Interim IESG document review

[Alex Zinin <zinin@psg.com>]

Catching up on my old outstanding action items:

> o Alex Zinin to send proposal and justification for interim
>   document review.

With the current process, *formal* cross-area review happens only when
the documents are submitted to the IESG for final approval. If interim
reviews are needed, they are currently done informally through
requests to specifics ADs and directorates. The feedback brought back
from this has no formal standing within the process.

There are several advantages that a formal interim review process
could bring:

 1. Better documentation and follow-up.
    Documents for the interim review would be tracked using the normal
    IESG process, which helps to ensure that adequate review has been
    given to documents, or at least that the documents have been
    brought to the attention of the interested members of the IESG,
    and their opinions have been documented and discussed, within a
    reasonable time frame.

 2. Formal IESG opinion.
    At this moment, there is no formal way to request a review by the
    IESG and get a formal IESG statement on it. In certain situations
    it may be necessary to come back to the community with the
    position of the IESG as a body, rather than a collection of
    personal opinions from several ADs and/or directorates.
 
 3. Elimination of late surprises.
    With formal interim reviews, the IESG will have an opportunity to
    formally express its opinion on a specific direction a WG is
    taking earlier in the process. This resolution would supposedly be
    brought back to the community as either "The IESG has no problem",
    or as the list of concerns and comments raised during the review.
    This would results in more effective *steering* process by the
    IESG, and less frustration from the contributors as they would
    have an opportunity to adjust the direction.

 4. Better transparency.
    With formalization of the interim review process, the technical
    steering process becomes more transparent to the IETF participants
    and contributors to the technology being reviewed.

Following are the potential disadvantages of the proposal:

 1. More load on the IESG and secretariat.
    Interim document reviews would inevitably result in more work for
    the IESG members and secretariat.

    To eliminate or minimize the problem, it is suggested that the ADs
    bringing documents for interim review use this function with great
    caution and only when deemed really necessary.

    Also note, that cross-area interim review already happens in an
    informal fashion, so the increase in load of individual IESG
    members should not be substantial.

 2. Increased time of IESG telechats.

    See considerations for the point above.

Procedural details:

Procedurally, it is suggested that a new category of documents is
created for the telechat agenda (in addition to the existing "New" and
"Returning" document categories)--"For Interim Review". The IESG would
then have a choice (depending on the importance of the document and
its target status) whether to use the full-size procedure with
balloting or the simplified procedure normally used for documents
going to the INFO RFC status.