The U.S. Commerce Department said Wednesday it will extend its oversight of the California-based organization that handles the internet's domain name policies, while finding ways to improve the group's accountability and transparency.

John Kneuer, the department's acting assistant secretary for communications and information, said the government's current agreement with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) works and should continue.

Commerce plans to renew a memorandum of understanding with ICANN, but it will likely add provisions designed to address complaints that the group is sometimes too secret and makes decisions that don't reflect the internet community at large.

The current agreement expires at the end of the month, but neither Kneuer nor Paul Twomey, ICANN's president and chief executive, provided details about the length of the pending extension or about any changes.

ICANN was selected in 1998 to handle the internet's addressing issues, including the key directories that help web browsers and e-mail programs find other computers on the internet. The U.S. government, which funded the internet's early development, kept veto powers over ICANN decisions.

When Commerce last renewed the agreement, in 2003, it suggested ICANN would be ready for self-sufficiency by Sept. 30, 2006. But even advocates of independence believe ICANN is not ready.

In an interview, David McGuire of the Center for Democracy and Technology warned that letting ICANN go too early opens it up to a takeover by another body, such as the United Nations.

"What we ultimately would love to see would be a completely non-governmental, bottoms-up management body," McGuire said. "At this point, that's just … not something we think is necessarily even viable."

In recent years, many countries frustrated with U.S. control of a global resource have called for such a move, but the United States resisted and during a UN summit last November won an endorsement from world leaders for keeping control. Instead, the United States agreed to join in a newly created forum to discuss matters ICANN wouldn't normally handle.

Kneuer told a Senate commerce subcommittee Wednesday that stakeholders who had submitted comments on the government's agreement with ICANN generally favoured the Commerce Department's continued involvement but wanted "a more specific focus on transparency and accountability in ICANN's internal procedures and decision-making processes."

Christine Jones, general counsel for domain registration company GoDaddy, recommended the pact's renewal with a roadmap for ICANN "to regain the confidence of the community it serves."