Hi Brian,
At 2:23 PM +0200 10/23/04, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
This is, I believe, one reason why our process includes a recall procedure. It's interesting that this has never been exercised, but I think its existence already puts the IESG and IAB on notice. However, it's always going to be a judgement call which decisions are purely operational and get made quickly by the I*, and which ones deserve debate in the sunshine.
There are several important things that your response glosses over...
Secrecy and closed meetings are not simply a matter of expedience in the IETF, they are supported by our prevailing culture and documented rules. We currently, and quite explicitly, expect our leadership to use their judgement in deciding what the community should and should not be told.
It is a fact that the IAB and IESG regularly hold meetings, hold mailing list discussions, make decisions and/or receive information that is not shared with the rest of the community. This is a perfectly valid way to run an organization (most commercial corporations are run this way, for example), but it is not (at least in California!) considered to be a reasonable way to run a government. And, I personally do not think that this is the way we should be running the IETF.
To illustrate the fact that the IETF is not organized or run in accordance with the "Sunshine Law" today, let me give some examples:
RFC 3710 (the IESG charter) says:
The IESG also has private group discussions, using any means of its choice, including email. Records of those discussions are not required to be made public. This is believed to be vital in permitting a frank exchange of viewpoints and worries, allowing people to speak out freely on topics known to be controversial, and permitting people to change their minds based on presented arguments. Decisions and their justification are a matter of public record.
What this paragraph says is that our IESG deliberations are allowed to be secret. Only our decisions and their justifications are recorded and accessible to the community. And, in fact, we make many decisions that are not recorded, and others that are recorded without enough detail to understand their justifications.
RFC 3710 then goes on to offer even more reasons why the IESG, in particular, might decide to hold a discussion of which the community is not informed:
However, discussion of personnel matters and possibly legal and financial matters may sometimes be required to be kept confidential, and the chair may, with the consent of the full members, exclude liaison and ex officio members whose presence is seen as inappropriate for the particular discussion.
Although RFC 2850 (the IAB charter) does not empower the IAB to have any "private group discussions" that are not minuted, it does say basically the same things about personnel, financial or legal matters:
However, discussion of personnel matters and possibly legal and financial matters may sometimes be required to be kept confidential, and the chair may, with the consent of the full members, exclude liaison and ex officio members from such discussions.
The passive voice in these sections is a bit ambiguous, but it is clear that the IETF Chair and IAB Chair believe that they can jointly require that the IAB and IESG keep information regarding legal or financial matters confidential. They apparently also believe that it is appropriate for the Chairs to keep some information confidential from the IESG or IAB.
The IETF Chair and the IAB Chair have, on several occasions chosen to hold substantive discussions or make decisions in small groups that exclude most of the IAB and IESG. These groups are sometimes justified based on prevailing thinking regarding directorates which allows the leadership (at least IESG members) to hand-pick small groups of people for advice, etc.
Brian, I believe that you and John Klensin were both members of one such group -- the IAB Advisory Committee that did the initial AdminRest work. As far as I know, your meetings were not minuted and your mailing lists archives were not open, although you did produce a public report in RFC 3716. Is it your belief that the public report includes all of the substantive information that you received, and all of the substantive issues that you discussed as members of that advisory team? Or did the team make some decisions regarding what the community did or did not need to know? Is there any reason why your mailing list archives were not made publicly accessible? What it even considered?
I do not believe that, today, we can recall our leaders for using their judgement in accordance with our prevailing culture and documented rules. So, if we want the IETF to be more open and transparent, I think that we need to change those rules or pass a new rule that overrides them.
We, the IETF community, need to decide how we want the IETF to be run. I personally believe that we should make substantial changes to our culture and rules by adopting our own version of the Sunshine Law and holding ourselves to that standard, but I am not of the opinion that this would be a small change or that it would be easy to affect this change quickly.
The community may very well decide that our current culture and rules are appropriate and that we don't want to change them, but let's not kid ourselves into believing that our current organization is run in a truly open and transparent manner.
Margaret
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