Sent on behalf of CWG-Stewardship Chairs by support staff. 

To: CWG-Stewardship Chartering SOs and ACs

The ALAC, ccNSO, GAC, GNSO, and SSAC

Dear SO and AC Chairs,

CWG-Stewardship proposed response to the ICG RFP the IANA Stewardship Transition

The Cross Community Working Group on Naming Related Functions (CWG-Stewardship) is pleased to provide its Chartering Organizations with its proposed response to the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) Request for Proposals on the IANA Stewardship Transition for your consideration and approval as per its Charter.

The response is the result of extensive work by the CWG’s 19 members, 133 participants and a team of highly qualified legal advisors over the past year, which included over 100 calls or meetings, 2 public consultations and more than 4,000 email messages. It represents a carefully crafted balance between key requirements, specific legal advice, and significant compromises by all who participated and includes diligent attention to the input received through the Public Comment proceedings. The final proposal has received the consensus support of the CWG-Stewardship with no objections or minority statements recorded for Chartering Organization consideration.

As noted in the CWG-Stewardship proposal itself, the proposal is significantly dependent and expressly conditioned on the implementation of ICANN-level accountability mechanisms proposed by the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability). The co-chairs of the CWG-Stewardship and the CCWG-Accountability have coordinated their efforts and the CWG-Stewardship is confident that the CCWG-Accountability recommendations, if implemented as expected, will meet the requirements that the CWG-Stewardship has previously communicated to the CCWG. If any element of these ICANN level accountability mechanisms is not implemented as contemplated by the CWG-Stewardship proposal, this proposal will require revision.

We also note that there are certain implementation elements that will require further dialogue in the near future, including with the other operational communities, and these have been marked as such in the final proposal. Two specific issues are particularly important to highlight. One is the finalization of the service level expectations (SLEs), where the proposal includes a set of agreed principles between the CWG and IANA, but these remain to be finalized in the form of a mutually agreed set of SLEs. A detailed plan for this finalisation is being worked on and it is our view that this detail, whilst vitally important, does not impact on the substance of the proposal put to you for approval. The second issue entails the location of intellectual property rights and this needs further discussion with the other respondents to the ICG RFP and ICANN.

As per the CWG-Stewardship’s Charter we now seek your approval to submit this final proposal to the ICG and ask you to consider this approval in accordance with your respective SO or AC rules and procedures by 25 June 2015 to meet the overall timing requirements which would allow the transition to proceed, noting that final approval is conditional on the approval of the CCWG-Accountability Work Stream 1 recommendations.

We will make ourselves, together with or other key contributors, available to you at the ICANN 53 meeting in Buenos Aires in order to answer any questions you may have and to explain any details of the proposal. For your information, further background documents as well as the slides, recordings and transcripts of recent webinars explain the details of the final proposal are available here: https://community.icann.org/x/sJc0Aw.

Should you have any further questions please do not hesitate to contact us.

Lise Fuhr & Jonathan Robinson

Co-Chairs, CWG-Stewardship