I left some words out in a section and forgot to date and version number the document, so here it is again. PLEASE USE THIS ONE.

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Draft charter for the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group

V 2.1 (July 16, 2014)

The IANA transition coordination group (ICG) has one deliverable, a proposal to the U.S. Commerce Department National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) regarding the transition of NTIA’s stewardship of the IANA functions to the Internet community.

The group’s mission is to coordinate the development of a proposal among the communities affected by the IANA functions. The IANA parameters fall into three categories: domain names, number resources, and other protocol parameters. While there is some overlap among these categories, each poses distinct organizational, operational and technical issues, and each tends to have distinct communities of interest and expertise. For those reasons it is best to have work on the three categories of IANA parameters proceed autonomously in parallel and be based in the respective communities of interest.

The coordination group has four main tasks:

(i)                Act as liaison to the three communities of interest (names, numbers, protocols)

(ii)              Assess the outputs of the three communities of interest for workability, compatibility and consensus

(iii)             Assemble a complete proposal for the transition

(iv)             Information sharing and public communication

Describing each in more detail:

(i)                Liaison

Members of the ICG will ensure that the communities from which they are drawn are working on their part of the transition plans. This involves informing them of requirements and schedules, tracking progress, and highlighting the results or remaining issues. The role of a coordination group member during this phase is to provide status updates about the progress of his or her community in developing their component, and to coordinate which community will develop a transition proposal for each area of overlap (e.g., special-use registry)

(ii)              Assessment

When the group receives output from the independent groups it will discuss and assess their workability, assess their compatibility and interoperability with the proposals of the other groups, and verify their levels of support in the respective communities. The ICG might at some point detect problems with the component proposals. At that point the role of the ICG is to communicate that back to the relevant communities so that they (the relevant communities) can address the issues. In assessing consensus, the coordination group will rely to some extent on its members to reflect to the rest of the group the support levels within the member's own community, but the group is also authorized to engage in independent assessments, such as public notice and comment periods.

(iii)             Assembling and submitting a complete proposal

The assembly effort involves taking the proposals for the different components and verifying that they fulfil the intended scope, meet the intended criteria, that there are no missing parts, and that the whole fits together. The ICG will then develop a draft final proposal that achieves consensus within the ICG itself. The ICG will then put this proposal up for public comment involving a reasonable period of time for reviewing the draft proposal, analyzing and preparing supportive or critical comments. The ICG will then review these comments and determine whether modifications are required. If not, and the coordination group agrees, the proposal will be submitted to NTIA. If changes are required to fix problems or achieve broader support, the ICG is authorized to make minor amendments in consultation with the affected communities of interest. If, in the ICG’s opinion, broad public support for the proposal as articulated by the NTIA is not present, the parts of the proposal that are not supported return to the liaison phase.

(iv)             Information sharing

The ICG should serve as a central clearinghouse for public information about the IANA stewardship transition process. Its secretariat should maintain an independent website, under its own domain, where status updates, meetings and notices are announced, proposals are stored, the ICG members are listed, etc.