RE: [nc-budget] Secretariat - contingency plan
Phillip-
I
think your point is well-taken. In developing a transition plan to a
fully-procured DNSO support service, the Budget Committee assumed that some form
of staff support would be available by early this year to manage/conduct the
procurement itself. This was based in part on the assumption that our
voluntary fund-raising and recruitment efforts would have gotten underway a
while ago. Unfortunately, our fund-raising efforts have been stalled over
the procedural question of which form we should use to administer these
funds: a trustee relationship with ICANN management; a separate US-based
legal entity; or a separate non-US-based legal entity. On
this question of administration of the funds, the Committee appears to be
fairly evenly split.
So,
the longer term solution is to successfully address the question of how funds
should be administered so that we can get on with the fund-raising process; so
that we can get on with the staff recruitment/selection process; so that we can
get on with the work of the DNSO. But none of this could be done in
time to meet the deadline that we have agreed to with AFNIC.
Consequently, I think we need to do two things:
(1) allocate some some of the DNSO's funds (I would suggest $8K) to hire a
technical consultant who can immediate begin managing the Web/Listserv
procurement process for us (Bidders would simply have to understand that the
legal entity with whom they would be contracting is at this moment not settled
and it might be ICANN, it might be a US corporation, and it might be a non-US
corporation. So we should accept that this particular procurement would
not be of interest to those bidders who are highly risk averse.); and (2) Ask
AFNIC if they would confirm their willingness to continue with status quo
support for the DNSO and to quote us a monthly rate for doing
so.
More
importantly, as NC Chair I'd ask your help in getting us to a speedy conclusion
on the question of how the voluntarily-donated funds should be
administered. I am now satisfied that we can work out satisfactory
arrangements under any of the three scenarios currently under consideration and
am willing to donate the assistance of our outside counsel to helping wrap up
the details once we simple make a decision on direction.
Finally, I'm sorry to report that I believe that it
will be impossible to convene a meeting of the Budget Committee prior to the
next Names Council meeting in response to your request that the Committee
consider alternative budget scenarios. I would point out, however, that
the Committee is already scheduled to meet the following week and to take
up at that time both the funds administration question and the question of how
to deal with non-paying DNSO constituencies. So, while the Council may
want to attempt to address the question of Constituency payments at the same
time that it addresses the question of the 2001 budget, I do not believe that
it needs to do so.
Roger
|