Re: [I18nrp] charter -01

[Spencer Dawkins at IETF <[e-mail]>]

FWIW,

On Tue, Aug 14, 2018 at 12:00 AM Phillips, Addison <[e-mail]>
wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
> I like this evolution. A few comments.
>
> The liaison text is a little curious. It says that liaising isn't
> "directly" in scope. Is that because the (almost certainly necessary)
> liaising with folks like the UTC, W3C (especially I18N WG :-)), ECMA, etc.
> will formally exist elsewhere? Maybe the charter should more strongly
> acknowledge the need for coordination while keeping the existing formal
> mechanisms intact. I'd suggest something like:
>
> --
> While formal liaison mechanisms with other standards organizations (such
> as the Unicode Consortium) are not part of the directorate's charter, there
> is expected to be occasional coordination with the wider
> internationalization community that includes these other standard's bodies.
>

This is only my opinion, but I was on the IAB for three years and was the
first IAB prime for the IAB's liaison oversight program (
https://www.iab.org/activities/programs/iab-liaison-coordination-program/),
when we set it up in about 2011, so I hope it's not super-wrong.

We/the IETF relies a lot on informal interaction with other SDOs. There are
other SDOs that the IAB maintains formal liaison relationships with, listed
at https://www.ietf.org/about/liaisons/, but those tend to be SDOs that we
have a lot of interaction with, and/or who require a formal liaison
relationship to get anything done.

Basically, if an individual IETF participant can send email to another SDO,
and get a useful response, that's the preferred path. The directorate
itself can figure out when that's necessary, and whether the responses
coming back are useful, with no other process needed.

If that doesn't work in your situation, that's a good conversation to have
with the IAB. I'd start with Mark Nottingham, who is the IAB liaison
oversight program prime now, but just sending an e-mail to the IAB and
asking them for help/guidance should work just fine.

It's also useful to note that some SDOs and external bodies have liaisons
to the IETF, with no corresponding IETF liaison in the other direction, so
IETF participants can be as informal as is helpful, even if the responses
coming back have to be approved at plenary meetings before they come back.