On September 20, the Commerce Department announced its intention to extend its memorandum of understanding for management of the Internet domain name system with the nonprofit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) for another year until September 2003. ICANN's arrangement with the Commerce Department dates back to November 1998, but has long been fraught with dissatisfaction and contention around issues of accountability, scope of governance, and representation of public and public interest perspectives within in ICANN. ICANN was originally selected by the U.S. government under the assumption that it would function as more of a coordinating body, than an Internet governance or policymaking body, especially as it helped to develop more governmental and private sector competition in the domain name registration and operation in a more privatized arena. In both its public statement and within the now-amended MOU itself, the Commerce Department has criticized ICANN for both moving slowly and falling short of the obligations and goals with which it was charged. ICANN, however, is also recognized as the only entity currently in place with the capacity to address the infrastructure issues posed by the Internet's infrastructure, as the U.S. government seeks to divest itself of direct management responsibility for the Internet's global infrastructure. ICANN also helped its case by publicly admitting its shortcomings and by implementing a reform plan to address the concerns of many of its critics-- particularly public interest groups, domain name registrars, and international governmental bodies. Specific reform proposals will be finalized at ICANN's October 28-31, 2002 board meeting The Commerce Department will have more involvement with respect to domain name system (DNS) management in addition to conducting ICANN administrative work on DNS technical issues in a public and open manner. It will also have a more direct role in identifying and recommending technology and outside expertise to help strengthen and improve the global DNS system, as well as the coordination between ICANN and VeriSign over the latter's exclusive management of the ".com" and ".net" domain name registries. Commerce will also be more directly involved in ICANN's coordination of protocol and logistical agreements with other global root domain name servers, and its subsequent engagement of non-US governmental interests in ICANN decisionmaking. ICANN, under the revised MOU, is to more directly incorporate outside expertise and policymaking processes into its technical standard setting and administrative processes, so as to ensure a greater level of transparency in the operation of the domain name system. This includes more direct involvement of private-sector and national governmental interests with respect to the registration and operation of country-code level domain name space, and addressing the policy issues between country-code domain name registrars and holders, especially in those instances involving public-sector bodies outside the US. It will also be expected to improve the process by which new top-level domain names are selected, implemented, and operated. ICANN is also obligated to give priority attention to disputes raised by the Internet user community with respect to ICANN decisions and deliberations. ICANN will also have to work more directly with the Commerce Department to develop, implement, and transition to a more robust security architecture for the DNS root server system. This includes the submission of a formal report on the status of the root domain name server to the Commerce Department by November 30, 2002, and a proposal description by December 30, 2002 for enhancing the root server's security. This is in addition to the requirement to submit both a year-end and quarterly reports regarding its progress on implementing the tasks under the MOU. Though the thrust of the Commerce Department's revised MOU takes pains to stress that ICANN's role and authority are being refined rather than expanded, there is still not a great degree of clarity in terms of what it's actual role and authority within the broader area of Internet governance is-- or should be, or at what point it will transition away from a body that generates as much controversy as it does guidance and operational guidance as the Internet's architecture continues to mature.