After the .NYC opportunity was brought to the attention of the City of New York, the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) issued an Request for Information (RFI), followed some months later by a Request for Proposals (RFP).
New York City has a mature process for licensing and awarding contracts for its projects, and their RFP was very extensive and required significant resources on the part of the candidates to complete. Smaller cities may wish to have a less burdensome RFP in order to attract a greater number of qualified candidates.
New York City was attracted to the .NYC top-level domain because it saw benefits to the City for branding, tourism, and distribution of city services under an “official” Internet identity. The City was also interested in the benefits .NYC would bring to its residents: good domain names for local businesses and people who want to identify with New York City.
While it is unknown who responded to the RFP, at least two groups have spent years working on .NYC projects: Dot NYC LLC and Connecting NYC.
The City is expected to announce the winner of its RFP sometime in the first quarter of 2010.
