Re: Draft IAB conflict of interest policy

["Eliot Lear (elear)" <[e-mail]>]

Hi Mike,

I don't think I'm asking for "folks not to participate in leadership decisions about work that may affect their employer", what I am suggesting is that when in the "decider" role, that the person takes a very close look at the optics, and avoids blatant conflicts of interest.   90% of the time these will be "don't care" decisions for both the employer and competitors.  It's that other 10% where we might end up in trouble.

While I realize that people have an interest in erring on the “disclose” side, there are some potential risks in doing so when there really is no reason, even if not doing so would lend itself to the appearance of bad pool later: if each and every IAB decision involving personnel or standards in particular requires a disclosure statement simply because there is a corporate interest, people will become habituated to such disclosures, and ignore the ones that really matter.

With regard to recusals, they can hamstring the work of the IAB, particularly when it comes to confirming candidates.  As an employee of Cisco I had to decide whether to recuse the decision to confirm someone who worked at a competitor.  Cisco is so large that such a set is hard to define, and even if we used common notions, I saw no value in my recusal, and some harm to the institution would I have done so because it would have sent a message saying that the IAB as a whole could be trusted to evaluate in the face of such potential conflicts.

In another case, I myself recused on a decision regarding ISOC Board selection, I did so out of an abundance of caution because to avoid the appearance of a quid-pro-quo between me personally and someone on the NOMCOM that appointed me. But there are ten voting members of the NOMCOM and as many on the IAB to provide a pretty reasonable layer of protection, even had I not.  Arguably I erred in recusing in that instance.

I would much rather we assume that people are conflicted, that there is no fiduciary responsibility on the part of the IAB, liaisons, and IESG members to the IETF or the LLC, and that our organization defend against such potential conflicts through diversity of leadership.  The just-announced IAB seems to me to be pretty well balanced (or at least more balanced), not only in terms of corporate participation, but also in terms of points of view.  That to me addresses the IAB far better than any CoI policy ever could.

I feel a bit differently about the IESG and WG chairs because of the way those roles are constructed, but that ground has been well covered elsewhere in this thread.

Eliot