Yesterday, I published a couple of audio clips from the auDA AGM held on the 28th November.
Here are the next few snippets. Apologies again for the quality – they were done from a distance.
In this first one, Luke Summers (eBranding.com.au on DNT) asks some good questions about regulation and red tape in the .au space. This is answered by both the auDA Chairman (Stuart Benjamin), and the CEO (Cameron Boardman).
The second segment is from Sean Fogarty. He asks some hard questions about direct registrations. Answered by Chairman and CEO.
In the third snippet, Sean asks about memberships and the previously proposed registry tender. Given the furore over the AusRegistry announcement yesterday, you might find some of the CEO’s comments quite interesting. In retrospect, he chose his words rather carefully. The art of being an ex-politician!
At 1:02 of the recording, you can hear another member in the room interrupt the CEO’s response with these words:
“It’s a serious question. Is it going to be a closed tender; or an open …. (indistinguishable)”
What do readers think?
Ned O’Meara – 14 December 2016
Disclaimer
Thanks Ned.
It’s great to have the complete questions and answers, as the details in the AGM minutes have been extensively ‘paraphrased’.
Cam lets the cat out of the bag where he says .au is going to be the platform to the rest of the world. Apparently peeps overseas can’t access .com.au.
Oh he means they are going to flog .au’s to the rest of the world.
I think I heard Cameron Boardman state on the record the register tender would be done via “expressions of interest” .
In my view having written tenders and submitted tender responses for over 25 years including for major corporate entities and government this is vastly at odds to what auDA announced yesterday as “exclusive negotiations with Ausregistry”. That is not “expressions of interest” at all.
I disagree with what auDA has done and I 100% believe they must go out to open tender. If Ausregistry makes the best submission against others great but lets see some transparency and also opportunities for others including Australian business to go for it!
Not going to open tender is not transparent nor is it in the best interest of Australian domain name consumers, resellers or the Australian domain name space including security, pricing, foreign ownership regulations, registry profits from paying Australian domain name registrants going offshore etc.
I call on Cameron Boardman and the auDA board to go to open tender and show they are truly following a more transparent, consultative path for auDA and they do take into consideration the rights of Australian domain consumers as first priority.
In other countries by going to open registry tender has led to new feature and benefit offerings, pricing can be more competitive ( most registries including the incumbent drop their wholesale pricing) , security holes can be fixed and addressed in detail and the issue of where the profits will go can also be determined.
auDA had committed to going to tender. They need to do it or I think they may lose even more credibility. It is apparent auDA has had massive staff changes this year… a lot of promises have been made by new people at auDA and also by some auDA board members why was this done, if nothing actually changes for the better and auDA continues to say one thing and do another than what is the use of all of lost staff?
Will we see auDA do the same trick with direct au registrations… propose more review etc but then do it anyway? Will this bonanza of extra profits also be given to Ausregistry / Neustar Inc USA also?
I find it strange certain people have said the current registry has issues yet they have given them the “exclusive” negotiation opportunity again.
If a company or government departmemt did not go out to open tender for a $100 million 5 year contract extension again it would be in the newspapers … at least!
Having rasied this at the meeting I feel very disappointed.
If auDA needs more time to do it properly then extend the current registry contract until the expressions of interest tender is properly prepared and finishes.
If they do not know how to do the expressions of interest / tender they need to get the Federal Government to help asap. I do have some doubts they can do it properly it seems. Just giving it to Ausregistry again may be what they seem to done via this “exclusive negotiations” this path….. just like ther previous extensions and no tenders previously under the old auDA management and auDA board.
So many years and no open tenders… seriously? Does this look strange to anyone else?
Note from Ned – whilst it is not normally my practise, this post has been edited because it contained miles of “cut and paste”. It contains some excellent info on the last RFT that went out in 2005, and is definitely worth a read. Particularly the questions and answers section.
Here is the link: https://www.auda.org.au/industry-information/registry/registry-tender/
Ref to comment about overseas. I can’t see how anyone at auda would expect to see millions of .au domains sold outside Australia. There are stuff all words that anyone uses in daily language that end in it http://www.wordfind.com/ends-with/au/
Surely no one seriously would imagine that something like the .ly trend could be applicable to .au