Re: sole-sourceing IANA function to ICANN for next 3 years (fwd)

[RJ Atkinson <rja@extremenetworks.com>]

On Tuesday, Feb 4, 2003, at 16:12 America/Montreal, Geoff Huston wrote:
> I _suspect_ that the barrier to change ins the rainbow-colored papers 
> of some years
> back. i.e. we are grappling with an historical decision, not an 
> individual or
> an office or agency.
>
> I _suspect_ that a change to the contract would be seen as a change in 
> policy, and
> a change in policy may well require yet more rainbow-colored documents
> being circulated.
>
> Not a pleasant prospect for anyone if this is indeed the case.
>
> But I live under a different bureaucracy and I'm not sure that I 
> understand how it works
> at this level of detail within the US.
>
>    Geoff
It is very unlikely that any career civil service person in NTIA/DoC is 
going to change
this magnitude of policy without at least implicit approval to do so 
from some political
appointee within DoC.  To behave otherwise would be foolhardy on their 
part.

So this means we probably need to make our case to at least a 
[deputy][assistant]
[under] Secretary of Commerce who oversees NTIA.  And in practice it 
would be
much more likely to succeed if a friendly Senator or Congressman could 
be engaged
to prod them from Capitol Hill.

Sigh.  Might be easier to find some funding for IETF IANA and just pull 
the plug.  Sigh.

Ran
rja@extremenetworks.com