As you know, the NTIA announced on March 14th, 2014 that a process has been
started to relinquish the IANA oversight role of the NTIA to the
multistakeholder Internet community. ICANN was given a facilitator role to set
up the process, and there has been a proposal and commentary on that proposal,
including well-received feedback from the IAB.
Now we are at a point where the final details are expected to become clear
soon. A big part of the overall plan depends on the processes in the relevant
communities, such as those of the IETF and RIRs. But the overall process also
includes a coordination group, on which the IETF gets 2 seats and the IAB 2
seats. Other seats will be filled by parts of the naming and numbering
communities. ISOC will also have two seats.
The coordination group is likely to be ultimately responsible for delivering a
combined transition proposal to NTIA and for ensuring that the proposal meets
the criteria NTIA previously outlined. Participation in the coordination group
is likely to entail a significant amount of time and travel, although the exact
details of how the group will work and what its responsibilities will be is not
yet available.
The IAB will select two people from the IAB voting members and the IAB IANA
strategy program participants. I'm sending this email because the IESG would
like to consult with the community before filling the two IETF positions. Given
that there is an upcoming ICANN meeting in London (starting on June 22nd) and
that there might be opportunities for discussion during that meeting, timely
selection would be useful.
We realize that doing this on a compressed timeline and without complete
details is not ideal. NTIA has requested that the transition proposal be
delivered by September 2015, which we view as a relatively short time period
for developing global community consensus on this topic. Thus, we feel that it
is imperative for the coordination group to be constituted and for it to begin
its work as soon as possible, just like how the relevant communities should
progress their parts of the work.
We would like to fill the two IETF seats with IETF community members who have
had significant interaction and experience with IANA and its oversight. Some
IESG, IAB, and IAB IANA strategy program members have experience on this
matter, and we are already aware of several such people who are willing to
serve in this role. However, before appointing people to these seats, we wanted
to find out if there are members of the broader community who would be willing
to serve. If you would like to volunteer, please send a short statement of
interest (200 words or less) to the IESG <iesg(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org> by 23:59
UTC on June 16, 2014.
Jari Arkko on behalf of the IESG