Governments Agree To ICANN Accountability Proposals, Giving Green Light For IANA Transition

Governments gathered at the 55th meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in Marrakesh this week have agreed to not object to the final proposal on enhancing ICANN accountability. By the move, the governments cleared the way to allow a potential handover of the management of the central root zone of the domain name system and other core databases to ICANN from the United States Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

While several government still are opposed to details about how governments can participate in future decisions of ICANN, nobody wanted to block the end of US oversight. The ICANN Government Accountability Committee (GAC) reached agreement last night.

Two more stakeholder groups have still to finalise their deliberations on the ICANN reform that aims to set up an “empowered community” to step into the oversight role currently held by the NTIA: the Country Code Names Stakeholder Group (ccNSO) and the Generic Names Stakeholder Group (GNSO).

Both are expected to basically agree to the documents later today, which will allow the NTIA to start its evaluation as a last step before the IANA transition can happen.

Similar to the GAC, the GNSO also plans to allow for dissenting votes on individual provisions.