedback from the RIPE community and provide updates as the group’s work progresses.

Progress on the Naming Community Proposal
Discussions during the week also focused heavily on the proposal currently under development by the Cross-Community Working Group to Develop an IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal on Naming Related Functions (commonly referred to as the CWG-Stewardship). The CWG-Stewardship’s recent announcement regarding a revised timeline that would see its proposal delivered to the ICG in June 2015 was of particular interest. There were also discussions on the substantive concerns about whether ICANN itself or a new, external contracting company would hold the stewardship of the names-related IANA functions. The Chairs of the CWG-Stewardship have released a statement summarising developments coming out of ICANN 52:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-4-2015-02-12-en

In addition, the ICANN Board issued a statement clarifying that it will promptly forward the proposals received from the ICG and the CCWG-Accountability to the NTIA, without modification:
https://www.icann.org/news/announcement-3-2015-02-12-en

Best regards,

Chris Buckridge
Senior External Relations Officer
RIPE NCC


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