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RE: A concept resurrected(?) - WG secretary?

At 11:52 AM 10/12/2003, Margaret.Wasserman@nokia.com wrote:


There has been a fairly negative response to the idea of allowing WG
chairs to officially name WG secretaries.  I am surprised by this for
three reasons:

        - There was nothing in this proposal that required
                all WGs to have WG secretaries.
        - This proposal was offered as a constructive way to
                solve a set of evident, IETF-wide problems.
        - There are few, if any, alternate proposals on the
                to address these problems.

I agree with this logic and argument expressed here... the concept of WG secretaries appointed at the pleasure and discretion of WG chairs has enormous merit and those Secretaries should be listed on the WG home page

I like to try it out in Minneapolis for a variety of reasons.

In fact Id formally like to petition the IESG for permission to try it out.

IMHO the meta issues here are two fold.

1. What are the structures we can put in place that ,within reason, relieve some of the burden on the IESG for BGP , Informational document review and production and some of Ted Hardies ideas on a Area Directorate committee make sense here.

2. There is a fundamental issue here underlies the current thread which is what I would call "management in depth'. It is a classic problem of any organization that wishes to both recognize as well as promote individuals into positions that ultimately lead to management responsibilities.

The IETF is no different from any corporate body profit or non-profit in nature .. the successful organization looks first to its order of succession and the structure that says if person A gets hit by a truck then what happens?? Each and every person in the structure of management of the IETF is needs to be partially responsible to make sure that there is some one to take over in the event of sickness, death or other catastrophic event.

This is not a NOMCOM issue but it goes to the structures in place that the NOMCOM must draw on which is the pool of responsible and trained applicants for management positions.


What are the problems?

>From my perspective, a WG secretariat could add much-needed
cycles to help solve the following problems:

        - WG minutes are not submitted, submitted late, incomplete
                and/or of such poor quality as to be completely
                useless
        - WG agendas are not posted, posted late, incomplete and/or
                of such poor quality as to be completely useless
        - WG mailing lists aren't well-managed, and summaries
                aren't sent after lengthy discussions.

presicely and I'm perfectly wiling to admit to some of these omissions myself


Now, I'll admit that there may be some WGs for which all of these
things are being done, and done well on a timely basis...  But, can
you name one?  These problems apply to a large enough majority of
the IETF groups that I think they can be considered IETF-wide
problems.

Why are minutes, agendas and summaries important

We assert that it is possible to be a full contributor in the
IETF without attending meetings.  Bad or missing meeting minutes
make that more difficult.

The minutes are the only long-term, archived record of what was
discussed and decided in our meetings.  They can be very important
later, if it is necessary to know what a group decided and why.

Agendas allow people to prepare for meetings and to know which
meetings they should attend.

And summaries could help to make WG mailing lists productive,
breaking us out of the make-progress-every-four-months cycle
that most WGs seem to be locked in.

I am the first to admit that my WGs have not been exemplary at
these things.  Have yours?  If not, do you think a WG secretary
might help?

yes


Margaret 


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