I will be giving 3 minutes of remarks from the floor during the IGF orientation session on Tuesday to talk about the ICG. I’ve attached and pasted below roughly what I plan to say — based off of Joe’s slides, all of our documents, and the NTIA announcement. (Some of it is contingent on the portal link going live and the RFP getting posted, so it may change).

So as to give people a simple URL that they can remember to find our work, I bought ianacg.org (on personal title) tonight. I’m working on getting it re-directed it to <https://www.icann.org/en/stewardship/coordination-group>.

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ICG Update at IGF

September 2, 2014

 

Since 1998, the US National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) has contracted with ICANN to perform key administrative Internet functions. Earlier this year, the United States government announced its intention to transition the stewardship of these functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority or “IANA” functions, to the global multistakeholder community. The US government asked ICANN to convene global stakeholders to develop a transition proposal.

 

ICANN, in turn, initiated the creation of the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG). The ICG consists of 30 members and 2 liaisons appointed by a variety of constituencies, including Internet users, businesses, and the operational communities related to domain names, numbering resources such as IP addresses, and parameters used by Internet protocols. I am the chair of the ICG and nearly all ICG members are present in Istanbul this week.

 

The ICG’s mandate is to deliver a proposal for the IANA stewardship transition to NTIA. The group’s charter outlines the process of proposal development. The ICG will solicit proposals from the operational communities concerning their respective functions. The coordination group has published a draft Request for Proposals that can be used for this purpose.

 

The RFP requests that the operational communities consult broadly with all interested parties, and the ICG expects all interested parties to get involved as early as possible in these community processes. For example, the Regional Internet Registries are already convening processes to develop a proposal concerning numbering resources; a cross-community working group is being established to discuss proposals for domain names; and the Internet Engineering Task Force is creating a working group to develop a protocol parameters proposal. These community processes are where the bulk of proposal development will occur. If you want to participate, these community processes are open to you.

 

The ICG is further chartered to solicit input from stakeholders broadly, to assess the compatibility of the proposal components that result from the operational community processes, to serve as a central clearinghouse for public information about the IANA stewardship transition, and to assemble and submit the final proposal to NTIA. The target deadline for the ICG to receive proposals from the operational communities is December 31, after which the group will move on to assess, assemble, and seek public comment on the complete proposal before submitting the final version to NTIA. The current contract between NTIA and ICANN expires on September 30, 2015.

 

If you want to learn more about the ICG, the IANA stewardship transition, or how you can get involved, please visit ianacg.org or come talk to me or any of the other ICG members – the full membership list is on the web site. Thank you.