John, JCK> To further complicate things, I personally don't think the IETF JCK> has yet figured out enough about what it really wants from the JCK> secretariat part of the function and reached enough consensus on JCK> that to justify any RFP-writing. In this respect, the material JCK> in The Report seems to me to be inadequate unless the definition JCK> of what the IETF wants from the secretariat is "whatever the JCK> IESG or its leadership decide they want on a given day". Bingo! Thank you. Virtually all of the "reorganization" discussion over the last year -- two, or however long it has been going on -- has been about form, and almost literally nothing about the actual work (except to complain that the work has not been getting done "properly". Whenever anyone has been bold enough to ask what the details of the work actually need to be, the response is a hand-waving dismissal. It is time to treat the content of the work at least as seriously as we have been treating the form of the corporate relationships. In fact, we should defer all discussions about form until we have detailed, written agreements about a) the details of the work, b) the budget for getting the work done, and c) the funding basis that will cover the budget, with enough credibility to b and c to feel legitimate for long-term planning. It really is time to make concrete, detailed, substantial descriptions of the functions to be performed, to the level of work statements that would be attached to contracts. JCK> Now, if one separates out the tasks and constructs the RFPs and JCK> evaluation process properly, presumably nothing would prevent JCK> one organization from coming in and saying "we actually have all Right. However the upside to doing these component specifications is that each one can be evaluated carefully and pushed towards completeness. and Harald, HTA> I suspect that the only way we can figure out if anyone can figure out what HTA> we want done from the descriptions we give is to ask them - we don't have HTA> any experience figuring out what the processes of an organization is, we HTA> just have experience with living inside this single instance. Permit me to respectfully disagree...... What you are describing is quite simply handing over complete responsibility for the IETF's operation to someone else. So it would be whatever they tell us it would be. Curiously, this is exactly what you and some others have been claiming is the problem with the current Secretariat relationship. One does not hire a person or an organization with terms that reduce to: "here's a bunch of money, now go figure out what you are going to do for us." d/ -- Dave Crocker <dcrocker-at-brandenburg-dot-com> Brandenburg InternetWorking <www.brandenburg.com> Sunnyvale, CA USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253> _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf