There may well be good reasons for restructuring. The Internet has undergone significant upheavals approximately every ten years or so since its beginnings some thirty years ago. None of these have been without their difficulties, but in the final analysis reasonable outcomes occurred despite fears by many that such would not be the case. The Internet would appear to be in a similar situation today.
The nations of the world have discovered the Internet in recent years and have come to understand its importance to them moving forward. Yet, many of them do not understand fully how the net works, or the processes by which it evolves. This is partly an educational issue, and a high priority one at that.
The Internet is challenged, more today than ever, to deal with a complex set of issues surrounding its evolution and integration into all aspects of society. Telephony, as well as media of all kinds, are now (or soon will be) supported by the Internet and the integration of information with communications services is accelerating. Many older distinctions make little sense in this new world we have all helped to create, and organizations that have not been involved in the past may now see the need to do so. These organizations have structure, members and some notion of turf, and increasingly the turf looks manifold, resembling a Riemannian surface.
The role of the IETF has been critical to the Internet?s evolutionary process. Yet it should not be taken for granted. Much effort has been spent by many dedicated individuals over many years to make it an effective body. Professional stewardship of this ship of state, as well as oversight of the process in the public interest, will be increasingly important in the future.
In this spirit, the following insights are proffered:
- The IETF Secretariat was created by CNRI in the late 1980s to help support the IETF as we now know it. For the first ten years or so, the actual work was done by CNRI under a Cooperative Agreement with the US Government. In 1998, the provision of support services was moved to Foretec Seminars, a for-profit company that was formed by CNRI to support seminars, workshops and conferences, and which would provide secretariat services for the IETF under contract to CNRI in much the same fashion that CNRI had provided them in the past.
- Since the outset, CNRI has supported the IETF by raising funds, providing some of the support itself, and by providing the financial underpinnings in both good and bad times. The initial PI on this effort was Vint Cerf.
- CNRI helped to form ISOC and was one of the three charter members of ISOC. CNRI provided funding to help ISOC get started, and after ISOC was incorporated in December 1992, CNRI provided secretariat services to ISOC for several years.
- In 1993, CNRI made arrangements for ISOC to move into its own quarters nearby CNRI. This was motivated at the time by a need to provide a physical separation between the IETF Secretariat and the activities of ISOC.
- An MOA was developed by CNRI, ISOC, and coordinated with the IAB and IETF Chairs in the 1996 ? 1998 time frame. CNRI understood the MOA to have been agreed upon by the parties, and has been operating within the spirit of it since then.
- In recent years, demands on Foretec for IETF services have increased; but there have been no effective means of applying back pressure, i.e. a change management process that addresses cost recovery for additional services. This is an issue that needs to be resolved.
- I have publicly stated CNRI?s willingness to support the IETF in their restructuring efforts. We expect to do our part, but due to some of the legalities involved, this is a matter than cannot be fully worked out in a public forum.
- CNRI takes seriously the fiduciary responsibility entrusted to it to insure the continued well-being of the IETF, operating in the public interest, which we accepted, on behalf of the community that we helped to form, many years ago. While we do not seek to retain this, neither can we or should we simply walk away from it irresponsibly. In many ways, our primary responsibility over time has been to help ensure the public interest is well served by the Internet standards process; this responsibility needs to be preserved throughout any of the organizational structures that support it.
- Earlier this year, I provided suggestions regarding issues that were essential to work out for insuring the healthy provision of secretariat services given limited resources and potentially unlimited demand. These suggestions involved developing a process for understanding the annual needs of the IETF, translating it into a budget to support it, raising funds to supplement meeting fees, developing procedures for staying within the bounds of available resources, and for negotiating changes in the provision of resources and funding. This area has not yet been addressed, yet it remains critical to do regardless of the restructuring approach for IETF itself.
- Finally, there are many other issues that will affect the decision-making processes here, which can only be sorted out among the involved parties. Some of these are legal, some contractual, some financial, and some even institutional. I believe the most pressing issue is largely about managing the provision of secretariat services to the IETF. While discussions about organizational change have been ongoing for a while, a thoughtful approach to restructuring was recently put forth by Patrice Lyons as an Internet Draft (draft-lyons-proposed-changes-statement-01.txt), and should be carefully considered by the IETF. I hope to weigh in on some of the open issues in future comments on this mailing list.
R.E. Kahn
11-9-04
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