--On Friday, May 28, 2010 10:15 -0700 IETF Administrative
Director <iad@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> All;
>
> The IAOC is considering the adoption of IAOC Administrative
> Procedures and seeks your comments before adoption. These
> procedures address such matters as quorums, voting, election
> and removal of the chair, compensation and expenses, and
> recusal.
>
> The proposed procedures are set out below to facilitate your
> review and comment.
Hi.
While I appreciate the opportunity to review this document, I
think several elements of it are not merely ill-conceived but
improper. Several of the reasons have been given by others but,
at the risk of repeating:
(1) The IAOC does not have any authority to alter, update,
restate, modify, or clarify BCP 101. It should avoid text that
appears to do so, even if the intent is simply to summarize,
because inadvertent conflicts and confusion are an inevitable
consequence of doing so. In addition to the examples I remember
being given by Ted Hardie and others...
(1a) The IAOC may decide to not appoint the IAB or IETF Chairs
or the ISOC appointee as IAOC Chair, and I think that those
people would be ill-advised to accept the role for several
reasons. But BCP 101 is quite clear on the latter and arguably
clear on the other two: the text says "shall select one of its
appointed voting members...". Clearly the ISOC-appointed member
is qualified; the text uses exactly the same terminology to
describe that person as it does the Nomcom, IESG, and IAB
appointees, only the appointing body is different. There is
some ambiguity about the ex-officio voting members -- clearly
they are appointed by someone. If the IAOC is convinced that
BCP 101 needs modification, I think the community should see an
I-D proposing such an update, to be processed via the usual
consensus process. Trying to make the change via a supposed
administrative procedure document is just improper.
(1b) The responsibility and accountability relationships are
also fairly clear in BCP 101 ("...those members do not directly
represent the bodies that chose them. All members of the IAOC
are accountable directly to the IETF community....". Trying to
clarify this can easily change its sense. In particular,
Section 9 of the new proposal (in addition to issue with
"disinterested") implies a slightly different set of criteria.
In addition to the issues mentioned in other notes, Section 9
reopens the question of the role of the IAB and IESG Chairs as
ex-officio members of the IAOC. They are either there to
represent the perspectives of the IAB and IESG and the IAOC's
perspective back to the relevant bodies (which those "appointed"
by those bodies explicitly are not) or the justification for
having those two people ex-officio in those positions
disappears. If the IAOC believes that should be changed, then,
again, the IAOC should make a proposal to the community for
discussion and approval under the normal consensus procedures.
I note that one such proposal was put on the table some months
ago but that the relevant Area Director made it clear that he
had no intention of letting the community consider it.
(1c) The proposed text says "d. The Chair shall (i) have the
authority to manage the activities of the IAOC and (ii) convene
and preside over meetings of the IAOC, but shall have no other
powers or authority beyond his or her powers as an IAOC member."
But BCP 101 indicates that requests "for review should be should
be addressed to the IAOC chair...", which implies at least one
additional piece of "power or authority". Again, it seems
inappropriate for this type of document to restart BCP 101
provisions in a way that could be interpreted as changing them.
(1d) While I think clear conflict of interest and disclosure
provisions are a good idea (and I'm actually supportive of Sam's
formulation), BCP 101 appears to be comprehensive wrt the
qualifications or IAOC membership. If there is any language in
it that says "the IAOC may impose additional requirements on its
membership", I can't find it. If the IAOC imposes a disclosure
requirement and some member ignores it, the only thing the other
IAOC members can do about it is to initiate or foment a recall
action. The Nomcom, IAB, IESG, or ISOC BoT can fairly clearly
impose disclosure requirements as part of their selection
process, but cannot enforce later disclosures except, again, by
recall. If the community doesn't like that (and I think it
shouldn't like it), then we need to open BCP 101 via the usual
procedures. About the most the IAOC can do is establish a
voluntary procedure for such disclosures... which is certainly
not what the current proposed language does.
(2) The IAOC is in breach of its responsibilities to the IETF
community as specified in BCP 101 as well as commitments it
made, with some fanfare, about a year ago. Despite promises
that minutes would more accurately and comprehensively reflect
decisions and considerations and that they be brought up to date
and kept up to date, and that professional staff was being used
to facilitate that, we are now back to having minutes running
some months behind. That is particularly important to this case
because the community is, IMO, entitled to see discussion in the
minutes of the IAOC decision to create this document and its
evolution, not simply see a "here it is, please comment" note
from the IAD. Until the minutes are current, and kept current,
I do not believe that IAOC should be producing new procedural
documents, nor that the community should approve them, at least
without a clear exposition of the problems being solved and
evidence that there is an emergency (of course, if there were
minutes, I assume we would find both there).
john
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