Lawrence Strickling the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator in a blog post yesterday asked everyone to weight in on the ICANN transition away from the United States  Supervisory Roll.

“I urge all parties with an interest in the IANA transition to review these proposals and provide feedback to the working groups. This is the best way to make your voice heard and make a difference.  It is particularly important that stakeholders everywhere evaluate whether these plans meet the criteria that we have said must be part of the transition.”

The comment period has now been opened until September 8, 2015 on the Proposal to Transition the Stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) Functions from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to the Global Multistakeholder Community:

IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal [PDF, 2.2 MB]
(Translated versions forthcoming)

The ICG is now asking the public to review the transition proposal, consider specific questions identified below, and submit comments by the deadline of 8 September 2015 at 23:59 UTC.

After the conclusion of the public comment period, the ICG will make a final determination about whether to recommend that NTIA approve the transition proposal.

Here are the instructions on how you can file a comment.

“Since the formation of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in 1998, NTIA has contracted with ICANN to carry out the IANA functions, including the management of top-level registries for domain names, Internet Protocol addresses and related numeric identifiers, and protocol parameters. Under this contract NTIA has been responsible for approving changes to the authoritative root zone file of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS). NTIA also has a Cooperative Agreement with Verisign under which the company performs related root zone management functions.

On March 14, 2014, NTIA announced its intent to transfer its stewardship of these key Internet functions to the global Internet community. Transitioning NTIA out of its historic role marks the final phase of the transition of oversight of the DNS as outlined by the U.S. Government’s policy statements in 1997-98.”

If you have any opinion on this proposal now is the time to weigh in.