Internet DRAFT - draft-duke-gendispatch-rfc8989bis
draft-duke-gendispatch-rfc8989bis
Network Working Group M. Duke
Internet-Draft Google LLC
Obsoletes: 8989 (if approved) 8 July 2022
Updates: 8713 (if approved)
Intended status: Best Current Practice
Expires: 9 January 2023
Nomcom Eligibility
draft-duke-gendispatch-rfc8989bis-00
Abstract
The IETF Nominating Committee (NomCom) appoints candidates to most
IETF leadership committee. RFC8713 provides criteria for membership
on Nomcom that attempts to ensure that NomCom volunteers are members
of the loosely defined IETF community, by requiring in-person
attendance in three of the past five in- person meetings. In 2020
and 2021, the IETF had six consecutive fully online plenary meetings
that drove rapid advancement in remote meeting technologies and
procedures, including an experiment that included remote attendance
for NomCom eligibility. This document updates RFC8713 by building a
new set of eligibility criteria from first principles, with
consideration for the increased salience of remote attendance.
Status of This Memo
This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the
provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79.
Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering
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material or to cite them other than as "work in progress."
This Internet-Draft will expire on 9 January 2023.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (c) 2022 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
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This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (https://trustee.ietf.org/
license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document.
Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights
and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components
extracted from this document must include Revised BSD License text as
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provided without warranty as described in the Revised BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. Conventions and Definitions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. NomCom Principles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3.1. Some Opinionated Assertions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
4.1. Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
5. Available Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
6. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
7. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
8.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1. Introduction
[RFC8713]} defines the process for selection of the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG),
IETF Trust, and the IETF LLC Director. These four committees form
the senior leadership of the IETF. A key actor in the process is the
Nominating Committee (NomCom), which nominates a single candidate for
each open position from the pool of volunteers, subject to
confirmation by other bodies.
Nomcom voting members are themselves volunteers that have met certain
eligibility requirements. The actual NomCom is selected at random
from the pool of eligible volunteers, with restrictions to ensure
that no more than two volunteers with the same primary affiliation
are chosen.
Section 4.14 of [RFC8713] requires that volunteers must have attended
three of the previous five in-person meetings. In practice, this has
meant that the volunteer picked up their registration badge. Current
members of the Internet Society Board of Trustees, IETF Trust, LLC
Board, IAB, and IESG are ineligible.
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[RFC8989] specified an experiment in the wake of six consecutive
fully online meetings from 2020 to 2021, where the traditional
interpretation of the requirement would have resulted in no eligible
volunteers. It extended the attendance requirement to define meeting
attendance as including logging in to at least one session of a
fully-online IETF meeting.
RFC8989 also created two other tracks to obtain eligibility: (1)
serving as a working group chair or secretary in the past 3 years,
and (2) author or editor of an IETF Stream RFC in the past five
years, including internet-drafts in the RFC Editor queue.
This document discusses some of the first principles that inform the
design of NomCom eligibility. It makes recommendations on how the
future process should work. Its objective is to eventually replace
Sectoin 4.14 of RFC8713 with criteria loosely based on those in
RFC8989.
2. Conventions and Definitions
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "NOT RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and
"OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in
BCP 14 [RFC2119] [RFC8174] when, and only when, they appear in all
capitals, as shown here.
3. NomCom Principles
The NomCom is intended to be composed of randomly selected members of
"the community." For many years, in-person attendance was a
reasonable proxy for the commitment associated with being a member.
Two days of travel and an attendance fee is a relatively large
expenditure of time and money. Additionally, in-person attendance is
thought to increase personal familiarity with candidates for
leadership positions, although there is no mechanism to ensure any
interactions. Finally, the NomCom interview process was largely
conducted in-person at IETF meetings, so the ability to attend was a
prerequisite to participate.
Beyond the principle that the community should govern itself,
selecting volunteers with a demonstrated commitment to the
organization, while limiting the number from any organization avoids
the potential for mischief via nominations that disrupt IETF
operations or attempt to "take over" the IETF on behalf of that
organization.
However, there are numerous problems and vulnerabilities with the
criteria:
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* Attitudes to business travel evolve, and remote meeting technology
continues to improve, to the extent that many longstanding
community members choose to participate remotely.
* The NomCom process is now fully remote.
* In-person attendance involves roughly two days of travel and the
registration fee. Some organizations may find this to be a small
price to pay to shape the IETF, compared to the cost of sustained
involvement in IETF activities.
* Affiliations are difficult to verify; understanding alliances and
other relationships between organizations is nearly impossible.
Among the RFC8989 criteria, counting remote attendance lowers the
barriers to entry. As IETF is committed to having a no-fee remote
option, ([I-D.draft-kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-fee]), the only required
investment is to log on once per meeting at a specific time
(sometimes a locally inconvenient hour).
Further, practices for authors and editors of RFCs vary widely. Some
listed authors expend very little time on publishing draftss, having
contributed an idea or lending their name to bestow prestige on a
document.
Conversely, it is historically difficult recruit volunteers for
NomCom, so overly restrictive criteria work against getting a deep
talent pool.
3.1. Some Opinionated Assertions
Time commitment is more meaningful than money expended. For many
organizations, the fiscal costs are negligible. For other committed
participants, they are insurmountable. But everyone has the same
amount of time.
We can't measure the passive time spent on IETF (e.g. spent reading
mailing lists), but there are outcomes from active time spent (emails
sent, drafts written) that we can measure.
There are numerous appointed positions (Working Group Chair,
Directorate Review, Designated Expert) where leadership will
generally police members that are not meeting minimum contribution
levels.
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4. Criteria
The following paths to qualification replace Section 4.14 of
[RFC8713]. Any one of the paths is sufficient, unless the person is
otherwise disqualified under Section 4.15 of [RFC8713].
Path 1: For 3 out of the past 5 IETF meetings, the person has either
(a) attended in person, or (b) been listed as a presenter on the
agenda for any working group or research group at that meeting.
Path 2: The person has served as a Working Group Chair, Secretary,
Directorate or Review Team reviewer, or IANA Designated Expert for at
least six months over the past three years prior to the day the call
for NomCom volunteers is sent to the community.
Path 3: The person has personally uploaded an internet-draft to
datatracker for two IETF Stream RFCs within the last 5 years prior to
the day the call for NomCom volunteers is sent to the community. An
Internet-Draft that has been approved by the IESG and is in the RFC
Editor queue counts the same as a published RFC, with the relevant
date being the date the draft was added to the RFC Editor queue. For
avoidance of doubt, the 5-year timer extends back to the date 5 years
before the date when the call for NomCom volunteers is sent to the
community.
4.1. Rationale
Path 1: Obtaining working group agenda time is a demonstration of a
valuable contribution to IETF work, and is resistant to trivial
contributions (blank email, silly comments from the queue) that could
artifically inflate stats. Volunteering to take minutes, if the
tooling was feasible, would be a valuable addition to this path.
This narrows the [RFC8989] criteria by excluding mere remote
attendance, while continuing to accept the investment of time and
money to travel to the venue as a demonstration of commitment.
Path 2: Community members in these postions are vetted by leadership
and (presumably) removed for failure to do the work, so this path is
difficult to manipulate. This expands the [RFC8989] criteria
considerably.
Path 3: Physically uploading the draft is a good proxy for actually
doing the active editorial work, rather than merely lending one's
name to a document, or authoring an obsoleted document many years
ago.
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5. Available Data
TODO: This document should contain data about how the proposed
criteria would have affected eligibility for NomComs in the recent
past.
6. Security Considerations
As this document specifies IETF governance processes, it has no
direct impact on security of the internet.
7. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA actions.
8. References
8.1. Normative References
[RFC2119] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate
Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119,
DOI 10.17487/RFC2119, March 1997,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc2119>.
[RFC8174] Leiba, B., "Ambiguity of Uppercase vs Lowercase in RFC
2119 Key Words", BCP 14, RFC 8174, DOI 10.17487/RFC8174,
May 2017, <https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8174>.
[RFC8713] Kucherawy, M., Ed., Hinden, R., Ed., and J. Livingood,
Ed., "IAB, IESG, IETF Trust, and IETF LLC Selection,
Confirmation, and Recall Process: Operation of the IETF
Nominating and Recall Committees", BCP 10, RFC 8713,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8713, February 2020,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8713>.
[RFC8989] Carpenter, B. and S. Farrell, "Additional Criteria for
Nominating Committee Eligibility", RFC 8989,
DOI 10.17487/RFC8989, February 2021,
<https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc8989>.
8.2. Informative References
[I-D.draft-kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-fee]
Kuehlewind, M., Reed, J., and R. Salz, "Open Participation
Principle regarding Remote Registration Fee", Work in
Progress, Internet-Draft, draft-kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-
fee-02, 18 January 2021, <https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/
draft-kuehlewind-shmoo-remote-fee-02.txt>.
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Acknowledgments
TODO acknowledge.
Author's Address
Martin Duke
Google LLC
Email: martin.h.duke@gmail.com
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