For some reasons Michele's mail did not reach the list(or better put did not reach me). FWIW, I thought I was the only one that had significant concern on the legal costs for this process. The arguments made earlier was that this is normal pricing for top notch firm with the required speciality in California law.
Unfortunately opening things to RFP at this stage may not be a wise thing to do as we will loose significant "knowledge about ICANN" that the current firm now have (which ofcourse was one of the reasons for the high amount already expended).
Regards Sent from my LG G4 Kindly excuse brevity and typos On 23 Jun 2016 15:00, "Gomes, Chuck" <cgomes@verisign.com> wrote:
Without any intention to detract from Michele’s main questions, I inserted a few comments below that I think are important to keep in mind.
Chuck
*From:* community-finance-bounces@icann.org [mailto: community-finance-bounces@icann.org] *On Behalf Of *Michele Neylon - Blacknight *Sent:* Thursday, June 23, 2016 9:26 AM *To:* Xavier J. Calvez; community-finance@icann.org; cwg-stewardship@icann.org *Cc:* Executive Team; BFC *Subject:* Re: [community-finance] FY17 Budget update: Section 4 on IANA Stewardship
Xavier
Just reading over this and a few comments / concerns.
It sounds like this expenditure is being viewed as a fait accompli and it’s really case of moving things around to work out how it will be funded, which seems a bit backwards. How can you agree on the expenditure for a project without knowing how you will fund it?
*[Chuck Gomes] Don’t we know how it will be funded, i.e., via reserves? What we don’t know is whether the reserves will be restored and how, as Michele notes below.*
The reserves are already depleted and there doesn’t appear to be any firm plan on how those reserves will be restored, unless I missed something. Yet the expenditure keeps growing.
*[Chuck Gomes] As I understand the word ‘depleted’, I don’t think that it is accurate to say that the reserves are depleted. In my mind, that would mean there are no reserves left. As I am sure Michele knows, that is not the case. But it is true that they have been significantly reduced. There also appears to be sufficient reserves to cover future unbudgeted expenses and still have a sizable balance in the reserves, albeit a lot less than the currently targeted level of one year of operating expenses.*
The legal fees are again ridiculously high. How does ICANN select vendors for these kind of services? Is there a tender process? Is there an RFP?
*[Chuck Gomes] Note that the CWG Stewardship via its client committee and the CCWG Accountability via its mechanisms selected the two external legal firms. That doesn’t mean that any existing tender processes shouldn’t have applied but I am pretty sure that time constraints were an issue.*
Regards
Michele
--
Mr Michele Neylon
Blacknight Solutions
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*From: *<community-finance-bounces@icann.org> on behalf of " xavier.calvez@icann.org" <xavier.calvez@icann.org> *Date: *Monday 20 June 2016 at 03:07 *To: *"community-finance@icann.org" <community-finance@icann.org>, " cwg-stewardship@icann.org" <cwg-stewardship@icann.org> *Cc: *Executive Team <executive-team@icann.org>, BFC <fin-comm@icann.org> *Subject: *[community-finance] FY17 Budget update: Section 4 on IANA Stewardship
Dear all,
Please find attached an extract from the final FY17 Budget document relative to the IANA Stewardship transition (Section 4), currently under review, prior to Board consideration for approval in Helsinki.
You may remember that the Draft budget document submitted for public comment did not include information on the FY17 expenses for this project. The Project Cost Support Team created in Marrakech has been working with the BFC, the CCWG, CWG, ICG co-chairs and involved staff to estimate the draft project’s expenses for FY17. These draft estimates have been included in the attached section (total $8.8m, page 3/10).
Though offered late in the process, as these estimates are under review, your comments and questions on this section are welcome.
Thank you.
Best,
Xavier
Xavier Calvez
ICANN
CFO
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