Oversight of IANA

IANA is managed by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) under contract to the United States Department of Commerce (DOC). The Department of Commerce also provides an ongoing oversight function, whereby it verifies additions and changes made in the root to ensure IANA complies with its policies.

On January 28, 2003 the DOC, via the Acquisition and Grants Office of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, issued a notice of intent to grant ICANN the IANA contract for three more years. It invited alternative offerors to submit in writing a detailed response on how they could meet the requirements themselves. Such responses were to be received no later than 10 days following publication of the invitation and the decision on whether to open the "tender" to competition was to remain solely within the discretion of the government.

In August 2006 the DOC extended its IANA contract with ICANN for a further five years, subject to annual renewals.

The relationship between ICANN and the ccTLDs and RIRs can best be described as highly political, and there have been a number of proposals to decouple the IANA function from ICANN completely, but it has been recognized as impractical to change the current control structure without risking fracturing the Internet.