[Iasa20] DRAFT Re: draft-haberman-iasa20dt-recs-00.txt

[Bob Hinden <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

I finished reading the draft and have some comments I would like to share.

I think it is an oversight in the document to not discuss the financial implications of the different models.  It’s most significant in the Independent organization, but they all have financial impact.  Creating an ISOC subsidiary or Independent organization will have a significant financial impact and should be part of the discussion.  Where will the money come to pay for the increase?  I think it’s critical to understand the financial implications of the different model.

The current expense level (from 2017 IASA budget) is a little over $7M a year (including indirect ISOC contributions of staff).  ISOC contributes about $2.2M to make up the difference revenue and expenses.  I don’t know how much additional an independent organization will cost, but I suspect it will be a large number.  It’s going to have to cover new staff, insurance, overhead of running a corporate entity (filing taxes, HR, corporate reporting, etc.), etc.  New issues will be created, for example will a venue want to sign a contract with the new IETF org it has never heard about before and doesn’t have a credit rating?

I agree we have a fund raising problem, but it’s not going to be fixed simply by adding a Director of Fundraising.  The problems are more structural and caused by changes in the industry.  We recently all saw a large company that provided significant support for the IETF, layoff many long time IETF contributors.   We need to come up with better ways of show the value the IETF brings to the Internet.  Essentially, how do we sell the value of IETF to potential donors?  This isn’t fixed by reorganizing ourselves.

Significantly increasing the cost of the IETF without knowing how expensive the new plan is, or knowing how it is going to be paid for isn’t going to work well.  If we want to be an independent organization, we need to also be responsible for the finances.  We have lived in a world were decisions were made without thinking about how much they will cost.  No cost benefit analysis.  If the IETF is going to be an independent organization, that culture will have to change.

One of the issues raised in the document is the difficulty of the NomCom finding qualified volunteers for the IAOC.  Unless we can understand how to fix that, how is the NomCom going to fill positions on a Board of Directors?   It’s only going to become worse.

Another thing the IETF is not very good about is managing staff.  That is, writing performance reviews, setting appropriate goals, fairly judging their performance, replacing them as needed.  If we are going to have more staff, then this needs to be dealt with.  It’s hard for volunteers to manage paid employees.

I think it’s important that the IETF Trust should be kept of of this.  It is working, it has a bank account, and is doing well holding the IETF IPR, and IANA trademarks and domains.  Bringing it into some sort of new IETF organization, might well cause the ICANN community to reconsider moving the IANA trademarks and domain there.  Let’s not go there, the rest of this is hard enough.  At some point, we might consider having the IETF Trust have a set of trustees who are not the same as the IAOC.  But again, that doesn’t need to be done now.

Bob