The U.S. Commerce Department used its presence at a French conference on the “Internet of things” to announce that it will hold a public consultation on the different proposals to cryptographically sign the DNS root zone file, and determine who will hold the root zone trust anchor for global DNSSEC implementation. The call for public comment will be released later this week. (UPDATE: The official Notice of Inquiry has now been published.) The announcement was made by NTIA's Meredith Attwell Baker, who encouraged other governments to participate in the domestic US proceeding. The announcement occurred after NTIA prevented ICANN, the supposedly independent, global, "bottom up" administrator of the DNS, to hold its own public consultation. Also, DoC says it is awaiting a proposal from ICANN regarding "automation" (i.e., EIANA) of certain root functions. ICANN's Paul Twomey, who was on the same panel, declined comment on anything NTIA said; apparently the gag order still holds.