On 3/31/20 12:25 AM, Barry Leiba wrote:
The IESG has discussed what the best way is to handle a decision for
eligibility for the 2020/21 NomCom, given the timeframe involved and
the discussions that are already happening.
1. We are concerned that a normal process for discussing a draft,
conducting a last call, and approving a BCP would take too long.
2. We are concerned that rushing such a process by, for example,
posting a draft now and immediately last-calling it without a normal
period of discussion would call into question the legitimacy of our
consensus process and would set a bad precedent. We also note that
have already stated that we’d like community comments by 30 April, and
we are concerned about cutting that time short in order to write such
a draft.
4. We believe the IESG does have — and must have — the latitude to
address exceptional situations such as this and to make exceptions to
our processes. At the same time, we appreciate and agree with
concerns about overstepping, and we agree that maintaining
accountability and appropriate checks and balances is important.
The IESG, therefore, plans to continue collecting input and evaluating
the community’s rough consensus about the immediate NomCom-eligibility
question through 30 April, as stated. We will then post a statement
and inform the ISOC Board of Trustees, as we would do with a process
BCP. That statement will serve as the basis for eligibility to serve
on this year’s NomCom, and this year’s only; it will NOT remain in
effect beyond that brief timeframe, and will make that aspect clear.
If rough consensus of the community is that it is important for the
IESG’s decision to be published as a BCP, we will do so, handling that
after the immediate need for a quick decision has passed and making
the publication for archival purposes.
We also encourage the community to continue and complete the two
efforts that have been started, to formally define an exception
process, and to update NomCom eligibility requirements to account for
virtual meetings and for remote participation.
Barry, for the IESG
After thinking a bit more about this:
a) Without a definite and easily-referenced proposal, it will be much
more difficult for the IESG to gauge community consensus. An email
proposal really isn't sufficient because it's not very easily
referenced. Also email conversations tend to shift rather quickly so
that different reviewers will have different ideas about the current
state of a proposal, again making community input harder to evaluate.
So IMO it's necessary to have a proposal written up as an Internet-Draft
and for the Last Call to reference that specific document.
b) Even if IESG has "latitude" such as you describe (which I'm actually
dubious about), I believe it can only have such latitude to the extent
that it follows established IETF consensus procedures as closely as
possible. So for instance, publishing a BCP (assuming you get
consensus on it) is not optional, nor is it something that requires an
additional determination of consensus, because that deviation from
process is not made necessary by the current emergency.
A good faith effort on IESG's part would look like publishing an I-D,
like, tomorrow, and Last Calling it. It's not necessary that the
proposal be perfect; it's only necessary that it put enough of a stake
in the ground that the community can evaluate the proposal and IESG can
make sense of the responses. If IESG sees from the feedback that
slight changes are needed to win consensus, making those slight changes
can be done without another Last Call as quite often happens with other
IETF consensus documents.
I believe that the community will support any reasonable proposal for
nomcom eligibility in this one specific instance of nomcom selection, as
long as that proposal is submitted expeditiously. I have, uh, less
confidence that the community will support IESG making up its own rules.
Keith
