conventions continues this weekend, with 1976 republican which hadonvention, president gerald ford competing for the party's nomination against former california governor ronald reagan. peter: larry strickling is the administrator of the national telecommunications and information administration within the department of commerce. mr. stripling, what does that administration do? is theickling: it principal advisor to the president on communications and technical policy issues. we are also a unit of the department of commerce. our principal functions involve managing the use of spectrum by federal agencies. we have overseen a broadband adoption program, starting with the recovery act in 2009. we are overseeing the public safety broadband network development by firstnet, and then we spend a lot of time on internet policy matters, both

domestic and international. peter: and that is where we want to start. one of the issues is whether or not i can should be turned over to a group of international stakeholders. is that on track for september? mr. strickling: in the community, yes, in the sense that you have to go back to 1997 for the origins of the story. back in 1997, the clinton administration decided that it felt bad, given a choice between having the internet managed by a group of governments, or managed by the public sector, the choice was -- the private sector, the choice was to make sure the manages this, and that's part of the process, to privatize the domain system. it started a long odyssey to get to where we could complete the privatization of the domain name system. that is where we are up to at this point in time.

ago, in the hopes of completing the privatization, we have now started our intention to complete the privatization, and to ask the multi-stakeholder community, and by this we are talking about the businesses, the academics, the technical experts, and governments who have participated in internet matters for the last however many years to come together and develop a plan to complete this transition. they took two years to do they work -- do their work. they exchanged thousands of several and they ran million dollars of lawyers fees as they examined various proposals, and they deliver that proposal to us at the beginning of march. an interagency review and evaluation of the proposal, and concluded that it met the criteria we had laid out two years ago that needed to be this transition to proceed, and that it would preserve and enhance the multi-stakeholder model in

government, that it would not turn the internet over the governments, that it would meet the needs of customers of the various functions, and that is what our report concluded. we hit an important milestone. icane at the point where is completing other implementation matters that need to be completed, and they will be reporting to us in august as to whether or not they can complete that work by what is currently the expiration date of the contract, september 30. his been a large discussion about this that has emerged in congress. the discussion in congress has been going on the entire two years that we have been involved in the transition planning. we have met with members of congress and met with their staff. we have been on the hill explaining a report, and we are hopeful that we will be able to answer their concerns over the course of the summer as we the completionch

of the implementation work. peter: narrator congress has concerns -- peter: congress has had concerns about this issue. when you hear the phrase "returning the internet over to international control," is that accurate? mr. strickling: that is not accurate of all. operates pretty much as a private company. icanontract we had with was to designate them to perform technical functions. they hand out id numbers to the -- ip numbers to the registries around the world, and they update the names on the internet. all that is happening is that thehave this bureaucracy, united states government, between the customers of these for the last ican 18 years, and all we are doing

with this transition is allowing the customers of these functions , the name registrars, to know ican to directly with get the services they need. transparency more and accountability, but that is all that is at stake with the contract. intothe debate has brought focus, though, are questions about the overall accountability of ican, because ican is also involved in policymaking as it relates to the names on the internet. this is not any part of our contract, but this is part of the function that ican performs, and the internet wants to make sure that in performing those is accountable to the civil society members that participate in the process. that has been a part of the transition planning as well, to develop the plan under which i

cann will be more accountable to those members of the community then it has in the past. when we talk about turning over the internet, none of that is happening. what we are talking about is the stakeholders will now have the ability to exercise direct itsrs over icann if performers and employees do not perform in accordance with the community. that is what is happening with the accountability improvements. keep in mind that is independent and separate from the contract we have with icann to perform these technical functions that is the contract that expires in september. but these have been lumped together, and in some respects misrepresented in the community, that somehow the u.s. controlled all of this when all we have is a narrow slice of the technical functions. let's bring lynn stanton the conversation. ifn: what is the backup plan

icann comes in august and says, no, we can't quite get everything done, we need three months, four months, whatever? peter: that -- mr. strickling: that's why we have asked them to come in august. if the stakeholder community comes to us and says we have more time, we need a sufficient number of weeks to actually figure out what could be an appropriate extension of the contract. that is baked into the schedule in terms of a contingency. we will have to determine whether we will have to do that or not. lynn: there was technical testing going on, the transition of information that you have kind of student of the love. has that been completed, is everything fine? middle of. the has that been completed, is everything fine? mr. strickling: my understanding is they did pass the test. the new system by which icann will transmit changes directly to verisign has now been proven

to work exactly the same as the current system does. the one technical change that as part ofr transition has now been tested to be fully operational and implementable. peter: does congress have the authority to stop this transition? mr. strickling: i think they did have the authority to engage in this. i don't want to get into the legal aspects of this. today, though, the contract is set to expire in september and can expire on its own terms. clear congress, because they wanted to have time to look at this, and they have done that for some appropriation writers -- three some appreciation -- appropriation riders that nothing will happen through september 30. we think they will get comfortable with this.

have seen some reports from some sources that we are pushing this, rushing through to get this done, and that it is a radical plan. none of those things are true if you actually take the time to look at what is at stake here, and what the community did, and how we have analyzed it. onsay we are rushing things a policy that was established in 1997, and here we are in 18 -- here we are 18, 19 years later, it does not bear any sort of scrutiny. this has taken a long time to get done because it has been done carefully. the community has taken two years to developing a senseless plan that has been agreed to by businesses, governments, academics, civil society. they work tirelessly for two years to develop this plan and presented to us. i think everyone in the process thanks it is now time to get this done. congress has asked the government accountability office

to report on whether the united states has an ownership stake underlying the list of names and numbers and whatnot. if that report comes back and says that they do, the administration does not have the right to give away u.s. government property without congressional consent. is there a plan in place for that? mr. strickling: i don't know when gal will complete its work. i will be extremely surprised if they conclude that there is any government property at stake. i know how the contract works. when we contracted with icann to do this work, no government property was given to them. there is no government property that will be given to them at the end of this contract. own lawyers have looked at this in great detail and concluded that there is no property issue here, so i would be extremely surprised if gao were to conclude otherwise. that israel and not

intellectual property that your lawyers have looked at? and notis real intellectual property that your lawyers have looked at? mr. strickling: it is public. it is made available to anybody who wants to have it. it is not proprietary. for the internet to work, it has to be widely distributed, at every point in the internet where people have to do lookups, they have to have the ability to access the file to figure out how matters should be routed on the internet. it is a public, nonproprietary document. there is no way anybody is going to find that is property. what is the downside if it does not go through in september? you said it has been on this path for a long time, and you don't understand why people are saying what's the hurry, but what is the hurry? what is the downside if you do not completed by september 30?

depends oning: it the reason. we are at a point for the community says, we have done what you asked, we have done the work, here is our plan, we all support it, it has been vetted by lawyers they hired, we hired by corporate -- we hired corporate governance experts to review it on our end, and it was six -- consistent with sound principles. without reason, if the united states were to say, just kidding, we don't intend to let this end, i think it would have drastic potential consequences internationally. the ongoing debate here, and this goes back to some of my earlier remarks, is who do we want making these decisions? makingant the government these decisions, or do we want the people who actually build, operate, and transact business and exchange information on the internet, do we want them making the decision?

the clinton administration made was we wanted to be the community. that has been an ongoing debate internationally for years. there are countries that still insisted the internet taught to be managed by the united nations, or managed by the international telecommunication union, or some other intergovernmental body. four years ago, the world conference on international telecommunications in dubai, we had 89 countries who signed up for a revolution to give the ipu more authority over the internet. the u.s. was on the short side of that vote. only 55 countries opposed. what we have seen over the last several years is countries now toing back and signing up support the multi-stakeholder model of governance. almost 30 countries who find the regulations in -- who signed the regulations in dubai has now supported the proposal given to

us. that is great progress, and we have made it in part because of she u.s. government' willingness to complete the transition, and it has been done by an outstanding amount of diplomacy by folks at the state department. we risk losing all of that progress that the united states basically does not live up to its word and complete this transaction. only ones saying this. there have been a number of papers that have come out since the plan was issued in march, saying exactly the same thing. the former secretary of homeland security joined in a paper with chairman chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, general cartwright, to point out what will happen internationally if we don't follow through on our promises. what you are doing is handling a toat talking point back countries like china and russia who preferred the intergovernmental approach, and

giving them now the opportunity to go back to these countries where we have made all this progress over the last three to four years, and now letting them come back and say, you can't trust the united states, they don't want to give this up, you need to give it back to the u.n. for the folks who want to protect internet freedom, and i think all of us do, whether you were a democrat or a republican, we all have that as our role. i think people need to understand that we might actually hurt internet freedom if we renege on our commitment to complete this transaction, their transition, and to plead it -- to completed when the community says they are ready. peter: another one of your charges is the finding of spectrum. how are you doing on that front? where itkling: we know is. the issue is, how do we continue to meet the needs of the to have access to more

spectrum to provide more wireless broadband services to the american public? as you may recall, the president in 2010 set a goal for us and the fcc to identify 500 megahertz of spectrum that could to commercial wireless broadband use. we are about halfway through that. i think we so far have identified about 245 megahertz of that goal. of bands thater were under active consideration how, in terms of trying to come to a final judgment on them. part of that is the over 120 megahertz that is currently being auctioned off in the incentive auction that the fcc on the broadcast spectrum. we are also focused very intently on spectrum in the five gigahertz band. that has been interest -- of interest for more wi-fi use, that sort of thing.

this is an ongoing effort. what allows us to make the process -- the progress we have been making is the government-industry collaboration. -- thear, the 80 billion far morerum delivered revenue than anybody could have predicted. i think that was made possible by the fact that the industry and government had worked closely on that band before it went to auction. we also are making progress on understanding how government agencies and industry can share spectrum in the future. new is going to be the paradigm. i have been saying this for years. spectrum sharing is the way we the to go, just because of growing needs of both federal agencies and industry to make maximum efficient use of their spectrum. peter: are you leading resistance, going to federal departments and agencies, trying to get some of the spectrum they control? mr. strickling: it is not resistance, but what you have is

a set of measures that they have been asked to perform, and the need for them to understand, particularly in a sharing environment, will the equipment they have already deployed continue to operate as a means to on things like protecting air traffic systems, making sure we are getting weather reports distributed the way they need to be distributed around the country? these are important lifesaving measures that we need to make sure are being performed. agencies naturally have concerns that when we start introducing other transmitters into the spectrum bands, it might interfere with their ability to do their work. what we have is a very thorough, that understands through analysis and testing the implications and effects of bringing these different types of systems together in the same spectrum band. goodeling is that we get

cooperation from federal agencies and conducting these analyses, but we want to make sure they are done properly, because the worst thing that could happen would be to miss something which would lead to problems down the brodie that we did not -- down the road that we did not anticipate. overall, we are getting excellent collaboration. lynn: you said recently that the administration would continue with the same kind of work on spectrum. what would be the outcome as they turn away from sharing and try to find exclusive use? they will beg: unsuccessful. i don't think there is any turning back, and i don't expect there to be. the need for additional spectrum is a need that is not going to go away at the end of the obama administration. it will continue to be a need for any administration halloween this point forward. but i don't think there is any -- following this point forward. but i don't think there is any way to do it other than sharing. the sooner i think we can get everybody fully cognizant of making their own r&d

programs to facilitate that, the better off we will be. lynn: another issue on your plate is the first responder network authority, which is ncia. within in cia -- i think that is a unique arrangement. what is the progress on that? when will first responders actually be able to use this network? mr. strickling: the immediate issue for firstnet is to find its strategic partner. they are in that process right now. they had put out an rfc several months ago seeking interest from companies to come in and indicate how they would partner with firstnet in terms of being able to use the spectrum that was allocated to this by

andress, and utilize leverage their existing infrastructure to be able to deliver services to first responders. i think the expectation is that firstnet would be able to make a selection on that before the end itthe year, and from then would be a series of intense months as we work with that partner to develop plans for each of the states as to how this network would be deployed, and then each state will have an opportunity to look over that plan and decide, yes, we want to sign up for firstnet, or they will have an option to opt out and build their own access network in their state as an alternative to having firstnet do it, but that network. have to be integrated into the overall firstnet core network in order to provide services on an interoperable basis across the country. lynn: because it will use the same spectrum is firstnet. mr. strickling: right.

as for when first responders will be able to sign up, i think we are still away from that, but we are making good progress. the next big milestone is funding this partner and being able to conclude a contract with a strategic partner. lynn: there was criticism from stone -- from some stakeholders that ncia was taking too much of a hands-on approach to firstnet activities. do you think that is fair? would you do something differently if you had to start from scratch? i don't think: those comments understood the reality of what firstnet taste. when the law was passed, it provided several pages of direction for how to pick up and point a board. the board's 15 people. everything else was pretty abstract. .he board was selected at that time, the board had no

employees, there were no ongoing operations, basic systems did we had to so yes, provide things like legal support, media support at the outset, because all you had at the beginning was 15 board members. been many months before they were able to hire an executive director for the organization. yes, firstnet had to rely on ncia for basic survival needs during those early months. maybe people didn't really understand that there was an ongoing organization that could just be slotted in to perform those tasks. but now that we are several years into this, they have now grown, they have their own staff to perform many of these we arens, and i think providing more council and oversight as required by the statute. peter: since you graduated from harvard law school, you have been working in this world.

associate general counsel at the fcc, and the general of the common carrier bureau. you worked for broadband communications and were a promisee coordinator -- a policy coordinator for the obama for america campaign, where you look at technology issues. what did you get right into thousand eight when you were developing his technology? -- in 2008 when you were developing his technology? what would you have done differently? mr. strickling: i can't think of anything today that we should have done differently. i think the focus out of the box was where it needed to be, which was the focus at the start of the administration on expanding broadband access and adoption. that is pivotal to so many issues that we have in our society. giving people access to high-speed internet, to be able to use it to get better education, to find jobs, to communicate with other people, i think that was a key focus at the outset, and it was important that we did that at the outset,

and we had the opportunity with the grant program under the recovery act to do just that. we stood up a grant program in 90 days to put $4 billion of grant money around the country, and the results of that have been nothing short of amazing in the sense that our grantees built over 115,000 miles of fiber and other high-speed infrastructure. we connected tens of thousands anchor institutions to these networks. as had ait hg measurable impact. it is not enough, and the industry has been doing this as well, and they are able to spend more money, but i do think the pump priming that we were able to accomplish or the focus we made on a recovery efforts of 2008 has been important in seeing the expansion of broadband around the country. peter: from your perch as administrator of an tia for the

tia forght years -- n the last eight years, what was your reaction to the house being periscope live on international -- on national tv? what was your reaction to that? positive.ling: very as new technologies developed, we need to find ways to have been utilized and made available to a broader set of people. i think it has been great for not just that, but all the advances we have seen over the last eight years in terms of the new technologies. what we needed to do is provide the environment in which that sort of experimentation and innovation can take lace. i would expect any administration following us to focused onas providing an environment conducive to further exploration. lynn: when you look at those new -- andf technologies

ntia has convened a number of proceedings to develop guidelines on issues like privacy with respect to drones or from on-screen apps. but consumers walked out of the , and whenst year o they walked out the process was largely dominated by industry. do you think there is a future to the multi-stakeholder process? will there be a way to bring dissenting voices back in? does the consumer community really have? mr. strickling: keep in mind that what these processes were intending to create were best practices and codes of conduct. they were not establishing government policies in the sense of, this is now the policy of

ntia. we have had to be very careful to not impose our own judgment on these outcomes. what we have tried to do is provide an opportunity in a facilitated environment for parties to come together and try to solve problems. there is no question that you get the best outcomes when you have the broadest interests present in the room. i was sorry to see the consumer the faciale recognition process, and i think the final outcome would have been stronger if they had participated. we are still developing what is an initial set of best practices, and i think we are all better off having that work done than to simply shut it down and do nothing, because something should have shown up in its place, but what you do have is a committed group of people who came up with something that, while early in

the process and certainly something worthy of coming back to, perhaps multiple times as we see this technology developed and understand it better, the ramifications of it, but we've made that first step. i think that is important, and that's what we have been trying to demonstrate through all of our work on multi-stakeholder discussions. we don't have to solve the problem once and for all, but we can make progress, we can get the issues ventilated, we can get parties to come together and talk about it. each piece of outfit that -- output that we generate is another step that we are making to help solve the issue. as the issue becomes more concrete, congress might want to legislate in the area. eventually, maybe there is an opportunity for regulation to take place. but that should not detract from the fact that we are making progress with the people who want progress. i think that our work in this area has been important in

showing how we can bring people together to reach consensus, and we have made progress substantively in the actual outputs of these groups as they relate to drones, facial recognition, mobile apps. the world is a better place having knees. .> larry strickland this is the communicator. >> i had a rough upbringing and i got involved in the streets and i started selling drugs, marijuana, mescaline tabs, cocaine, and then crack cocaine came out.