RE: first steps (was The other parts of the report...)

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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

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-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail] [mailto:[e-mail]] On Behalf Of John C Klensin
Sent: 12 September 2004 17:20
To: Harald Tveit Alvestrand; scott bradner; [e-mail]
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 <[e-mail]> wrote:

> 
> 
> --On lørdag, september 11, 2004 17:06:53 -0400 scott bradner 
> <[e-mail]> 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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