Public Comment
Amendment to the IANA Naming Functions Contract, Annex A
Open Date
7 January 2019 23:59 UTC
Close Date
18 February 2019 23:59 UTC
Staff Report Due
6 March 2019 23:59 UTC
Brief Overview
Purpose: The purpose of this public comment proceeding is to obtain community input on a proposed Amendment to the IANA Naming Functions Contract between ICANN and Public Technical Identifiers (PTI). If approved, the Amendment would allow the Customer Standing Committee (CSC) and PTI/ICANN to change the IANA Naming Function's Service Level Agreements (SLAs) without the need to do a contract amendment every time an SLA change is needed. Instead, the SLA change would follow an SLA Change Process that provides a process to achieve amendments to the SLAs in a timely fashion while requiring consultations with the IANA Function naming customers and broader ICANN community as appropriate.
Current Status: Because the inclusion of the SLAs in the IANA Naming Function agreement was a key element of the IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal, ICANN org identified that the proposed amendments to pull the SLA table out of the agreement had to be subject to ICANN's public comment processes. As with other comment periods, the comments submitted will be analyzed and considered prior to seeking formal approval for a change to the contract.
Once the contract is amended, the table with the current SLAs will no longer be housed within the contract. Instead, the SLA table will be available on the appropriate place on pti.icann.org or iana.org. That table may only be changed when the SLA change process is followed; if there is any failure in that process, no SLA change will occur.
Next Steps: The ICANN Board and PTI Boards will consider the proposed Amendment.
Section I: Description and Explanation
The IANA Naming Function Contract that ICANN holds with PTI sets out the obligations for the performance of the IANA Naming Function. Included are Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for the performance of the function. The Customer Standing Committee (CSC), which reviews PTI's monthly performance against the SLAs, recommended changes to some of the SLAs to better reflect reality now that more operational data is available since the IANA Stewardship Transition. In discussing how to effectuate these changes, the CSC, ICANN org, and PTI identified that a contractual amendment every time a change to an SLA is needed is not effective or efficient and would not serve the interests of the IANA Naming Function customers.
In the Customer Standing Committee's (CSC) meeting held on 17 December 2018, it approved two SLA change processes: a "Process for amending the IANA Naming Function Service Level agreements" and a "Procedure for Modifying the process for amending the IANA Naming Function Service Level agreements". ICANN org and PTI management were involved in the conversations and agreed to the processes as well. The processes are not in force until such time as the IANA Naming Function contract is amended. The CSC has been working on defining these processes for some time, and the CSC consulted with the IANA Naming Function customers prior to approving the processes.
Once the contract is amended, the table with the current SLAs will no longer be housed within the contract. Instead, the SLA table will be available on an appropriate place on pti.icann.org or iana.org. That table may only be changed when the appropriate SLA change process is followed; if there is any failure in that process, no SLA change will occur. Depending on the significance of the change, public comment may be required, but at a minimum there is a requirement for consultation with the IANA Naming Function customers. PTI and ICANN also have requirements to consider feasibility and costs of potential changes before broader consultation is performed.
The proposed contract amendment does the following things:
- Removes the SLA table from the naming function contract;
- Requires the SLA table to be maintained on an appropriate place on pti.icann.org or iana.org;
- Requires that any changes to the SLA table may only be achieved through following the defined change process, which must also be publicly available; and
- Requires that any changes to that change process must also be done pursuant to a defined process that will be publicly available.
The proposed amendment does NOT change the base definitions that guide how SLAs are developed or the proper fields for inclusion in SLA tables.
Section II: Background
In 2016, Public Technical Identifiers (PTI) was formed to perform the IANA Functions on behalf of ICANN via contracts and subcontracts. The IANA Naming Functions Contract contains the obligations and requirements for the performance of the IANA Naming Function.
Annex A of the Contract contained Service Level Agreements and included an SLA table that identified definitions for the performance of the IANA naming function. The SLAs' design team within the CWG-Stewardship and ICANN, agreed on thresholds for the SLAs with the understanding that there was not sufficient historical data for determining appropriate thresholds for some SLAs, and these would be revisited at a later date to be updated to more appropriate metrics.
The Customer Standing Committee (CSC) was established as part of the IANA Stewardship Transition to monitor PTI's performance of the IANA naming function against the SLAs in the IANA Naming Function Contract.
Section III: Relevant Resources
Amendment No. 1 to the IANA Naming Function Contract – Amended Annex A for public comment
Amendment No. 1 to the IANA Naming Function Contract – Redline version of Annex A. This redline appears quite long because many pages of tables are removed. Note that changes are ONLY within Section 2 of that Annex, beginning at 2.c. All areas that remain unchanged through the amendment are highlighted in yellow.
Process for Amending the IANA Naming Service Level Agreements – Contains two SLA related processes: 1) Process for Amending the IANA Naming Function Service Level agreements and 2) Procedure for Modifying the process for amending the IANA Naming Function Service Level agreements. The first process ensures that due diligence will be followed in making changes to SLAs, and the second procedure provides a mechanism for changing the first process itself.
Section IV: Additional Information
Customer Standing Committee Charter
Customer Standing Committee homepage
Comments Closed
Report of Public Comments