[admin-discuss] Public archival of AUTH48 communications

[The IESG <[e-mail]>]

The IETF prides itself on its open process and transparent 
communication, with one of our core principles being our commitment to 
making all materials related to our standards process and other 
activities publicly available. 

For a document undergoing publication within the IETF Stream, most of 
its history can be traced by exploring the mail archive - from the first 
submission, to Last Call comments, to IESG evaluation. However, once the 
document enters the RFC Editor queue, the communication between authors 
and RFC Production Center (RPC) is only visible to a specific set of 
people: RFC editors, authors, the responsible ADs and WG chairs (when 
applicable). 

In order to increase transparency during the final stages of document 
editing, the IESG, IAB, ISE, IRSG, Temporary RFC Series Project Manager, 
RPC, and Tools team are considering allowing anyone to search and read 
AUTH48 conversations about specific documents (or clusters of 
documents). It is not a goal to actively involve more people in the 
conversation between authors and RFC editors.

Our proposal: to set up a public mailing list of AUTH48 conversations, 
for archival purposes only, i.e., read-only. The RFC editors, when 
initiating the conversation with the authors will CC this mailing list. 
All further responses usually maintain the CC addresses, and as a 
consequence will be archived in the mailing list archive. 

All AUTH48 discussions of all documents will be archived on the same 
mailing list. Searches and filtering will be available based on the 
mails’ content and metadata, including draft name, RFC-to-be number, 
cluster number, sender, and date.

Opt out: the authors and RFC editors are able to opt out from archival, 
by removing the mailing list from the CC. Although we don’t envision 
that this will be necessary often, there may be cases where sensitive 
information needs to be shared.

The initial AUTH48 mail from the RFC Editor will also include text about 
public archival, to make sure authors are aware. With this announcement, 
the IESG wants to inform the community and read feedback before we set 
anything up. Please send any comment to [e-mail] or reply to this 
thread by 24 March 2022.

Francesca Palombini for the IESG