(16.8.2016) Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling

Two months ago, we passed an important milestone in a nearly 20-year effort to privatize the Internet domain name system (DNS). We announced on June 9 that the transition proposal developed by the Internet multistakeholder community meets the criteria we outlined in March 2014 when we declared our intent to transition NTIA‘s stewardship role related to the DNS. While this was a significant moment in this journey, we said in June that the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which currently operates the IANA functions under a contract with NTIA, still had work to do to implement key action items called for in the transition plan.

On Friday, ICANN informed NTIA that it has completed or will complete all the necessary tasks called for in the transition proposal by the end of the contract term. NTIA has thoroughly reviewed the report. We informed ICANN today that based on that review and barring any significant impediment, NTIA intends to allow the IANA functions contract to expire as of October 1.