Re: Last Call: <draft-secretaries-good-practices-06.txt> (IETF Working Groups' Secretaries) to Best Current Practice

["Murray S. Kucherawy" <[e-mail]>]

Howdy Adrian,

On Wed, Dec 3, 2014 at 8:05 AM, Adrian Farrel <[e-mail]> wrote:

>
> I believe I see two issues raised by you and Melinda in this thread which
> I may
> summarise as:
> - This I-D needs to be clearer that it is not normative, not defining
> process,
>    and not directing WG chairs to use secretaries.
>

Agree.


> - The use of a WG secretary somewhat reflects an abdication of
>   responsibility by a WG chair who was appointed to carry out these tasks.
>

I think that's a bit more than what I was saying, at least.  Some WGs
become unwieldy because they end up taking on more documents or more people
than they had anticipated, or a co-chair's expected availability becomes
compromised.  In some cases it's appropriate to replace such a co-chair
with someone else that can handle the demand, and in others a WG secretary
might be all that's needed.  It's possible to delegate without abdicating,
where the delegated authority is merely to, for example, collect
information needed for the co-chair to make a decision; the co-chair
accepts responsibility for the collection and has the opportunity to verify
the input, even if she isn't the one actually doing the collection.

The second is more of a philosophical question. The chair is "contracted" to
> deliver and given certain powers to achieve delivery. Can the chair
> delegate the
> actions while supervising their implementation and carrying responsibility
> for
> their correctness? This is maybe an issue we can address by making it
> clear who
> carries responsibility  for actions carried out by a WG secretary and what
> the
> complaint/appeals path is.
>

I think the answer to the question there is not only "yes", but that's
exactly what's expected if the chair exercises her prerogative to appoint a
secretary.  The proverbial "buck" still stops in the same place.  If that's
not written down, it ought to be.   (And yes, I'll offer to edit such a
document, though probably not until the new year.)

-MSK