Hi Ted, Pardon the top post… If I read you correctly, you are saying that the communication from the RSOC to Heather was simply a statement of what they planned to recommend to the IAB, and not a statement of the process that had been agreed and was being executed. Right? Adrian From: ietf <ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Ted Hardie Hi Aaron, On Fri, Jun 21, 2019 at 8:45 PM Aaron Falk <aaron.falk@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: You've made some meta-points above, which I will respond to in a different message, as I think they are on the topic of "what do we do in the future" and need to be called out as such.
I believe Sarah's note covers the question of why the RFP process was a focus. On the other question, I must remind you that this position is both a community leadership position and a contractor position. We see the first when Heather sits on stage with the rest of the leadership at plenaries, to take comments from the community. The latter, however, is covered by the normal confidentiality given to personnel matters. That confidentiality is important to maintain even when the comments given would be laudatory, as that principle ensures that you don't get revelation by omission at later dates. The public statements in cases like this are the outcomes, just as they would be in a company's hiring or promotion decisions.. In this particular case, the full process did not run, as it goes RSOC recommends to the IAB, the IAB makes a decision, and the contract is executed by the LLC. There is no outcome to point to, in other words, since Heather's decision took place before it finished. What I can say is that the IAB received the RSOC recommendation and that the IAB minutes will show what that was. The minutes will not receive final approval until Wednesday's meeting, but I will share with you what the draft says:
I call your attention to the final line of the recommendation, which confirms what Sarah already said. Much more on the personnel side I do not expect the RSOC or IAB to say, given the usual confidentiality requirements around personnel decisions. As I noted above, those requirements apply even if the comments are positive.
If you consult RFC 6635, Section 4, you'll see that this interaction is primarily between the RSE and the IAOC; in 6635bis this is updated to the LLC. The institutional memory here is lodged elsewhere.
The IAB did not so much remove half the RSOC as refresh the whole membership. See the call for for volunteers from May of last year: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf-announce/-9XsyFQsp-4fybaKssEttVINCQE. As the call for volunteers notes, the current process doesn't give RSOC members specific terms. Rather than select specific members and remove them, the IAB chose to consider the whole membership and invite existing members to stand again if they chose. As is usual for IAB appointments of this type, there was then a period where confidential comments on the volunteers was received, followed by interviews and a selection.
The IAB takes its responsibilities under RFC 6635 very seriously and will do what it can to improve the process. That may, of course, require considering changes to RFC 6635; that is the topic of the "meta message response" you'll see in a bit. Ted Hardie |
