US government gives IANA contract back to ICANN

As expected, the US government has awarded the IANA contract to ICANN. The contract, which covers a number of critical technical functions including acting as the Internet's top-most directory, will run for three years with two optional extensions of two-years. It contains a number of new requirements and clauses, the most important of which are separation from policy work, and a series of reporting requirements. Earlier this year, the award process was thrown into disarray when the US government's procurement arm so no one had met the new criteria, including ICANN which has run the contract since it was first awarded in 1999. ICANN is under pressure to improve the way it runs IANA if it wishes to retain the contract past 2015.