Re: I-D Action: draft-hardie-iaoc-iab-update-00.txt

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

Andrew,

A few more observations inline below, but, coming back to
something I said earlier, I'm much more interested in the
question of whether the IAOC is being effective today and how we
can make it more so than I am in how the IAB organizes itself.
In part because of the worked example I cited earlier (and some
others), I don't see the IAOC as working well.   I'd be happy to
be contradicted but, from the outside, it looks as if part of
the problem is too large a percentage of the membership being
stretched too thin.   

I am also completely unsympathetic to arguments that we have to
have the IAB Chair (and the IETF Chair, etc.) as members of the
IETF Trust, therefore we can't take them off the IAOC.  First,
I'm not persuaded it is true, partially because I'm not aware of
any mysterious induction ritual for either role in which someone
comes around with magical IPR and/or financial oil and sprinkles
it over new IAB and IETF Chairs, thereby blessing them with
extensive knowledge and wisdom in those areas.   It was perhaps
just too long ago, but I'm sure no one treated me to any such
process of anointment.     More important, the decision to
constitute the IETF Trust by making the Trustees the membership
of the IAOC occurred at a particular time and under particular
(perhaps even peculiar) circumstances.   The period during which
we couldn't change those arrangements expired years ago.  I
don't remember the issue being discussed, at least in recent
years, but it appears to me that, the occasional request to
create a derived work from an IETF document aside, most of the
responsibilities of the Trust and Trustees are strategic, which
most of the IOAC's rule is, as the name implies, administrative
functions, budgeting, and managing the IAD and other contractual
functions.  It appears to me that argues much more strongly for
separating the two than for making one less effective in order
to preserve the "same membership" relationship.

More inline below.

--On Wednesday, February 03, 2016 20:39 -0500 Andrew Sullivan
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>...
> … this.  I don't think it is healthy, for the IAB or for the
> community, that we act as though the way to make this all work
> well is to have some _one_ who has all the state.  I think in
> the case of the IAB we should distribute the state more
> widely.  I think it makes for a more effective and useful
> body.  It also is a practical effect of taking seriously our
> usual claims that we work by consensus, that we reject kings
> and presidents, and so on.

I think this is key.   I also believe that, when the Nomcom is
evaluating the interests and skill set for the IETF Chair and
the IAB is evaluating the interests and skill set for the IAB
Chair, "has the knowledge, interest, and commitment to be a
really good IAOC member" does not head the list and indeed may
be far enough down on the list to not be very significant...
especially in an environment in which those positions have to be
filled from a pool that is very limited for other reasons.

> As part of that move, we also get the happy benefit that more
> people can be considered for IAB chair, because it will entail
> a smaller time donation by whoever ends up as the chair.  From
> the point of view of organizational diversity, that seems to
> me to be a significant advantage too.

Exactly.

>> My suggestion a few years back, after being on the IAOC for
>> awhile, was to keep the ex-officio folk on tap, for their
>> knowledge, but move them to non-voting positions, and then
>> specify 3 other folk to do the voting. (I think this matches
>> St. John's current suggestion.)
> 
> I also think it matches, but it seems to me that this will
> either be ineffective or else it will just add more cooks to
> the kitchen:
> 
>     • If the _ex officio_ people are not really expected to
> be paying       attention, then the expertise you are hoping
> to get won't be       available: every time you need the
> supposed special knowledge of       one of those people,
> you'll end up having to read them in       entirely to the
> issue.  That's no different than having someone       go back
> to consult with others on an issue.
> 
>     • If the _ex officio_ people are expected to be
> participating as       enthusiastically as they are at present
> (I would like to think       that I'm holding up my end of the
> log in the IAOC and Trust, but       my colleagues there
> should feel free to correct me), then all we       get are
> more committee members.  In my experience, it is a rare
> administrative task that is made either more efficient or
> better       delivered by adding more people to the committee.
> Perhaps your       experience differs.

I think the above is true, but I interpreted Mike's proposal in
the context of some of the other things being said at the same
time as wanting the _ex officio_ people (or at least the IETF
and IAB Chairs) as observers, not merely "non voting members".
That would imply a model closer to your first one, membership in
the mailing list, but no expectation of active participation...
but an ability to step in if they saw it as needed, e.g., if
something was going wrong.   It also implies absolutely no
expectation of their bringing special expertise or perspective
-- expertise and perspective that could come from anyone on the
relevant other bodies who was really interested -- to the IAOC
on a regular basis.   

If we separated the IAOC and the Trust, I could see advantages
to leaving the two Chairs as voting Trustees, but decoupling
them from the IAOC entirely, replacing them with designees from
the IAB and IESG membership.

> The main
> problem is that we think there should be one person in the
> middle of all these different things.

Exactly.  As I suggested earlier, there really were good reasons
for this when we set the IAOC (and then the Trust) up, but most
or all of those reasons are long past.

> It has struck me more
> than once that if someone brought us a system with a giant
> single state-exchange mechanism in the middle, many of us
> would immediately say, "Won't scale, and too brittle and
> vulnerable."  Yet we seem to think it a good feature in the
> organization.  I'm arguing that we can try another way.

And I'm arguing that doing things differently is long overdue.

     john

p.s. While I think the IAB should organize this (like most other
things) any way it sees fit, I don't see it as a good match for
the Program model, partially for the reasons Dave cites.    I
think your document should just say that that IAB selects
someone from its membership (as distinct from the IAB's current
appointment to the IAOC who has traditionally not been from the
IAB membership and who has no charge to bring an IAB perspective
to the IAOC/Trust or keep the IAB informed when issues of IAB
interest show up on the IAOC/Trust agenda).   Whether that
person has Program support or some other setup seems to me to be
an internal IAB matter and of much less interest.