New gTLD program and ICANN's existence are inconsistent with US Government Contracting Procedures

[George Kirikos <gkirikos@xxxxxxxxx>]

In light of the NTIA/DOJ letter strongly suggesting how competitive procurement 
should take place, to lower costs for consumers, I am encouraged by today's 
directive by the US government regarding contracting procedures:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090304/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_waste

"Those new rules, officials said, would make it more difficult for contractors 
to bilk taxpayers and make some half-trillion dollars in federal contracts each 
year more accessible to independent contractors."

"Obama will say that his administration will stop outsourcing to private 
contractors many services that should be performed by government employees. He 
also pledged to open contracts to small businesses and eliminate "unnecessary" 
no-bid contracts that allow preferred contractors to take assignments even 
though they might not be the least expensive option."

Obviously, the services provided by both VeriSign and ICANN can be performed 
much less expensively by either in-house government employees or by competitive 
tenders. Just like Neustar won the .us contract, VeriSign should have to 
compete to provide .com/net registry services, as should PIR (who have raised 
prices substantially) for .org. For .com alone, consumers and businesses, who 
are also taxpayers, would save on the order of $400 million per year through 
competitive procurement.

It's clear that for any new gTLDs that the community agrees should be added to 
the root, that there should be a tender process to see who would perform that 
at the lowest cost for a given set of contract specifications. This is the 
exact opposite of how ICANN wishes to manage things, auctioning off the new 
TLDs to the highest bidder to maximize its own benefit (at the expense of 
consumers). ICANN itself has demonstrated they are not the "least expensive 
option", as not only is their own budget out of control:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090105_icann_for_profit_companies_comparables/
http://www.circleid.com/posts/20090203_icann_blows_46_million_stock_market/

but they actively propose to raise business and consumers costs through 
ill-conceived programs like the new gTLDs boondoggle. This is not the way a 
true "custodian" should operate. This demonstrates the capture of ICANN by 
entities that no longer represent the public interest, as seen by the manner 
that the public majority is routinely dismissed in order to favour a select 
minority, through mechanisms like weighted-voting. The proposed new gTLD 
"experiment" needs to be radically reformed, and put on the back burner for a 
post-ICANN world where the technical coordination function currently outsourced 
to ICANN is taken back in-house by the NTIA. It's clear given ICANN's attempt 
to force new gTLDs upon the public that US government employees can represent 
the public interest in a superior manner.

Sincerely,

George Kirikos
http://www.leap.com/