RE: [ga] FYI: .org applicant comments (long)

["Karen Elizaga" <karen@elizaga.name>]

Hello Ross & Alexander,

To be clear, what we have described in our .org application is a technical system that has been developed, built and will continue to be operated solely by Global Name Registry.  Nothing in our application alludes to any system, or even components of a system, built by VeriSign.  Therefore, this puts us on an even playing field with only those bidders who have not had the opportunity to have our systems reviewed by Gartner. 

This may or may not have hurt us and other similarly situated bidders - we just don't know.  Our point in raising this issue was simply that (1) previous knowledge about any of the bidders should have been disclosed prior to evaluation, and (2) with the existence of Gartner's previous knowledge about any of the bidders (and therefore the uncertainty of whether this resulted in any advantage of one bidder over another) it can't be said unequivocally that the evaluation was thoroughly impartial or based solely on the evidence provided in each of the carefully prepared bids.

Regards.
KE

-----Original Message-----
From: Alexander Svensson [mailto:alexander@svensson.de]
Sent: 31 August 2002 16:03
To: DNSO General Assembly
Cc: Ross Wm. Rader
Subject: Re: [ga] FYI: .org applicant comments (long)



Hello Ross,

At 31.08.2002 08:34, Ross Rader wrote:
>Any thoughts on GNR's complaint that Neustar may have an unfavorable
>advantage over GNR because of Gartner's prior analysis? 

The report on NeuStar was written by David Fraley of Gartner's
Network Infrastructure group. NeuStar's registry services are
part of that report. There has also been a report on 
how VeriSign cut their fraud rates (fraud against VeriSign, 
that is). It's hard to tell what's in the NeuStar report
without paying the 795 US$, but from the table of contents,
it looks rather like a company portrait, not an in-depth
analysis of their domain name business or their .org chances.

That said, I don't believe that Gartner's prior analysis of
NeuStar has had a significant impact on their recent report.
At least I don't see anything in the Gartner report for ICANN
which indicates that they were more familiar with NeuStar than
with other bidders.

>What I mean is given
>GNR's technical & economic association with Verisign, wouldn't GNR benefit
>from a similar evaluative bias given that Verisign's operation could be
>viewed as the standard by which all other comers are being judged? One would
>assume that the technical evaluators would have a high degree of
>pre-existing familiarity with Verisign and therefore GNR.

GNR gets a 3.48 Gartner score for criterion 1 (stability);
UIA using VeriSign gets a 3.60 score, Afilias scores 3.67,
NeuStar 3.85. It doesn't look like GNR's association with
VeriSign has made a tremendous impression, and some bids
were rated higher than the one using VeriSign (UIA).

It's understandable that almost all the bidders are unhappy
with the evaluation reports which rate them down. However,
there are some points which stick out:
-- The Academic CIO analysis with its "group discussion"
   approach is not suitable for such an evaluation, since
   the ranking is intransparent. Five academic CIOs stating
   that their "team feels [!] that two proposals, NeuStar and 
   ISOC, were the strongest" is utterly unconvincing.
-- The NCDNHC report is much more transparent; unfortunately,
   some errors made it into the published version. Even
   though transparent, the evaluation method is of course
   debatable and it seems that there have been problems
   with contacting some of the bidders (e.g. Organic Names).
-- The Gartner evaluation states criteria and evaluation in
   detail. Even though there are mistakes or at least areas
   where bidders disagree, it is quite transparent. Where
   errors are clear, they should be corrected (as in all other
   reports).
-- The Staff Report should not have recommended a particular
   bidder, and I hope the Board makes it clear to their staff
   that this should never happen again! How is the Board to
   retain their judgement if staff posts a press announcement
   titled "Preliminary Report to ICANN Board: ISOC to Run .org?"?

Best regards,
/// Alexander

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