In a September 21st letter sent by Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information Lawrence Strickling to U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) disclosed that it is “actively exploring how to best meet this requirement” for “a clear and enforced ethics and conflict of interest policy” in the next version of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) contract. This Department of Commerce letter was sent in response to a September 14th letter from Senator Wyden to NTIA raising concerns about news reports of a “revolving door” at ICANN (Wyden press release and link to letter at http://wyden.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/?id=2e414e69-1250-4ca3-ae6b-2b6091ed52cc ). The Senator’s letter stated:
As you know, any designated IANA is hugely important in regulating the multi-million dollar domain name industry. At the same time, because the IANA is not a branch of the federal government, its executive leadership is not subject to the same financial disclosure, ethics, or conflict of interest rules as executive leadership at federal agencies or in Congress.
While I support the control of this system by NTIA, I also believe that any IANA employees ought to be made subject to the same ethics rules in place as NTIA employees. With the growth in importance of this authority, it is important to ensure that decisions are made impartially.
Senator Wyden’s interest in this issue was reportedly sparked by a September 21st story in the Washington Post headlined “A ‘revolving door’ at nonprofit keeper of domain names” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/icann-departures-draw-criticism/2011/08/19/gIQAzpeDTJ_story.html).
Secretary Strickling’s letter of response also notes that the NTIA has conducted two Notices of Inquiry regarding the IANA contract in February and June of this year, and has “received 136 comments from a range of domestic and international stakeholders including governments, private sector entities, and individuals who also noted the need for increase (sic) transparency and accountability” — all as part of the first comprehensive review of the IANA contract since it was initially awarded to ICANN in 2000. NTIA recently exercised its option to extend the length of the current IANA contract, from the end of September 2011 to March 2012, to allow for extended consideration of whether the contract should be re-awarded to ICANN, as well as what additional conditions should accompany it. The IANA contract provides the technical foundation for ICANN’s DNS policymaking, including the addition of new gTLDs to the root zone file under the program approved by its Board in Singapore this past June and which will open for applications in mid-January 2012.
A series of leaked European Commission discussion papers recently proposed that the IANA contract be amended to address ethics issues as well as to give governments greater leverage over the approval of new gTLDs and ICANN’s overall operation. At the same time, the Chairman of ICANN’s Board Governance Committee recently revealed that it has begun an internal discussion of Board and staff ethics issues, has directed staff to draft proposed guidelines, and anticipates community discussion on this matter at the upcoming ICANN meeting in Dakar, Senegal. ICA will be in attendance in Dakar and will continue to closely monitor the ethics, transparency and accountability issues as they are important on their own and have significant implications for ICANN’s future relationship with the U.S. and other governments, as well as for the broader ICANN community including domain investors and developers.