Re: [Iasa20] I-D Action: draft-hall-iasa20-workshops-report-00.txt

[Brian E Carpenter <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Thanks for this report, very useful for those who couldn't attend
the workshops. Here are some personal thoughts, picking on a few points.

>    o  The line between the IETF and ISOC is not organizationally clear-
>       cut, 

Better get used to it. Since the IETF is intentionally not incorporated
and intentionally run by a rough consensus process, that line will never
be clear-cut.

> which has led to issues around transparency, 

Why has the lack of a clear line done that? I'm not saying there are
no transparency issues, but I don't understand why they are caused by
the unclear "line".

> allocation of staff time and priorities, 

Are you saying that the IAD doesn't get enough staff support *due
to* the unclear line?

> budgeting,

Again, why is that  due to the unclear line? The IETF has no budget,
since it isn't incorporated. The ISOC holds our budget and it's
run by the IAD. I don't see the lack of clarity here.

> and clarity of who is responsible for what.

Yes, I agree that the line between volunteer and staff effort can be
unclear - that's a classical (and insoluble) problem in non-profits.

>    o  Having ISOC represent the IETF to sponsors and donors -
> 
>       *  creates confusion about why the IETF does not represent itself,

Actually I think the issue is a bit more contorted. I don't think that
companies are at all confused. It's just that they have mixed motivations.
The technical managers want influence in the IETF; the engineers want
to help the IETF; the marketing people want publicity. 

But indeed, the IETF leadership needs to work hand in glove with
ISOC on this. I'm not sure what it has to do directly with IASA, though.
IASA's job description doesn't include PR.

>       *  yields questions about why ISOC does not instead increase its
>          IETF support

I have no sympathy with that. The IETF would be very mistaken to think
of ISOC as a cash cow and drop its own involvement in fund-raising.

>                       and how donations can be guaranteed to be
>          dedicated to the IETF, and

That seems like a trivial accounting matter.

>       *  can result in those soliciting sponsorships and donations
>          having a lack of familiarity with IETF work.

See above re hand-in-glove.

>    For example, participants noted some items are branded
>    IETF, like the IETF Journal, are ISOC driven and funded, and are not
>    directed by the IETF community.

Really? When it started, the IETF Chair (me) reviewed the contents.
I'm a bit shocked if that is no longer the case.

...
>    A commentor mentioned that this sounded like a
>    branding issue at times: while the IETF Trust holds IETF trademarks,
>    is the IETF brand and the contours of what it encompasses clear?

I'm puzzled by this. It seems entirely clear to me: the Trust decides who
can use the brand, and ISOC clearly uses it when describing IETF activities.

>    The
>    commentor further asked: who defines the contents of ISOC activities
>    that are visible to the outside world?

ISOC of course. Who else? ISOC's role is far broader than the IETF.

>    ...for example, if the IETF community
>    wants to change the structure of relationships with sponsors, who has
>    the authority to make that decision?  IESG?  IAOC?  Community
>    consensus?  This participant felt that this is unclear.

IAOC. From RFC4071:
  "The IAD and IAOC are responsible for making all business decisions
   regarding the IASA.  In particular, the ISOC Board of Trustees shall
   not have direct influence over the choice of IASA contractors or IETF
   meeting sponsors.  This restriction is meant to enforce the
   separation between fund-raising and the actual operation of the
   standards process."
But of course we expect the IAOC to seek community input, as in the
current discussion about meetings policy.

...
>    The IAOC only goes to the
>    community for specific policy questions - e.g., the privacy policy or
>    changes to the trust legal provisions - but does not get general
>    "please do this" feedback from the community.

That is not the IAOC's fault. Look at how little feedback the IAOC gets
in plenary, where the detailed IAOC report has been dropped by popular
request.

>    Another workshop participant felt
>    that there was a lack of clarity around even where some questions
>    should be asked (e.g. "how many logos do we want on our badges?" or
>    "who drives/has responsibility for some specific functions?").

Did they try asking the IAD?

>    That
>    commentor felt that an important question is whether or not the IETF
>    community wants a "thin" IAOC that has mostly oversight of the IAD or
>    a "thick" IAOC that has administrative responsibilities - i.e. "who
>    is driving the bus?"

Now that's a good question. The "O" in IAOC stands for "oversight". The theory
is that staff should do everything and the IAOC should watch. I don't think
that's reality. The *intended* answer was that the IAD drives the bus.

>    Some felt that the lack of rigid formality in the organization and
>    structure was not necessarily a bad thing.

To a large extent it's an excellent thing. But even so, responsiibilities
for decisions need to be clear. In the limit, the IAOC oversees, hires
and fires the IAD. But reality is more complex.

>    ...working to improve IASA could make the IETF more structured and thus
>    less appealing to some kinds of contributors. 

That's confusing. The IASA is meant to be a professional administration,
serving the rest of the community. That does *not* mean that an improved
IASA implies a more structured IETF as a whole.

>    ...we do ourselves a disservice by this long-
>    standing confusion about whether IETF is an organization; they felt
>    that people within the community know what is meant by the IETF and
>    that more formality is not necessary.  

I am totally unaware of this confusion. In fact, it confuses me.

...
>    o  Relying heavily on meeting-based revenue is somewhat at odds with
>       the fact that much of the IETF's work takes place outside of in-
>       person meetings.

Possibly. But relying on, say, membership fees would be completely at odds
with the IETF's volunteer and rough consensus ethos. Relying on vendor
sponsorship has its own obvious problems.

>    ...A workshop
>    participant felt that the IETF needs to be able to clearly state what
>    it is asking for, and what the relevance is for the potential
>    sponsor.

As mentioned above, the relevance is wildly different for different employees
of a sponsor (engineers, engineering management, marketing).

>    ...IASA has lagged progress of groups like the IESG,
>    who have made agendas and meetings open.  
...
>    Hotel contracts aren't shown due to confidentiality agreements,...

In my experience some years ago, a large proportion of IAOC (and sub-committee)
discussions were very unsuitable for open access. Contracts and personnel issues
came up a lot. If meetings were made open, a lot more business would be discussed
outside the meetings. I'm all for transparent reporting but in this case I just
don't see open meetings being viable.

>    One suggestion was for the IAOC to hold information sessions or
>    office hours at meetings,

Surely the IAOC has been making its office at IETF sites open for drop-ins
for years? As for info sessions, see the remarks about why the IAOC no longer
parades in plenary. Very few people actually seem to care.

>    o  IAD workload is (much) more than a full-time job, but we have one
>       staff person allocated to it.

Um, perhaps we can stop the problem description right there?

Relying on volunteers to make professional admin work better seems
highly unlikely to succeed.

>    A participant said that, although IAOC committees are listed on the
>    IAOC website (https://iaoc.ietf.org/committees.html), there is a lack
>    of documentation about how the committee participants are chosen.

And so what? If the IAD and IAOC don't have the right to co-opt their own
subcommittees as needed, we are in a funny place. I seem to have seen
calls for volunteers from time to time.

>    A Workshop participant noted that, in order to understand how the
>    committees work, one needs to understand...

I don't understand the point of this. Why does the community need to
understand how the subcommittees work? They don't answer to the
community, they answer to the IAOC.

Regards
   Brian Carpenter











 














Regards
   Brian Carpenter



On 14/03/2017 03:28, [e-mail] wrote:
> 
> A New Internet-Draft is available from the on-line Internet-Drafts directories.
> 
> 
>         Title           : Report from the IASA 2.0 Virtual Workshops
>         Authors         : Joseph Lorenzo Hall
>                           A. Jean Mahoney
> 	Filename        : draft-hall-iasa20-workshops-report-00.txt
> 	Pages           : 17
> 	Date            : 2017-03-13
> 
> Abstract:
>    This is the Workshop Report for the IETF Administrative Support
>    Activity 2.0 (IASA 2.0) Virtual Workshops, held on 28 February 2017
>    at 1100 UT and 1600 UT.  The original IETF Administrative Support
>    Activity (IASA) was created ten years ago, and since has been subject
>    to some reflection.  In the intervening years, there has been
>    considerable change in the necessary tasks of IETF administration and
>    in the world around the IETF, and in how the IETF raises funds and
>    finances its work.  The IASA 2.0 process seeks to address which
>    administrative arrangements will best support the IETF going forward.
> 
> 
> The IETF datatracker status page for this draft is:
> https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-hall-iasa20-workshops-report/
> 
> There's also a htmlized version available at:
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-hall-iasa20-workshops-report-00
> 
> 
> Please note that it may take a couple of minutes from the time of submission
> until the htmlized version and diff are available at tools.ietf.org.
> 
> Internet-Drafts are also available by anonymous FTP at:
> ftp://ftp.ietf.org/internet-drafts/
> 
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