Hi John -
At the risk of being too specific about this, the "meeting
planning" function(s) and the "[standards] secretariat" one(s)
have almost nothing to do with each other --other than, in our
case, some rather important history.
Agreed, with the addition of Steve Crocker's point about the
meeting agenda being part of what you call the "[standards] secretariat"
and what I termed the "Clerk's Office".
To further complicate things, I personally don't think the IETF
has yet figured out enough about what it really wants from the
secretariat part of the function and reached enough consensus on
that to justify any RFP-writing.
I agree with you. My personal view is that a better strategy
for that piece is to attempt to negotiate a sole source contract
with CNRI. I don't think we understand the process (indeed
we probably haven't defined the process enough) to do an RFP.
Just my view, and there are reasonable opinions to the contrary.
Now, if one separates out the tasks and constructs the RFPs and
evaluation process properly, presumably nothing would prevent
one organization from coming in and saying "we actually have all
of these skills, can justify your giving us the whole cluster of
tasks, and can give you a price break if you sign up with us for
more than one of then". That is actually done fairly routinely
in some settings. If there are viable candidates, it would give
you what you seem to be looking for below without imposing a
rather strange constraint on combinations of skills.
That's kind of how I wrote the RFP. Again, just my personal view,
it didn't seem prudent or wise to attempt to change all of our
horses in mid-stream. Of course, if we'd like to stick with CNRI
with some functions, it is important that we begin a dialogue
with them. It isn't easy for them since they aren't sure what
the IETF would like to do.
I've seen several comments that the mailing list or web presence
functions seem pretty straightforward to issue an RFI (a request
for information) to see what our options are. By drawing a
broader brush than just mail or web, I think we could get a
pretty good idea of what kind of support we might get in the
way of good proposals. That's why I recommended a broader
"network presence" function be considered.
In summary, I outlined three pieces:
1. meeting planning
2. core network
3. clerk's office
We could do sole source procurement on 0-3 of those pieces, or
an RFP on 0-3 of those pieces, or we could pick a different
decomposition. I don't think you can do both a sole source
procurement and an RFP on the same piece, though, so that is a
decision point. And, there is a bit of urgency to make that
decision since it is hard to move forward during a
transition period. (I used the word "urgent" instead
of, say, "panic" ... we do have some time to get this right,
but it would be nice to move along with all due deliberate
speed.)
Regards,
Carl
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