Spring is (sort of) in the air here in Syracuse. In that spirit, here is IGP’s latest contribution to the ongoing IANA transition discussion. Think of it as the outsiders guide to IANA inside baseball, giving you a quick overview of the latest in transition proposals.  Who has time to read email lists when transition season is in full swing!

Below you’ll find a chart outlining the organization of the IANA registries from circa-1998 to now.  Information is primarily drawn from two documents, the CWG on stewardship transition legal scoping document which nicely summarizes the internal, trust, and external models, and the recent hybrid model proposal developed by Avri Doria, Matthew Shears and myself. Along the top, the chart identifies the past, present and proposed future models for the IANA organization. Along the left side, the chart identifies various features of organization, from the “policy communities” represented and contracting organizations to the operator and (presumptive) contractor’s characteristics.

Organization of IANA registries

Of course any of the cells in the chart are open to interpretation or change, but we’ve highlighted unsettled or particularly challenging aspects of each proposal currently.  For instance, the trust model has yet to deal with the specifics of its Board of Trustees, who comprises it, how are they selected? Perhaps the biggest gaps for some models lie in effectively separating policy and IANA operations.  In that regard, the internal, trust, external models are all highly dependent on work stream 1 of the CCWG-Accountability (i.e, accountability related to the IANA functions).  The hybrid-subsidiary model is potentially also dependent on that work, although perhaps that can be resolved with a corporate or ownership structure where ICANN cannot influence an IANA subsidiary’s actions. At this stage, only the hybrid-shared services arrangement model proposes an arrangement where there is presumably no incentive within IANA to allow a specific interest group a second bite at the apple with regard to how policy decisions are implemented.  That’s a main point of strong vertical separation, removing incentives to discriminate.

So there you go baseball fans. As always, we welcome comment below and also directly on the chart.

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