--On Wednesday, February 10, 2016 14:08 +0200 Jari Arkko
<jari.arkko@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> John,
>
>> I'm much more interested in the
>> question of whether the IAOC is being effective today and how
>> we can make it more so than I am in how the IAB organizes
>> itself. In part because of the worked example I cited earlier
>> (and some others), I don't see the IAOC as working well.
>> I'd be happy to be contradicted but, from the outside, it
>> looks as if part of the problem is too large a percentage of
>> the membership being stretched too thin.
>
> I've been thinking about this topic recently :-)
>
> And it certainly is worthwhile to consider evaluating how well
> our arrangements work.
>
> There are many things to think about, of course. In my mind
> relaxing the rules on which IAB person should be involved is a
> good thing but it is a small thing.
Absolutely. At the same time, it is an easily-identified issue
and one that is easy to correct if the community isn't so
completely satisfied with the status quo that changes are
impossible. You've seen my comments on another possible small
change.
> There's the way we make decisions and the teams who are
> involved in that. I'm personally not a big fan of the magic
> knowledge through the all-knowing IAOC model; I think it is
> more about us having the appropriate teams (subcommittees in
> IAOC terminology) be the experts and make the proposed
> decisions, and the IAOC's role is due diligence, to confirm
> those decisions, and to oversee that those teams and our staff
> are working well.
That would work for me if there were a lot more transparency and
clear evidence of oversight. Without that -- and I suggest
those elements have been badly lacking -- more committee
structure and more de facto delegation of fundamental policy
decisions to staff turn into a mechanism for reduced or
non-existent accountability.
The Buenos Aires decision, independent of its merits, seems to
be an example in which each of the groups involved seems to have
a different story about who pushed and made the decision and
why. One can claim that, because the community was asked, it
was a community decision, but there was a good deal of
information that was not supplied to the community when it was
asked that anyone who had done even a superficial investigation
of the Buenos Aires environment would have known about. Again,
I'm not suggesting that the decision was the wrong one, only
that the way the IAOC handled it suggests lack of transparency
and accountability.
Similarly, there is the issue of (possibly redacted) contracts,
something many of us believe that BCP 101 requires and that the
IAOC and/or IAD promised the community repeatedly. They have
never appeared wrt hotels and rarely appeared on a timely basis
for anything else. Speaking from a very high level perspective,
either the IAOC has concluded that those postings are
inappropriate and/or unnecessary but has been unwilling to face
the community with that conclusion or there has been failure in
priorities and/or oversight. Either case suggests issues with
transparency and/or accountability.
I think both of those are just symptoms and examples, less
important in themselves than as pointers to trends and patterns.
I also see another more general problem and it is what motivates
me to poke at the IAB (and other) positions. Once upon a time,
in the not-quite-mythical past, most IETF "leadership" positions
were considered something one took on, for a while and as an
obligation to the community, not because of some individual,
corporate, or symbolic motivation. That both promoted and
required efforts to keep the jobs as small (and resource
non-intensive) as possible and people often served a term or
two, decided they had put their time in, and moved on. There
are lots of good reasons (and a few bad ones) why we've shifted
away from that model, but I think understanding that there has
been a shift --at least in philosophy -- is important.
That historical model is especially important to IAOC positions
because, whatever one might tell a sponsor or put on a CV
notwithstanding, IAOC positions (should) have no influence on
things under consideration for standardization or even, with the
exception of IPR-tuning from the Trust, the standards process
itself. Given that, if the IAOC is to succeed (and we consider
openness and transparency, not just "having the trains run on
time" as part of success), it is important that its members
(probably with two exceptions) be as committed those roles as a
service to the community as possible. That means not having
anyone there (modulo those exceptions) who feels stuck with the
job as a consequence of some other role, and _that_ is one of
the things that makes the IAB Chair-related discussion important.
> There are other organisational questions. But those are not
> the only ones, one could ask about resources as well. I can
> observe a long-term trend where the official IETF services
> grow (volunteer things move to commercial platform or new
> services are needed). I can also observe a short-term trend
> where the workload has increased due to various one-off
> situations, such as the new RFC format tools work, IANA
> transition, starting up the hackathon series, training for the
> ombudsteam, people changes in sponsorship arrangements at
> ISOC, and so on.
Yes, certainly. However, at the same time, the community
expects the IAOC to be able to say "too much at one time, we
need to put some of these things off" and to discuss those
choices, choices that may amount to the tradeoff between doing a
few things well and doing more things but not as well, openly
and with community knowledge and possibly involvement.
I also suggest that, while many of us have observed the same
trends and combinations you talk about above, it is not easily
possible to discern from, e.g., IAOC minutes or plenary
presentations, that the IAOC is considering them and the
tradeoffs and taking those choices seriously. I assume that is
insufficient transparency rather than no discussions, but
insufficient transparency isn't good either.
The above may suggest that it is time for the community to do a
complete review of the whole IASA structure, what the
assumptions were behind BCP 101 and how those assumptions have
worked out. I don't see the energy for that. I hope there is
sufficient energy to do some tuning within the structure rather
than our all having to wait until things get a lot worse before
asking the hard questions and doing something.
best,
john