Purchase Order No. 40S8NT067D20 (NTIA/ICANN) is in violation of
Federal Acquisition Regulations for the following reasons:
1) There were no competitors for the contract;
2) The offer was not made publicly;
3) The contract was not put up for bids;
4) Contractor NTIA's representative, Beckwith Burr, was instrumental
in the formation of ICANN, the recipient of the contract;
5) Contractor's representative Burr is personally acquainted with
companies and individuals financing recipient ICANN and has
facilitated its acquisition of the contract;
6) Contractor's representative Burr has not ensured that recipient
ICANN conform to contract requirements of the NTIA, specifically
that recipient be a membership organization representative of a
consensus of service stakeholders including users;
7) The NTIA's Burr sits on an advisory committee of recipient ICANN,
the Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which is a per se
organizational conflict;
8) An officer of the recipient - ICANN President Michael Roberts -
is a representative of an important organization - EDUCAUSE -
contracting services with ICANN and therefore is in conflict of
interests with the contract;
9) The attorney for recipient ICANN, Joe Sims, who wrote ICANN's
bylaws and, according to Congressional testimony, was instrumental
in selecting its Board of Directors, is a former officer of the
Antitrust Bureau of the U.S. Department of Justice and was chosen
for his ICANN functions specifically to attempt to make recipient
ICANN impervious to antitrust action, to which it would naturally be
vulnerable and liable as a cartel of special interests;
10) Members of ICANN's Board of Directors are representatives of
special economic interests, such as IBM, that will have unfair
competitive advantage in controlling the contracted Internet
services.
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Federal Acquisition Regulation (http://www.arnet.gov/far/)
Subpart 9.5--Organizational and Consultant Conflicts of Interest
.500 Scope of subpart.
This subpart--
(a) Prescribes responsibilities, general rules, and procedures for
identifying, evaluating, and resolving organizational conflicts of
interest;
"Organizational conflict of interest" means that because of other
activities or relationships with other persons, a person is unable
or potentially unable to render impartial assistance or advice to
the
Government, or the person's objectivity in performing the contract
work is or might be otherwise impaired, or a person has an unfair
competitive advantage.
9.502 Applicability.
(a) This subpart applies to contracts with either profit or
nonprofit
organizations, including nonprofit organizations created largely or
wholly with Government funds.
(c) An organizational conflict of interest may result when factors
create an actual or potential conflict of interest on an instant
contract, or when the nature of the work to be performed on the
instant contract creates an actual or potential conflict of interest
on a future acquisition. In the lattercase, some restrictions on
future activities of the contractor may be required.
9.505 General rules.
The two underlying principles are--
(a) Preventing the existence of conflicting roles that might bias a
contractor's judgment; and
(b) Preventing unfair competitive advantage. In addition to the
other
situations described in this subpart, an unfair competitive
advantage
exists where a contractor competing for award of any Federal
contract
possesses--
(1) Proprietary information that was obtained from a Government
official without proper authorization; or
(2) Source selection information (as defined in 3.104�3) that is
relevant to the contract but is not available to all competitors,
and such information would assist that contractor in obtaining the
contract.
