Re: Montevideo statement

[Abdussalam Baryun <[e-mail]>]

I like your approach and comments, and I think that our ietf leaders are
not always leaders but in IESG they are the managers.  Mostly ietf ruled by
community consensus not presidents, so we have many leaders including you
and some others may be additional leaders for the community. The ietf wants
feedback because there are not less than 50 leaders in ietf that lead the
Internet community or leaders that make/discover things for the community
when they participate.

I really want to say the important thing about leaders that they have
followers (not statements). Managers have workers and they may represent
organisation decisions and statements. The body that is managing the
decisions of ietf can make representation statements, but leader statements
has no value if there is no followers. Therefore, IMO, if there is no time
for asking feedback of community then the IETF chair can ask the IESG, to
support such represent statement. Otherwise we wait to review the community
feedback for two weeks.

AB

On Thursday, October 10, 2013, Dave Crocker wrote:

>
> Folks,
>
> There are a few things that we should consider rather more carefully
> than we've been doing, beyond a few of the postings. (I'd especially like
> to suggest that there be more careful review of Andrew Sullivan's postings
> on the thread, since he raises essential point, in my view.)
>
> In any event:
>
>      1. In spite of calling itself a press release (at the bottom) and
> having gone through an ISOC media person, what was released was not a
> press release.   Neither in form nor substance.  Its title says
> "statement", and the bottom list of people is in the style of a
> signature list, rather than merely listing attendees -- and note that Jari
> does characterize this as being signed.  Hence what was released was in the
> style of a formal statement, issued under the control of its signatories.
>
>      2. The statement does not merely say that these folk met and
> discussed stuff.  It says they agreed to stuff, or at leased "called for"
> stuff.
>
>      3. These people were acting as representatives of their
> organizations; hence the use of their titles.  And the statement does
> not explicitly say they were speaking only for themselves.  So their
> agreement to the Statement needs to be taken as their speaking for their
> organizations.
>
>      4. Having both IETF Chair and IAB Chair makes it look like there were
> two organizations being represented, but in practical terms there really
> weren't.
>
>      5. It has been noted that the IAB is largely autonomous for something
> like this; hence the IAB Chair formally only has to answer to the IAB
> itself, and we are told he was in this case.  What this begs is a question
> about the IAB acting independently of the IETF community...
>
>
> My initial reading of the Statement was that it was quite benign, so
> that any concern about it's speaking for the IETF was purely a matter of
> principle.  In that regard, I considered it a nice test case for some
> basic IETF discussion of the authority of our 'leaders' to make statements
> on our behalf but without our review or approval.  Then I re-read the
> statement more carefully and landed on:
>
>  They called for accelerating the globalization of ICANN and IANA
>> functions, towards an environment in which all stakeholders,
>> including all governments, participate on an equal footing.
>>
>
>     5.  It's not at all clear what "accelerating the globalization" means
> here, since the statement offers no context for whatever 'globalization'
> efforts with ICANN and IANA are happening.  Worse, this item is entirely
> political, involving organizations with which the IETF has on-going
> agreements and reliance.  Further, I believe there is no IETF context --
> nevermind consensus -- for the topic.  As far as I know the IETF has no
> basic discomfort with its relationship with IANA, for example.  We might
> individually make guesses about what this item in the Statement means, but
> my point is that a) we shouldn't have to, and b) it has no context within
> the IETF community.  For any of our 'leaders' to make agreements on our
> behalf, about political issues of organizations with which we have formal
> arrangements -- and probably any other organizations -- is significantly
> problematic.
>
>
> As has been noted, there are practical and formal limits to requirements
> for getting IETF rough consensus.  Any constraints on public statements by
> IETF leaders needs to balance against those limits, if we are to allow folk
> to speak publicly at all.
>
>      6. The realities of trying to get IETF community rough consensus
> means that anything requiring timely action cannot seek formal consensus.
>  To that end, we need to distinguish between 'review' and 'approval'.  IETF
> community review can be very quick indeed, though probably not less than 24
> hours, if the range of review comments is to be a good sampling of the
> community.  In the current example, community review quickly noted the
> erroneous phrasing that confuses concern about disclosure of an act from
> concern about the act itself.  (I'm working on the assumption that the
> Montevideo group is really more concerned that monitoring was/is taking
> place than that someone made this fact public...)
>
>
> Now to a more basic issue.  It's likely to be uncomfortable, but I'll
> stress that this isn't about individual people.  Fortunately, no sane
> person can have any concerns about the intent of either of the IETF folk
> who participated in this event and its resulting Statement.  So what
> follows is about IETF roles, responsibilities and authorities, not about
> individuals...
>
> What does it mean to be a 'leader' in the IETF, who is Chair of the IETF
> or the IAB?  Unlike CEOs and Presidents and Chairs of corporations, IETF
> leaders mostly don't lead.  They don't set work agendas. They don't control
> overall budgets.  They don't hire and fire people.  For almost all of the
> formal IETF 'decisions' they participate in, it is with exactly one vote in
> a group, and not more authority than that.  (And by the way, the IESG
> largely does not 'steer' the IETF.  Initiatives for work come from the
> community and very nearly never from ADs or the IESG.)
>
> IETF leaders are best viewed as facilitators, rather than leaders.  They
> do huge amounts of organizing, coordinating, interfacing, in the classic
> style of the cliche'd 'shepherding cats'.
>
> So when they speak on our behalf, it really does need to be an accurate
> rendition of IETF community views and not merely their guesses of those
> views or their hopes of what those views might or should be.
>
>      7. The released Statement was formulated by the group including two
> IETF 'leaders'.  It was not subject to random formulation by a reporter, or
> the like.  When people holding formal IETF roles participate in the
> formulation of formal Statements, things need to be carefully based on
> actual IETF community views.
>
>
> We need to find some sort of language that gives constructive guidance and
> constraint about public representations of the IETF, by our 'leaders'.  Not
> very long ago, there was a concern raised by Pete Resnick, when an IETF
> working group chair made statements at an ITU gathering and represented
> himself as an IETF wg chair.  We might want to review whatever guidance
> came out of that.
>
> d/
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
>