Oversight
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 DNS root zone to ensure IANA complies with its policies.
On January 28, 2003 the Department of Commerce, 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 U.S. Department of Commerce extended its IANA contract with ICANN by an additional five years, subject to annual renewals.
Since ICANN is managing a worldwide resource, but being controlled by U.S. interests, a number of proposals have been brought forward to decouple the IANA function from ICANN. However, some believe that it would be impractical to change the current control structure without risking fracturing the Internet.
Read more about this topic: Internet Assigned Numbers Authority