Re: Last Call: draft-dawkins-nomcom-dont-wait (Nominating Committee Process: Earlier Announcement of Open Positions and Solicitation of Volunteers) to BCP

[Pekka Savola <[e-mail]>]

On Wed, 27 May 2009, The IESG wrote:
> - 'Nominating Committee Process: Earlier Announcement of Open Positions
>   and Solicitation of Volunteers'
>   <draft-dawkins-nomcom-dont-wait-03.txt> as a BCP

I have two issues with this.

  1) This places a new responsibility at the feet of IETF secretariat.
     That's a new actor (not even a person but a role) in the process.
     This is not good.

     Better would be that the process allowed some already responsible
     party (be it ISOC president, former NomCom chair, IETF chair, IAB
     chair, or all of the above) the _option_ to allow IETF secretariat
     to perform this announcement. (More about the "option" issue
     below)

  2) As proposed, the IETF secretariat's role is exclusive.  In the
     future no one else would have the authority to publish the
     solicitation.  I don't think this is good.  The role should be
     optional, if _responsible_ party(ies) chooses to take that path,
     or at most inclusive of other parties' authority.

More detailed background on 2) below:

Abstract says:

    This document updates RFC 3777, Section 4, Bullet 13 to allow
    announcement of open positions and solicitation of volunteers to be
    issued before a Nominating and Recall Committee Chair has been named
    by the Internet Society President.

But the new bullet says:

       The IETF Secretariat obtains the list of positions to be reviewed
       and announces it along with a solicitation for names of volunteers
       from the IETF community willing to serve on the nominating
       committee.

       At the NomCom Chair's request, the IETF Secretariat may perform
       other clerical support tasks, as long as the task being performed
       does not require NomCom Chair judgement, in the NomCom Chair's
       opinion, and as long as the community is appropriately notified
       that this request is being made.  This request may come from the
       Incoming NomCom Chair (if one has been selected for this NomCom
       cycle) or the Outgoing NomCom Chair (if the search for an Incoming
       NomCom Chair is still underway).

"Allow" can be read two ways, one of them conflicts with the actual 
text.

Is the intent that the IETF Secretariat has an authority to obtain the 
list of positions and announce them (but other parties also have this 
authority), OR that it has the ONLY authority.

The narrow reading of the actual text above suggests that in the 
future no one else could do the announcement.

-- 
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings