Re: IETF Administrative Reorganization: What was that problem anyway?

John-

Thanks for your note.  A good reset of the discussion, IMO.  Some 
chiming in and a question below...

On Sep 14, 2004, at 2:12 PM, John C Klensin wrote:

We have
> exactly two problems:
>
> 	(1) For a number of policy and budgetary reasons, having two
> 	revenue sources that have to be kept isolated from each
> 	other lies on a scale between "suboptimal" and "nuts".
>
> 	(2) The IESG perceives that they are not getting adequate
> 	support for their work, and the standards process more
> 	generally, from the Secretariat and that, despite
> 	considerable effort, there has been little progress on
> 	solving that problem.

Yes, my understanding as well.

> And the guarantee of responsiveness, in _any_ organizational
> structure in which administrative/financial management are
> separated from standards management, lies in mutual trust and
> mutual understanding of goals and objectives, not in
> discussions of, e.g., who can blow whose bolts.

strongly agree.

> The question, then, is whether we can devise a scenario that
> addresses the critical path questions without inventing any
> more administrative structure than needed, without depending on
> unreasonable expectations of the skills of the IETF _technical_
> leadership, and without compromising the apparent and actual
> independence and ability of the IETF to develop good technical
> standards without undue influence from funding sources.

Agreed.

> To reprise, the criteria for that alternative administrative
> organizational structure should include:
>
> 	(i) The IETF volunteer (standards process) leadership and,
> 	for that matter, anyone with responsibility for steering
> 	the standards process, is at arms-length from financial
> 	dealings with particular donors who might be assumed to be
> 	influencing the IETF's standards process.
>
> 	(ii) Nomcom appointments to IETF volunteer technical/
> 	standards process leadership positions are not expected to
> 	require that candidates have significant administrative
> 	or financial skills, nor are candidates expected to acquire
> 	those skills on appointment.
>
> 	(iii) We put as much IETF energy into organization-creation
> 	as is actually needed to solve identifiable and real
> 	problems, and no more.  In particular, we don't try to
> 	create elaborate structures to handle hypothesized problems
> 	that have not occurred and probably will never occur, nor
> 	do we try to use IETF Administration as a way to develop
> 	and carry out unnecessary social experiments.
>
>      john
>

So, from this I guess you don't like scenarios C & D?  :)  Does this 
mean you do like scenarios A & B?  Or are you suggesting that some 
other as-yet-unspecified solution will meet criteria (i) - (iii) above 
and solve problems (1) & (2)?

--aaron

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