Joint Project Agreement

Overview
The U.S. Department of Commerce first entered into the MOU with ICANN on 25 November 1998. The Commerce Department revised the MOU six times between November 1998 and 30 September 2006. In September 2006, the MOU was replaced with a Joint Project Agreement (JPA). Like the MOUs, the JPA sets forth goals and tasks for ICANN to accomplish. But the JPA’s goals are less specific than those set forth in the MOU, “[i]n keeping with the widely expressed desire to make ICANN more independent of the U.S. government.”

Like its predecessors, the JPA styled itself as providing transitional oversight. The JPA's Preamble provides that its purpose is to facilitate the "joint development of the mechanisms, methods, and procedures necessary to effect the transition of the Internet domain name and addressing system (DNS) to the private sector. The JPA expired on 30 September 2009.