Perhaps it hasn't been said because it's obvious: operationally, if you ensure
*simultaneous* placing and renewal of all the contracts for functional
components, people have the opportunity to bid for as many functional
components as they can handle.
Regards,
Graham Travers
International Standards Manager
BT Group
e-mail: graham(_dot_)travers(_at_)bt(_dot_)com
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-----Original Message-----
From: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
[mailto:ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of John C Klensin
Sent: 12 September 2004 17:20
To: Harald Tveit Alvestrand; scott bradner; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: first steps (was The other parts of the report...)
Harald,
Let me try a different answer from Scott's, with just about the same
conclusion.
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. It would be very rare to
find one organization that would be equally skilled at actually doing both.
Creating an opportunity for one organization to "win" a bid by strength in one
area while dragging the other one
along is just looking for trouble. Now it is still an open
question whether one wants to parse the situation into even more tasks, such as
separating "secretariat" from "mailing lists" and/or "archiving and web site
maintenance", and potentially different groups. But those two task areas seem
really different.
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. In this
respect, the material in The Report seems to me to be inadequate unless the
definition of what the IETF wants from the secretariat is "whatever the IESG or
its leadership decide they want on a given day". That definition would, IMO,
be bad for the IETF and would call the intelligence of anyone who would respond
to the RFP into question (even though it would permit the IETF to have a lot of
control).
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.
john
--On Sunday, 12 September, 2004 16:16 +0200 Harald Tveit Alvestrand
<harald(_at_)alvestrand(_dot_)no> wrote:
--On lørdag, september 11, 2004 17:06:53 -0400 scott bradner
<sob(_at_)harvard(_dot_)edu> wrote:
imo it would least disruptive to follow option #3 (combo path) and
try to negotiate a sole source contract with Foretec/CNRI for what
Carl called the clerk function and maybe some other functions (imo it
would be better to outsorce the management of the mailing lists and
their archives to a company in that
business)
One thing that worries me about the "piecemeal" approach with some
functions under sole source is that for a long time we've been
operating with all functions in one body (except for RFC Editor and
IANA). There are some economies of scale with integrating those
functions.
If we follow the combo path, we also commit ourselves to breaking the
function into multiple pieces - which may discriminate against a
solution where other suppliers of services may be able to do "the
whole thing" more effectively than they can do parts of it.
How much is this a problem?
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