LOS ANGELES – The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Naming Function Review Team (IFRT) has announced that it is in the final stages of completing its Initial Report. The IFRT will be holding a webinar for the community regarding one of their proposed recommendations that would require an amendment to the IANA Naming Functions Contract between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and its affiliate Public Technical Identifiers (PTI). This amendment may be of particular interest to country code top-level domain (ccTLD) and generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry operators.

Per the ICANN Bylaws, Article 18, Section 18.5.d.(a):

"The IFRT may recommend, among other things to the extent reasonably related to the IFR responsibilities set forth in Section 18.3, amendments to the IANA Naming Function Contract, IANA Naming Function SOW and/or the CSC Charter. The IFRT shall, at a minimum, take the following steps before an amendment to either the IANA Naming Function Contract, IANA Naming Function SOW or CSC Charter is proposed:……(iii) Conduct a public input session for ccTLD and gTLD registry operators."

The IFRT noted that the IANA Naming Functions Contract contains a requirement relating to the formatting of IANA's monthly Root Operations Audit Reports and this requirement can be considered obsolete. The IFRT therefore recommends that:

In Article 7 Section 7.1 (a) the IFRT recommends that this statement "The relevant policies under which the changes are made shall be noted within each monthly report" be removed from the contract, as it is a legacy statement from the NTIA contract that is no longer required.

The IFRT encourages all interested parties, and in particular ccTLD and gTLD registry operators, to join the scheduled informational webinar to learn more.