ICANN Statement: ICANN Has Successfully Completed All Its Objectives under the MOU to Date
19 July 2004
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (19 July 2004) – ICANN, the global public-benefit non-profit organisation responsible for coordinating the Internet's naming and numbering systems, announced today that it has successfully completed all of its objectives to date under its Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC). ICANN has so far completed seven independence enabling structural reforms from the MOU on time, and is on or ahead of schedule to complete all of the remaining key organisational tasks.
In September 2003, ICANN signed an unprecedented three-year MOU with DOC aimed at completing ICANN's continued evolution toward privatized management of its functions. ICANN's management responsibilities include overall global coordination of the Internet's root server system, generic and country-code top level domain names (gTLD's and ccTLD's), and Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation.
"ICANN is pleased to continue its successful collaboration with the DOC and to have the DOC's full support in solidifying ICANN's strategic outlook, corporate stability and support systems through the public-private partnership", said Dr. Paul Twomey, ICANN's CEO and President. He added, "ICANN is turning the corner toward autonomous operation and is on path to full independent oversight of the ICANN functions under its global structure and with its global community."
Since 1998, ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has through the assistance of its globally based supporting organizations and advisory committees successfully coordinated the management of the technical elements of the Internet's domain name system (DNS) to ensure universal resolvability which permits all users of the Internet across the globe to find all valid addresses.
