US government believes that ICANN corporation has fulfilled all conditions related to the transfer of IANA functions and does not intend to renew its contract after October 1st. Lawrence Strickling, Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA, published this information in National Telecommunication & Information Administration (NTIA) blog. NTIA is a subdivision of the Department of Commerce, one of its functions among other things is control over IANA functions. However, back in March 2014 NTIA expressed willingness to transfer these functions to the Internet community.
Lawrence Strickling’s post highlights that the initial important condition of the transfer was that control functions will be in the hands of community representatives and not some government or intergovernmental institutions. Strickling states that intense two-year work done by ICANN and its partners in the development of new control mechanisms within a multistakeholder management model was very successful. Yesterday NTIA officially notified ICANN that it had analyzed corporation’s offer and believed that all conditions to transfer control over IANA functions to be met or agrees that they would be met in the near future. “Barring any significant impediment”, writes Lawrence Strickling, “NTIA intends to allow the IANA functions contract to expire as of October 1.”
This means that further control over IANA functions will be conducted with no interference from the US government by the Internet community itself using multistakeholder management model.
