As I know Lars likes using the car analogy, maybe this is a way of looking at it: in 2012, technical evaluation paid for a seat on a very big bus which included a lot of other evaluations and aspects of the program. Per the SubPro recommendations, for the next round technical evaluation was taken off that bus and had to get its own. As part of that, it is not only the costs of the seat that needs to be covered, but also the new bus, the insurance, gas (e.g. RSP system development, RSP handbook, system maintenance, staff support). As said previously, comparing technical evaluation of the 2012 round with RSP is comparing apples to oranges, but bringing in MSA is like comparing it with chickens because that is part of ICANN’s operations which is structured and funded in a very different way compared to the next round.
Besides what Neil already mentioned regarding analogies, the MSA fee is what pays evaluators external to Org to make a full technical evaluation. So it’s not dependent on other sources of funding. If the structure is 6.5x costlier then that’s where the problem is.
As indicated, the team will be sharing more details on the RSP budget so that will hopefully provide some further insight into the different parts that comprise the development, implementation and running of RSP and for which the costs need to be recuperated per the policy recommendations.
This will likely trigger a bunch of fee ceiling definitions in future policies, exactly because the RSP program didn’t follow the overall guidance of the SubPro policy. Policy development has been so far wary of defining fees but this episode will strongly hamper community’s confidence in reasonability of decisions impacting fees everywhere. Rubens