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

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

FWIW, I concur.  A few more comments inline.

--On Wednesday, December 03, 2014 07:18 -0900 Melinda Shore
<[e-mail]> wrote:

> On 12/3/14 7:05 AM, Adrian Farrel wrote:
>> But I would note for the second of these points that the WG
>> secretary role exists and there is also the concept of a
>> "delegate". These ways of handling IETF work are not
>> introduced or made concrete by this document. We can't,
>> therefore, hold this document to account for the existence of
>> things we don't like. We can only ensure that the document
>> accurately describes what exists.
> 
> Absolutely, but what concerns me (I'm not going to try
> to speak for John) is that this document appears to
> normalize the secretarial role, rather than simply saying
> that chairs are able to delegate various tasks.  There
> appears to be a formal vesting of responsibility in working
> group secretaries.

Right.  And, as I said earlier, it also doesn't accurately
describe current practice because there are two many variations,
including "no secretary" that the document doesn't recognize (or
recognize as legitimate)..
 
> I like Ralph's proposal to update 2418 to allow for
> wg secretary access to working group tools.  Otherwise
> my preference would be to continue to keep the focus on
> chair responsibilities, including chair delegation of
> various tasks.  Secretaries are fine but I really
> dislike seeing the role institutionalized.

Secretaries are fine but, if 2418 is changed, the change
shouldn't be to institutionalize Secretaries either.  It should:

(1) Make clear that the statements in 2418 about Secretaries are
to be taken as examples, not limits.

(2) Make clear that WG Chairs can, subject to review with/by the
relevant AD, delegate anything they like to anyone they like and
that such delegations should allow whatever access to tools,
etc., is needed to do the job... as long as such delegations do
no change the responsibility and accountability of the with WG
Chair.  If a WG Chair (after whatever consultation with the
relevant AD they consider appropriate) wants to delegate some
tasks to someone who is not an officially-designated WG
Secretary, we shouldn't have documents that accidentally get in
the way.

For the record, I'm not convinced that a change to 2418 is
needed for the above: the IESG has claimed, and gotten away
with, far more significant changes to procedures my means of
"statements" and the 2418 text does not appear to me to contain
any words that restrict access to tools that did not exist when
it was written.

    john