.au Domain Administration (auDA) has today released a Request for Tender (RFT) for a registry operator for the .au domain, a key part of Australia’s suite of critical infrastructure.
The role of the .au registry operator will support auDA in the administration and stable, secure, and reliable operation of the .au domain.
The current registry operator’s term is scheduled to expire on 30 June 2024. Accordingly, auDA is seeking tenders from the global open market to appoint a .au registry operator to commence on 1 July 2024 for an initial term of four years.
auDA looks forward to receiving tenders detailing registry services to support more than four million .au domain names and to deliver technical expertise to auDA, as a provider of Australian critical infrastructure.
The RFT comprises:
- The RFT terms and conditions, which among other things sets out the tender process and requirements for responding to the RFT
- The Registry Services Description, which sets out the technical and operational requirements that will be delivered by the successful tenderer
- The draft Registry Services Agreement, which sets out the contractual terms upon which auDA proposes to engage the successful tenderer (available on request from auDA, subject to certain conditions)
- Response templates that tenderers are to complete and which auDA will use to assess tenderers against the evaluation criteria (which include technical and operational capability, financial capability, pricing arrangements and risk).
The RFT documents are available on the auDA website. The RFT closes on 26 June 2023 at 23:59:59 UTC (27 June 2023 at 09:59:59 AEST).
The tender evaluation will be conducted by an evaluation committee that comprises auDA personnel and professionals external to auDA who have technical, operational, financial, legal, probity and risk expertise.
auDA CEO Rosemary Sinclair AM said, “auDA is pleased to support an open, fair and competitive tender process to select a .au registry operator. We look forward to receiving tenders from organisations that share a commitment to delivering value to Australians through .au.”
auDA expects to announce the RFT outcome in second half of 2023.
ENDS
Note to media:
Launch of the RFT follows a public consultation on an Exposure Draft Registry Service Description (Exposure Draft RSD) that provided information about the technical and administrative requirements that auDA anticipated it would require in the RFT. The consultation ran from 28 February to 21 March 2023.
