House Communications Sees Progress in IANA Transition Plans
House Communications Subcommittee members are increasingly at ease with the trajectory of the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, since ICANN's approval last week of two transition-related plans, they said Thursday. They indicated they'll continue to exercise their oversight of the IANA transition process until its completion. ICANN sent NTIA its finalized IANA transition plan and a related set of recommended changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms after the board passed both plans during its meeting in Marrakech, Morocco (see 1603100070). ICANN stakeholders strongly endorsed the IANA transition plan and the recommendations from the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability), saying during the hearing that the plans collectively meet NTIA criteria for the IANA transition.
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NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling said he “will not be providing any substantive comments or evaluations” of the IANA transition plan or CCWG-Accountability recommendations until NTIA completes its review. Strickling said last week he anticipates NTIA will complete its reviews of the plans within 90 days (see 1603110075). “Prior to completing our review, we expect ICANN and the community to adopt all the necessary bylaw changes to implement the transition proposals,” Strickling said during an Information Technology and Innovation Foundation event. A successful IANA transition will be "a powerful example to the world of the power and capability of the multistakeholder model to solve difficult issues regarding the Internet,” Strickling said.
CCWG-Accountability's recommendations would allow continued protection of ICANN against undue government influence since the accountability changes place “significant curbs” on the Governmental Advisory Committee's influence without completely removing GAC's power, said NetChoice CEO Steve DelBianco during the hearing. Governments will have “even less” of a role in ICANN policymaking following the IANA transition and will “move away” from seeking to use the nonprofit corporation as a forum for pushing restrictive Internet policies, said Wiley Rein telecom and Internet governance lawyer David Gross.
Intel backs ICANN's IANA transition plans in part because those plans support and enhance the multistakeholder Internet governance model, said Director-Global Security and Internet Governance Policy Audrey Plonk. The Internet Society also “strongly” supports the IANA transition plan and CCWG-Accountability recommendations, as both hold the “process and principles that have served as the foundation for the Internet's development,” said Vice President-Global Policy Development Sally Wentworth. Development of the IANA transition plan and CCWG-Accountability recommendations “has been a proving ground” for the multistakeholder process, showing such processes can result in “thoughtful and nuanced” proposals, said Center for Democracy & Technology Global Internet Policy and Human Rights Project Director Matthew Shears.
House Communications Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., acknowledged ICANN for reaching a “major milestone” in the IANA transition process by sending the transition plans on to NTIA. He raised continued concerns about rushing the IANA transition in a bid to meet the “artificial deadline” imposed by the current Sept. 30 expiration date for NTIA's contract with ICANN to perform the IANA functions. “Much work still remains, and if needed, NTIA should take the steps to extend the contract,” Walden said. “It is more important to get this done right.”
All six ICANN stakeholders who testified said they believe remaining work to implement the IANA transition can be finished before the Sept. 30 expiration date. “We have finished the hard work” of planning the IANA transition, with the passage of changes to ICANN's bylaws to codify the transition and changes to ICANN accountability, along with other implementation work, being far easier to complete, DelBianco said. “The fundamentals [of the IANA transition] are there in the proposals,” said IANA Transition Coordination Group Chairwoman Alissa Cooper.
ICANN approval of IANA transition-related plans shows “there's light at the end of the tunnel,” said ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. “I'm very optimistic” about the IANA transition's prospects after hearing DelBianco and other ICANN stakeholders endorse ICANN's plans, she said. Eshoo also focused on the current ban on NTIA's use of its funding to pay for the IANA transition. She told us after the hearing that stakeholders “made a very powerful case” against any further extensions of the spending ban. The FY 2016 omnibus spending bill extended the ban until Sept. 30 but didn't expand the ban through FY 2017 (see 1512160068). “We would be very concerned about the business impact” of an extension of the spending ban into FY 2017, Plonk said during the hearing. Further extensions of the spending ban would send a “very negative message” to the international community and the private sector, potentially incentivizing expansions of trade barriers impacting the tech sector, she said.
“We're obviously in a much better place than we were two years ago” with the IANA transition, but “there will continue to be oversight by us and other interested parties” until the transition occurs, said Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., during the hearing. “Even though there are happy faces about this, we're going to do our due diligence and continue our oversight” of the IANA transition, Shimkus told us after the hearing. “This is a big deal and if we don't get it right, it's lost.” Congress might have “more leverage” now in conducting oversight of the transition if GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, hadn't placed a hold on Senate consideration of Shimkus' Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters Act (HR-805/S-1551), Shimkus told us. “As long as we continue our due diligence, there's less concern” about possible government interference at ICANN, he said.
Shimkus raised concerns during the hearing about ICANN interactions with government officials. He didn't specifically reference concerns that Cruz and two other senators raised about ICANN's relationship with the Chinese government under now-former CEO Fadi Chehadé (see 1602040061 and 1603030067). CCWG-Accountability plans to address transparency in ICANN's interactions with governments as part of a second set of accountability mechanism changes, DelBianco testified. Transparency improvements are needed since ICANN's management sometimes “gets adventurous,” DelBianco said.
The Heritage Foundation and several other stakeholders submitted written statements in advance of the hearing. Heritage recommended NTIA extend its contract with ICANN for two years to allow for a “transition to the transition.” The changes proposed in the IANA transition plan and CCWG-Accountability recommendations “are significant and untested,” Heritage said. “It would be prudent to allow ICANN to operate under the new structure for a period of time to verify that unforeseen complications and problems do not arise while retaining the ability to reassert the historical NTIA relationship if unforeseen complications arise.” The Internet Society “would not support that approach,” Wentworth told us after the hearing. “We think that the checks and balances have already been built into this transition. The global multistakeholder community has reached a strong consensus and the world now really expects this transition to happen. We believe the community is ready to move forward.”