Sarah-
Thank you for your apology and your explicit thoughts on what you think were mistakes made by the RSOC. Your public accountability is to be commended. I realize how hard it can be to admit fault in this emotional environment.
As the RSOC is responsible to the IAB, I would very much like to hear a similar statement from the IAB, the chair or the IAB’s RSOC program lead, regarding what mistakes were made so the community can consider whether the current arrangements require change before moving forward with finding an interim RSE.
--aaron
On 24 Jul 2019, at 13:45, Sarah Banks wrote:
IETF Community,
Since Heather announced her decision not to renew her contract as RFC Series Editor (RSE), there has been a considerable amount of discussion within the community. The RSOC has been watching closely, and we wanted to take the opportunity to share some further thoughts.
It's clear to us that the community is unhappy with this outcome; we share that feeling. We believe that our recommendation to put the contract out to bid again in two years was part of the reason behind her decision. In retrospect we would not make the same decision again, and we apologise to both her and the community for the decision, its repercussions, and the situation we now find ourselves in.
It was not RSOC's intent to put Heather in a difficult position, but rather to address an issue that concerned both us and her -- succession planning -- and we shared it with her in the spirit of transparency. While we took care to communicate that this was not a reflection of her performance, in retrospect, we should have handled it differently.
To give some more detail: a few months ago, we had a large concern regarding the low number of responses to the previous RFP, and we believed that we would have a problem if for some reason we had to run that process again. Because of that, we wanted to learn how to get more responses. We convinced ourselves that the best way to do this was by exercising the process in 2021. With the benefit of hindsight, we recognize that this was a mistake.
We also convinced ourselves that Heather would understand the thought process and agree with it. While we took some precautions to express that our decision was not a judgement of Heather's performance, we did not actually socialise the idea with her before making a recommendation. That was very clearly a mistake. If we had discussed the proposal with her, we would have better gauged her state of mind and understood the accumulated tensions.
We remain concerned that the RSE position seems to be subject to an unusual amount of tension. Currently, we are discussing how we can gather information from the community (including Heather) to further understand those tensions, and make recommendations with more positive outcomes for the role and the RFC series. We're also discussing how we can improve communication between the RSE, ourselves, the community, and the other leadership bodies..
We are also listening to the community about the next steps to be taken; in particular, coming to an agreement about whether the RFP process should be run to find a replacement RSE, thereby gaining the benefit of a smooth transition while Heather is still in the post, or whether another process first needs to be run (e.g., to reconsider the role and its relationship to other bodies).
If you have thoughts about that or want to discuss other issues, please find an RSOC member this week; we want to hear from the community.
Finally, we'd like to thank Heather again for her dedication and long service as the RFC Series Editor to date; she entered a position that already had big shoes to fill, and in our estimation has enlarged them.
Regards,
Sarah Banks
For the RSOC
