Initial Report on Review of the Customer Standing Committee (CSC) Charter

Purpose: The CSC Charter review team (RT) seeks your comment and input on its findings and proposed amendment of the CSC Charter, as included in the RT's Initial Report.  According to the ICANN Bylaws (Section 17.3 (c)) and reflected in the CSC Charter, the ccNSO and RySG are required to review the CSC Charter one year after the first meeting of the CSC to consider whether the Charter is adequate and provides a sound basis for the CSC to perform their responsibilities as envisioned in the development of the IANA Transition Proposal.

Current Status: The CSC Charter Review Team seeks comments on its Initial Report, in particular the findings and proposed amendments to the Charter of the CSC

Next Steps: Taking into account comments received, the Review Team will prepare a Final Report for consideration and adoption by the ccNSO and GNSO Councils. The Amended Charter will become effective following the adoption of the Final report.

The Customer Standing Committee (CSC) was established on 1 October 2016 and has been operating in accordance with a Charter that was developed by the Cross Community Working Group IANA Transition (CWG) and was part of the IANA Transition Proposal. The ICANN Bylaws (section 17.3) and CSC Charter include a provision for a review of the Charter to be conducted one year after the first meeting of the CSC. The review is to be conducted by representatives of the Registries Stakeholder Group (RySG) and the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO).

The purpose of the Charter review is to consider whether the Charter is adequate and provides a sound basis for the CSC to perform their responsibilities as envisioned in the development of the IANA Transition Proposal.

Scope of review. The Charter will be reviewed to determine whether:

• the Charter enables the CSC to fulfil its role and responsibilities as envisioned
• there are any aspects of the Charter that are ambiguous that require amendment
• there are any typographical errors in the Charter that require amendment
• there are any elements of the work of the CSC that should be captured in the Charter that were not captured at the time the Charter was originally drafted

The Initial Report is the product of the work undertaken by the Review Team and includes a number of findings and proposed amendments to the CSC Charter in response to the findings. Key findings of the review include maintaining the narrow mission and scope of responsibilities of the CSC, along with the selection criteria for potential CSC candidates. A number of non-substantive changes to the Charter are recommended to address some inconsistencies and provide assistance to the CSC in performing their responsibilities

The Initial Report also includes some observations that are outside the scope of the review, but considered important enough to be included in the Initial Report by the Review Team.

The Customer Standing Committee was established as one of the post IANA Transition entities and conducted its first meeting on 6 October 2016. It performs the operational oversight previously performed by the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information Administration as it relates to the monitoring of the performance of the IANA naming functions, currently performed by Public Technical Identifiers (PTI).

According to the ICANN Bylaws (Section 17.3 (c)) and reflected in the CSC Charter, the ccNSO and RySG are required to review the CSC Charter one year after the first meeting of the CSC.

The Terms of Reference for the review were adopted by the ccNSO and RySG in July 2017, a small review team was subsequently established and commenced work in September 2017. The Review Team comprised Martin Boyle and Abdalla Omari from the ccNSO and Keith Drazek and Donna Austin from the RySG.

The Review Team conducted a number of consultations with the direct customers of the IANA Functions Operator, the CSC and the broader ICANN community. As a result of these consultations, the RT has prepared its initial report for public comment, which includes proposals to amend the charter. A Final Report will be prepared taking into account comments received during the comment period and will be presented to the ccNSO and GNSO Councils for adoption.

• Interim Report CSC Charter review team (PDF) [PDF, 840 KB]
• Interim Report CSC Charter review team (Word) [DOCX, 93 KB]
• CSC Charter [PDF, 151 KB]
• CSC Charter review team wiki space
• Terms of Reference CSC Charter review [PDF, 425 KB]

• Report