Hello all, As heads on the work for contracting an independent secretariat, the discussion is ongoing with ICANN procurement team to finalise the RfP inline with there practices and policy. I had a conference call with Viveck the Head of ICANN procurement team end of last week and we agree to have the RfP released by the end of this week and have the secretariat contracted before LA meeting. A new mailing list has been setup for this (SecretariatForICG-rfp@icann.org) which will be used for proposal submission and discussion of the sub-committee (currently made of Myself, Daniel, Russ and Patrik as Vice-Chair to whom the followup on this task has been assigned). As per ICANN process there will be a need to publish before the actual RfP, a call for Expression of Interest (EoI) to know in advance who is planing to respond to the RfP (this facilitate further communication if needed). The text proposed for the call for EoI is straight forward and past bellow for your information (same as what is in the introductory text of the RfP document in Dropbox). This EoI is planned to be published today or tomorrow and run till the 7th. —— ICANN will issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) to select a successful bidder and enter into a contractual agreement with a suitable contractor to perform a secretariat function for the IANA stewardship transition Coordination Group (ICG). The ICG is setup by ICANN and composed of representatives from different stakeholders groups to coordinate and deliver a proposal single proposal to the U.S National Telecommunication and Information Administration Department (NTIA) regarding the transition of NTIA’s stewardship role of the IANA function (currently preformed by ICANN) to a Multistakeholder mechanism. For more information about the ICG and its role please visit: https://www.icann.org/en/stewardship/coordination-group If you are interested in bidding for this proposal please send an Expression of Intent (EoI) to SecretariatForICG-rfp@icann.org by 07 September 2014 The Expression of Interest shall provide the Name of Organisation your organisation and your Contact details. ——— Thanks. - a.