[CWG-Stewardship] The work of CWG Stewardship has come to an end

[Lise Fuhr]

Dear CWG Colleagues,

As you are aware by now, the agreement between the US Government (NTIA) and ICANN, regarding management of IANA functions, expired on 1st October 2016. This means that the IANA Stewardship Transition can now proceed as planned and as such, the  CWG has fulfilled its purpose. It has been a long and, at times, very challenging journey for the group. We co-chairs would like to sincerely thank you all and ICANN staff for the hard work and stamina you have shown.

You will recall that we had an initial attempt at a model and when this failed to get adequate support from the community, the CWG went back to work and produced a revised model. We did this by modifying the way we worked and we divided the group into design teams in order to have dedicated, focused groups. However, throughout the process, we always returned to the CWG as a whole to evaluate and approve the work. For us as co-chairs it has been very challenging at times, but we have learned a huge amount from all of you and the process itself. This has been an excellent example of how the multi-stakeholder model can work in practice. Not the easiest way to work, but ultimately thorough, inclusive and holistic. In addition to the primary task of producing the IANA Stewardship Transition Proposal on behalf of the Names Community, we also believe that the work of this group has made a significant contribution to the effective working methods of Cross Community Working Groups.

Most recently, there were several political and other issues which threatened to delay or derail the process but the crisis which that would have potentially represented has been averted in the end. This is a very good start for the Stewardship Transition and we believe that the CWG has been the best team to facilitate this work. Our work is now complete and we will have no more meetings. Therefore we will now proceed to dissolve the CWG by writing to the Chartering Organisations in order to communicate that our work is now complete.

Thank you for your recent good words on our mailing list, but we think it is critically important to once more thank you and acknowledge the work of the whole group and ICANN staff. We worked together on a historical journey and you have all contributed significantly to the IANA Transition plan, as well as evolving the multi-stakeholder model.

Best regards,

Jonathan and Lise
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mm.icann.org/pipermail/cwg-stewardship/attachments/20161002/0acb90c8/attachment.html>