This public comment proceeding seeks community input on the draft PTI Conflict of Interest Policy, PTI Board Code of Conduct developed to strengthen the governance practices of PTI, as well as a draft PTI Expected Standard of Behavior, developed to guide PTI’s Board, staff, customers and broader community on expected standards to guide their participation.

The draft PTI Conflict of Interest Policy, PTI Board Code of Conduct developed to strengthen the governance practices of PTI, as well as a draft PTI Expected Standard of Behavior, developed to guide PTI’s Board, staff, customers and broader community on expected standards to guide their participation. Each of these documents is modeled off of the versions already in force in ICANN. The ICANN Conflict of Interest Policy and Board Code of Conduct that these documents were modeled off of were developed with external corporate governance expertise, and were most recently subject to public comment in 2012 before the ICANN Board approval. The ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior, which strengthen both internal governance practices and guide the behavior of those who participate within ICANN processes, were developed with community input over eight years ago, and have been refined in 2012 with corporate governance expertise, and just recently to incorporate best practices on language prohibiting harassment. These changes were also subject to public comment.

As part of creating a strong, well-governed PTI, ICANN has always planned for the development of these documents to be made applicable to PTI. NTIA, in its IANA Transition Proposal Assessment Report, also identified that it would be beneficial to model PTI’s governance requirements off of the strong practices in place within ICANN. ICANN has carefully reviewed and modified these documents for the Post-Transition IANA entity.

There are additional documents that are necessary for the incorporation and governance of PTI. A proposed Articles of Incorporation is currently out for public comment. ICANN will shortly be posting for comment a proposed set of PTI’s Bylaws, based on the IANA Transition Coordination Group’s Proposal that was submitted to NTIA.

The naming-related functions that PTI will be responsible to perform will be specified in a contract between PTI and ICANN. That contract will be posted for public comment in the coming week.

All of the implementation planning ongoing within ICANN can be followed at https://www.icann.org/stewardship-implementation.

The IANA Stewardship Transition

For almost two decades, ICANN has performed the IANA functions under a zero-dollar contract with the U.S. Government, implementing policies developed by the multistakeholder community. The U.S. Government always envisioned its role as steward of the IANA functions as temporary, and, in March 2014, announced its intention to transition that stewardship to the global multistakeholder community. This transition will not affect how the identifiers are coordinated nor will it affect the functionality of the Internet or our ability to access it. In fact, the transition is nothing more than the final step in an 18-year process to privatize the management of the IANA functions.

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) asked ICANN to convene an inclusive, global discussion that involved the full range of stakeholders to collectively develop a proposal for the transition. NTIA stated that the transition proposal must have broad community support and meet the following criteria:

• Support and enhance the multistakeholder model;
• Maintain the security, stability, and resiliency of the Internet DNS;
• Meet the needs and expectations of the global customers and partners of the IANA services; and,
• Maintain the openness of the Internet.

NTIA also specified that it would not accept a proposal that replaces NTIA‘s role with a government-led or intergovernmental organization solution.

Developing the Community Proposals

Two sets of recommendations comprise the package provided to the ICANN Board for the IANA Stewardship Transition. One set of recommendations involved the proposal from the direct operational customers of the IANA functions. This proposal was prepared by the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG). The ICG, comprised of thirty individuals, representing the broad range of Internet stakeholder interests, were nominated by their respective communities. The ICG assembled input from three global multistakeholder communities with direct operational relationships with the IANA functions to develop a proposal to transition NTIA‘s stewardship of the IANA functions.

• Read the final ICG proposal here [PDF, 2.31 MB].

The other set of recommendations related to enhancing ICANN Accountability in relation to the IANA Stewardship Transition. This proposal was prepared by the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability), made up of members from ICANN‘s Supporting Organizations and Advisory Committees, and over 200 participants, developed a separate proposal for enhancing ICANN‘s accountability in light of the changing historical relationship with the U.S. Government. Together with ICANN‘s existing structures, the group recommended mechanisms to ensure ICANN remains accountable to the global Internet community.

• Read the final CCWG-Accountability proposal here [PDF, 6.02 MB].

Proposals Delivery and NTIA‘s Report

On March 10, 2016, the ICANN Board of Directors transmitted the IANA Stewardship Transition and Accountability Proposals to NTIA for its review and approval.

On 09 June 2016, NTIA announced “that the proposal developed by the global Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria NTIA outlined in March 2014 when it stated its intent to transition the U.S. Government’s stewardship role for the Internet domain name system (DNS) technical functions, known as the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions.”

Other PTI related materials

On 01 July 2016, ICANN published the proposed PTI Articles of Incorporations for a 30-day public comment period.

ICANN‘s implementation planning efforts based on requirements of the ICG and CCWG-Accountability proposals can be tracked at https://www.icann.org/stewardship-implementation.

• Draft PTI Conflict of Interest Policy [PDF, 148 KB]
• Draft PTI Board Code of Conduct [PDF, 114 KB]
• Draft PTI Expected Standard of Behavior [PDF, 214 KB]
• ICANN Conflict of Interest Policy
• ICANN Board Code of Conduct
• ICANN Expected Standards of Behavior
• ICG Proposal [PDF, 2.31 MB]
• CCWG-Accountability Proposal [PDF, 6.02 MB]