Dear Sara,
At 02:47 PM 27-03-2020, Marcolla, Sara Veronica wrote:
The issue is, when government representative participate to IETF (or
a RIR, or ICANN, or a NOG), they do so in their official capacity,
thus representing to some extent their organisation. They (we) do
understand the concept, however it is impossible to attend without
this sort of "official" hat. So on one hand there is Joe-as-himself,
and on the other hand there in Alice-as-a-whole-government-rep. How
do we make this work better for everyone's benefit in IETF?
My email address could be read as being from someone working for
company X. That could be someone who is working as a junior engineer
or someone with an impressive job title. In general, the former does
not have much leverage in the company. The latter might not
understand SR-MPLS [1] or that the report which was attributed to the
United Nations is not a report from that body.
Should the question be about what works for everyone's benefit? In
my opinion, it is easier to see whether the attendance in the IETF is
worthwhile. Does your organisation gain a commercial or other
benefit from that? I assume that someone within your organisation
will be evaluating that if the organisation is paying for the expenses.
There are employees of a government in North America who have
participated in the IETF. I don't see why participating in an
official capacity would cause a problem in this venue.
Regards,
S. Moonesamy
1. https://datatracker.ietf.org/liaison/1677/
