Internet DRAFT - draft-dawkins-iesg-nomcom-advisor-iaoc
draft-dawkins-iesg-nomcom-advisor-iaoc
IESG S. Dawkins
Internet-Draft Wonder Hamster
Updates: 7437 (if approved) September 2, 2017
Intended status: Best Current Practice
Expires: March 6, 2018
IAB, IESG, and IAOC Selection, Confirmation, and Recall Process:
IAOC Advisor for the Nominating Committee
draft-dawkins-iesg-nomcom-advisor-iaoc-03.txt
Abstract
This specification formalizes an ad hoc practice used to provide
advice to the IETF Nominating Committee about the operations of the
IETF Administrative Oversight Committee.
This document updates RFC 7437.
Status of This Memo
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provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
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This Internet-Draft will expire on March 6, 2018.
Copyright Notice
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described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Discussion Venue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Background on 'IAOC Liaisons' to Nominating Committees . . . 2
4. BCP Text Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
4.1. Change to Section 4.3, 'Structure' . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
7. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
8. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Appendix A. Discussion Points . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A.1. Why is this Role an Advisor? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A.2. Why is this Role not a Liaison? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
A.3. Why is this Role not required to be a Sitting IAOC
Member? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
A.4. Why Does the Nominating Committee Request an IAOC
Advisor? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1. Introduction
This specification formalizes an ad hoc practice used to provide
advice to the IETF Nominating Committee about the operations of the
IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC) (described in
[RFC4071]).
This document updates [RFC7437].
2. Discussion Venue
Please direct questions and comments to the IETF Discussion mailing
list, at https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf.
Please note that background on discussion points that have come up
previously on the public IETF Nomcom discussion mailing list, at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf-nomcom, during review is
provided in Appendix A.
3. Background on 'IAOC Liaisons' to Nominating Committees
When RFC 7437 [RFC7437] was approved, it explicitly charged the
Nominating Committee with selecting and reviewing certain members of
the IAOC. However, [RFC7437] did not provide for the IAOC to send a
liaison to the Nominating Committee.
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This was not thought to be an obstacle, because [RFC7437] allowed any
committee member to propose a liaison from the IAOC:
Any committee member may propose the addition of a liaison from
other unrepresented organizations to participate in some or all of
the deliberations of the committee. The addition must be approved
by the committee according to its established voting mechanism.
Liaisons participate as representatives of their respective
organizations.
Beginning in 2010, the IAOC provided a liaison to each Nominating
Committee. In 2016, the IAOC did not provide a liaison because the
Nominating Committee was not appointing an IAOC member. The previous
Nominating Committee had filled a mid-term vacancy, using the process
described in Section 3.5. of [RFC7437], appointing an IAOC member for
a term longer than two years. In 2017, the NomCom was selecting an
IAOC member, but the opportunity to request a liaison from the IAOC
was overlooked, because because this practice wasn't part of the
documented process in [RFC7437].
This specification adds the previously ad hoc role to [RFC7437], so
future Nominating Committees will be less likely to overlook it.
Although past ad hoc practice has characterized this role as a
"liaison", this specification labels the role as an "advisor". The
rationale for this change in nomenclature is provided in
Appendix A.1.
4. BCP Text Changes
This section provides the updated BCP text for [RFC7437].
For each OLD text selection, NEW text is provided that replaces the
OLD text in [RFC7437].
4.1. Change to Section 4.3, 'Structure'
OLD
Any committee member may propose the addition of an advisor to
participate in some or all of the deliberations of the committee.
The addition must be approved by the committee according to its
established voting mechanism. Advisors participate as
individuals.
NEW
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Any committee member may propose the addition of an advisor to
participate in some or all of the deliberations of the committee.
The addition must be approved by the committee according to its
established voting mechanism. Advisors participate as
individuals.
Committee members are encouraged to propose the addition of an
advisor who is knowledgeable about the operations of the IAOC,
whether or not that Nominating Committee is reviewing an IAOC
position. The Nominating Committee may choose to ask the IAOC to
suggest an advisor who is knowledgeable about IAOC operations, but
may select any advisor they vote to approve.
5. Security Considerations
This document updates an IETF process BCP and has no direct Internet
security implications.
6. IANA Considerations
This document makes no requests of IANA, and the RFC Editor can
safely remove this section during publication.
7. Acknowledgements
Thanks to Adrian Farrel, Alissa Cooper, Andy Malis, Alvaro Retana,
Joel Halpern, John Klensin, Leslie Daigle, Michael Richardson, Robert
Sparks, Russ Housley, S. Moonesamy, Scott Bradner, Stephen Farrell,
and Ted Hardie for providing feedback on early versions of this
document.
Joel Halpern (2009/2010 past Chair/advisor) and Michael Richardson
(2014-2015 Chair) are especially appreciated, because only a few
people can provide a Nominating Committee Chair's perspective on how
useful representation from the IAOC has been in practice.
8. Normative References
[RFC4071] Austein, R., Ed. and B. Wijnen, Ed., "Structure of the
IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA)", BCP 101,
RFC 4071, DOI 10.17487/RFC4071, April 2005,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc4071>.
[RFC7437] Kucherawy, M., Ed., "IAB, IESG, and IAOC Selection,
Confirmation, and Recall Process: Operation of the
Nominating and Recall Committees", BCP 10, RFC 7437,
DOI 10.17487/RFC7437, January 2015, <https://www.rfc-
editor.org/info/rfc7437>.
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Appendix A. Discussion Points
This section preserves discussions and explanations that came up
during document discussions. Ordinarily, this section might be
deleted during the evaluation process, but some questions came up
repeatedly and consistently, so the editor plans to leave them for
anyone who also shares those questions.
A.1. Why is this Role an Advisor?
The editor of this document briefly considered proposing a new and
IAOC-specific role to [RFC7437], but considered such a proposal to be
complex. Anticipating every corner case in IETF process BCPs is
challenging and error-prone, and as this specification was being
written, the IETF Chair was sponsoring a design team reviewing all
aspects of the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA), so the
structure and membership of the IAOC itself could change in the near
future. Instead, the specification describes how the Nominating
Committee requests advisors, building on mature text that has
survived many Nominating Committee cycles.
After choosing to reuse existing roles defined in [RFC7437], the
definition of Advisor in Section 4.9 seemed appropriate.
An advisor is responsible for such duties as specified by the
invitation that resulted in the appointment.
Advisors do not vote on the selection of candidates.
The position described in this specification could be filled by an
advisor who would be a non-voting member of the Nominating Committee,
who is knowledgeable about the operations of the IAOC, with duties
that could evolve over time as the IAOC itself evolves.
The only difference between this advisor that requires an update to
[RFC7437] and and any other advisor is that committee members are
explicitly encouraged to suggest that this advisor be appointed, as
described in this specification. The text updating [RFC7437] is
found in Section 4.
A.2. Why is this Role not a Liaison?
Discussions on the IETF-Nomcom mailing list led to the recognition
that "liaison" was not the best description of this role.
The role of liaison defined in [RFC7437], Section 4.7 places some
significant obligations on liaisons that aren't necessary for
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Nominating Committee to ask questions and get answers about the IAOC
that come up in deliberations. These obligations include
o Liaisons are responsible for ensuring the nominating committee in
general and the Chair in particular execute their assigned duties
in the best interests of the IETF community.
o Liaisons from the IESG, IAB, and Internet Society Board of
Trustees (if one was appointed) are expected to review the
operation and executing process of the nominating committee and to
report any concerns or issues to the Chair of the nominating
committee immediately. If they can not resolve the issue between
themselves, liaisons must report it according to the dispute
resolution process stated elsewhere in this document.
o Liaisons may have other nominating committee responsibilities as
required by their respective organizations or requested by the
nominating committee, except that such responsibilities may not
conflict with any other provisions of this document.
Finally, in [RFC7437],Section 4.6, all of the liaisons are included
in the pool of people who are eligible to be selected as a
replacement for a Chair.
There are a variety of ordinary circumstances that may arise from
time to time that could result in a Chair being unavailable to
oversee the activities of the committee. The Chair, in
consultation with the Internet Society President, may appoint a
substitute from a pool comprised of the liaisons currently serving
on the committee and the prior year's Chair or designee.
Note: During discussion of this specification, we noted that any
liaison would be part of the pool of potential substitute
Nominating Committee chairs. It wasn't clear to the people in the
discussion that making liaisons who are voted onto the Nominating
committee eligible to be substitute Chairs is intentional. That
potential change is out of scope for this specification, but may
be a conversation worth having separately.
All of these obligations are important, but there are always at least
two full liaisons from the confirming bodies already responsible for
those responsibilities. It is simply not necessary to make the job
of helping Nominating Committee understand the IAOC more demanding
than it must be.
So, requiring the IAOC to name a formal liaison to the Nominating
Committee isn't justified.
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A.3. Why is this Role not required to be a Sitting IAOC Member?
In addition to the reasons given in Section Appendix A.2, the
requirement that the IAB and IESG liaisons to the Nominating
Committee be sitting members of the organizations they represent,
whose positions are not being reviewed by this Nominating Committee,
is especially challenging for the IAOC.
Because so many IAOC positions are filled by members who are already
members of IETF leadership who are subject to review by the
Nominating Committee, limiting an IAOC liaison to one of the sitting
members would mean that in some years, only the person who was
appointed by the previous Nominating Committee and not being reviewed
by this Nominating Committee, and the person who was appointed by the
IAB or IESG and not being reviewed by the IAB/IESG, would be eligible
sitting members of the IAOC who could serve as a liaison for the
Nominating Committee. "Eligible" does not also mean "willing and
able to serve", so it is not impossible that in some years, an IAOC
might find itself with no sitting member to send as advisor.
Although all IAOC liaisons to the Nominating Committee have served as
sitting members of the IAOC, given 10 years of IAOC operation, this
specification assumes that other members of the community have
sufficent experience to provide guidance if the IAOC chooses to
suggest such a person. If any given IAOC thought that was important,
they could certainly continue to suggest sitting members, but if no
sitting member was willing and able to serve, the IAOC would be free
to do the next best thing, and would likely be the best qualiified
group to decide who to send.
A.4. Why Does the Nominating Committee Request an IAOC Advisor?
This specification could have described the mechanism in one of two
ways.
o The IAOC could simply provide the name of the advisor to the
Nominating Committee, or
o The Nominating Committee could request the name of an advisor from
the IAOC.
Either choice could work. The reason that this specification chose
to have the Nominating Committee make the first move is that this is
more similar to the way other advisors to the Nominating Committee
are selected, except that the Nominating Committee is asking the IAOC
for a suggestion before inviting the advisor to join the Nominating
Committee.
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The suggestion is, in fact a suggestion, and the Nominating Committee
still votes to invite this advisor, as they would vote to invite any
advisor, as described in [RFC7437], Section 4.3.
Author's Address
Spencer Dawkins
Wonder Hamster Internetworking LLC
Email: spencerdawkins.ietf@gmail.com
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