RE: IESG issues with draft-ietf-nomcom-rfc2727bis-07

[Margaret.Wasserman@nokia.com]

Hi Robert,

>   | -------------------------------------------------------------
>   | >In section 2:
>   | >      The nominating committee will be given the title 
>   | >      of the positions to be reviewed and a brief description 
>   | >      of the desirable set of qualifications of the candidate 
>   | >      that is nominated to fill each position.
>   | 
>   | Is this information sent publicly or privately?
> 
> I'll just comment on this one for now ...
> 
> RFC2727 says:
> 
>       At a minimum, the nominating committee will be given the title 
>       of the position to be reviewed.  The nominating committee may be
>       given a desirable set of qualifications for the candidate
>       nominated to fill each position.
> 
> The replacement text is not substantially different.   

In my opinion, there are two substantial differences:

	1) Providing a set of desirable qualifications is no longer
		optional.  As far as I know, it hasn't been done in
		the past, so this is a new requirement.

	2) The new document says who would provide this information
	   and how it would be sent to the nomcom, which was not 
         specified in RFC 2727:

           "The IESG and IAB are responsible for providing a list of the
           qualifications desired of the candidates selected for their
           respective open positions to the Executive Director.  The
           lists are to be provided to the nominating committee for its
           consideration."

The list of positions is posted publicly along with the call for
nominations.  So, would this information (which will come in through
the same channel, probably at the same time) also be posted publicly?

Or is it to be assumed, given that this communication is not explicitly
exempted from the nomcom confidentiality rules, that the description of
desirable qualifications would be kept confidential? 

> The truly stupid thing about this objection, is that if it 
> were to cause the IESG to reject the document, then the IETF will 
> be left in exactly the position that the objection complains about.

Not true.  Under the new draft, the IAB and IESG are required to
provide a set of desirable qualifications, and it is unclear whether
that information will be distributed publicly or kept confidential.

Under RFC 2727, the IESG and IAB were not required to submit this
information at all.  In general, I think that this information was
gathered by the nomcom through interviews with IESG and IAB members,
among others, and was therefore covered by nomcom confidentiality
rules.

> One thing that is clear, is that if one were to desire that this be
> made more precise, one way or the other, the correct procedure would
> have been to bring it up to the working group when the document was
> being considered.
> 
> It is totally unacceptable for IESG members, however well motivated,
> to use their position on the IESG to force through changes to 
> documents that haven't been raised properly through the normal working 
> group procedures.

Nice posturing.

In reality, I think that everyone understands that it is not humanly 
possible for each IESG member to actively track and participate in
every IETF WG...

And, yet, we do require that the IESG review all of our documents for 
quality before publication.  IMO, the quality of a BCP process document 
is largely related to its clarity and consistency.

I am not saying that the WG has to change its position on whether
this information is disseminated publicly or kept private, or that
it has to follow my preferences regarding which one it chooses.
I am just saying that the document is unclear and incomplete because 
it doesn't specify this.

Margaret