Subject: On the confidentiality of the information and communication within the nomcom context

From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 20:10:49 -0700

I understand that there is work underway on the topic of revising 3777 
and I have also had several discussions with various folks on this 
topic.  With no intention to undermine the work already underway, I will 
briefly state some of my thoughts.

* Nominee lists should be made public.  In fact, other selection 
processes within the IETF make the candidate lists public and so it is 
time we let go of this in the nomcom context.  The case against is 
fairly weak at this point in time.

* Nominees are required to publish a statement for public consumption; 
in fact, I would go further and require making some of the information 
that normally goes into a typical questionnaire response public.

* The nomcom in the course of its operation may collect any type of 
information and all that is for nomcom's eyes only.  The nomcom shall 
only provide testimony to the confirmation body based on that information.

* Members of the community may contact any nomcom member and ask to 
anonymize their feedback; nominees cannot provide anonymous feedback on 
other nominees for the same position.

* Non voting members may share and assert the opinions of the bodies 
they represent, at will.  All personal opinions shall be shared on a 
pull-basis, initiated by the voting members or the chair.

* The nomcom chair should not share personal opinions on candidates.  It 
is advisable to not share opinions even on a pull-basis.
The chair's role is to ensure that the nomcom voting members consider 
all opinions from the community.

* The confirmation bodies shall not receive any verbatim information 
pertaining to the nomcom (either information collected by the nomcom or 
generated during the nomcom process).

* The confirmation bodies are to be provided testimony on the selection 
of each candidate.  The testimony shall include the nature of 
information collection and the debates; it may include a summary of 
feedback and a characterization of the the strength of support for the 
candidate within the community and the nomcom.

* Confirmation bodies may base their decision on information not 
available to the nomcom.  They are encouraged to share information on 
nominees with the nomcom and contribute to the timely completion of the 
nomcom process.

* Confirmation bodies must inform the nomcom of their decision within 4 
weeks of receipt of the first communication from the nomcom with the 
names of the candidates and the mandatory information to be included in 
the testimony.  If there is no response, the candidates are assumed to 
be confirmed.

regards,
Lakshminath
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From: Danny McPherson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:15:51 -0600

> briefly state some of my thoughts.

For the record, the work there that I'm aware of is about
documenting issues with 3777 and associated functions,
there's nothing underway with regard to revising 3777
at this moment.

And you're likely not surprised that I agree with all of your
listed concerns, although we diverge somewhat regarding
possible solutions.

-danny

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 09:56:46 +1300

Hi Lakshimnath, just a few notes and queries...

On 2008-03-16 16:10, Lakshminath Dondeti wrote:
...
> fairly weak at this point in time.

As I recall, this was discussed extensively before 3777 (and before
2727) and opinions were so evenly split that the only possible
conclusion was "no consensus for change". So we'll need to see if
opinions have changed...

(My opinion: on the occasions when I was a candidate, I would
have had no problem with it being made public. But the tricky part
is at what stage the list of candidates is considered stable
enough to be published.)

> that normally goes into a typical questionnaire response public.

I think that depends completely on the previous point.

> * The nomcom chair should not share personal opinions on candidates.  It 

To be clear, do you mean the chair should not share his or her
personal opinions?

> generated during the nomcom process).

I think that's a pointless restriction. In fact I would see a positive
benefit in the nomcom's "testimony" including extracts from community
feedback. There's no point in forcing the nomcom to perform an
exercise in paraphrase. (Any such extracts should be anonymous,
of course.)

> the testimony.  If there is no response, the candidates are assumed to 

The rules currently say
"The completion of the process of confirming the candidates is due
 within 1 month."
I can see an advantage in making that more precise, as you suggest.
But I don't like the default exit - if a confirming body doesn't
respond, I believe that should trigger a rather uncomfortable blowback
towards the confirming body. Otherwise we are setting them up to
abstain when there is a contentious case.

    Brian

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 17:07:29 -0500

> conclusion was "no consensus for change". So we'll need to see if

Right.  I am a lot more ambivalent about it now than I was then.
I do think that it's not possible to be more transparent in the
vetting process without it effectively becoming more election-
like.  I'm softening on that (elections) although I'm still more
against them than for them.

Melinda

---

From: Ole Jacobsen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Mar 2008 14:22:53 -0700 (PDT)

Inline:

> is at what stage the list of candidates is considered stable

Stable or not, a list of candidates for the community to comment on 
would be a very Good Thing. We seem to think that it is perfectly fine
for the IESG or IAB to publish its list of candiates for the appointed
positions, while the nomcom list is not public. Given than I was a
member of the nomcom and a (ultimately successful, thanks folks) 
appointment candidate, this seemed particularly odd from my point of
view.

For the record, I don't think our nomcom chair has anything to feel 
guilty about. He did a superb job and the fact that bugs in the system
were exposed is not a reflection on anything he did or didn't do.

Ole

Ole J. Jacobsen 
Editor and Publisher,  The Internet Protocol Journal
Cisco Systems
Tel: +1 408-527-8972   Mobile: +1 415-370-4628
E-mail: [email-masked]  URL: http://www.cisco.com/ipj

---

From: Lakshminath Dondeti <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:55:10 -0700

I have been a bit under the weather and responding to some of the 
emails.  I hope to catch up in the next couple of days.

> is at what stage the list of candidates is considered stable

As Ole noted, we have crossed this bridge in some cases within the IETF 
already.  I understand Melinda's concern about the whole process 
beginning to look like elections, but I think this would be for the 
better.  We can keep everything else pretty much the same, publish the 
nominees lists and take away the complexity within the feedback 
collection process.  The positive side effects (in fact, these would be 
my goals) are that we will get more nominees and more feedback, on balance.

As it stands now, we make the lists pretty much public (by casting a 
wide net as the current nomcom has done and as some of the past nomcoms 
have done), but they are not public until after the nominations are 
closed.  There are also a few people who want the list of nominees for 
one or more areas and we say no, for obvious reasons.

> I think that depends completely on the previous point.

Yes.

> To be clear, do you mean the chair should not share his or her

Yeah.  I am ok with leaving this to the chair though, if that is better.

> exercise in paraphrase. (Any such extracts should be anonymous,

My worry is that verbatim text may leak information about who provided 
them.  Some of us have unique styles in writing.  Anyway, that's my opinion.

> abstain when there is a contentious case.

The current text on interim appointments says this:  "Third, the 
confirming body has two weeks from the day it is
       notified of a candidate to reject the candidate, otherwise the
       candidate is assumed to have been confirmed."

regards,
Lakshminath

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From: Harald Tveit Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 03:46:03 +0100

> is at what stage the list of candidates is considered stable
I was part of the rough in that consensus, and I continue to believe the 
same thing I did then:

*The names of people nominated should be made public.
*The names of the people who agreed to serve if selected should be kept 
secret.

The reasoning I have is that several people argued that they did not 
want it publicly known that they were willing to stand against an 
incumbent - but they could always blame the fact that they were 
nominated on someone else; it reveals no information about their own wishes.

The argument against is that it makes it easy to detect what's happened 
when the nomcom has rejected all the nominated candidates and has to go 
searching for new ones - I believe that's one reason why my position did 
not carry the day in the update resulting in 3777.

(and just to repeat what I tried to say at plenary.... with proper 
notification to candidates of what will be shared with the confirming 
body, I think we don't have a problem going forward; without such 
notification, I believe that passing verbatim text from the candidates 
to the confirming bodies was not right.
My sympathies with everyone who had to figure their way through this one..)

                     Harald

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From: Michael StJohns <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:44:52 -0400

>*The names of the people who agreed to serve if selected should be kept 

+1

Open enough to get feedback, but kind to the rejected candidates.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:23:19 -0700

+1

-- 

   Dave Crocker
   Brandenburg InternetWorking
   bbiw.net
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---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:55:59 +1300

>> Open enough to get feedback, but kind to the rejected candidates. 

It's very tempting to say +1 without thinking about the unintended
consequences.

Clearly, if NomCom published a proposed slate and ask for comments
(to be kept confidential) they would get a lot of comments. However,
if they published a proposed slate and said "we have now sent this
to the Confirming Body", something rather different would probably
happen. The community comments would be sent to the confirming
body, who would then be forced into the position of reviewing those
comments and truly second-guessing the NomCom.

So if we made this change, I think we would have to do two other
things at the same time:

1. Add a new period to the timeline for the community to send
comments to NomCom and for NomCom to consider those comments,
and possibly change the slate as a result (in which case, GOTO 1).

2. Explicitly reduce the confirming bodies' role to verifying
that due process has been followed, since there is clearly no
scope for further debate about the chosen nominees after step 1.

   Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 20:40:47 -0700

> It's very tempting to say +1 without thinking about the unintended

Brian, many thinks are easy to say without thinking things through.

Or without reading carefully.

> happen. 

Since the proposal was for disclosure much earlier in the process, what is the 
point of introducing the issue of being selected by Nomcom?

Nothing in the proposal imposes additional tasks to the confirming body.

> and possibly change the slate as a result (in which case, GOTO 1).

The proposal was for disclosure of those nominated.

Hence, any public comment would be accepted during the same period as the Nomcom 
normally seeks comments explicitly.  No change in timeline is needed.

> scope for further debate about the chosen nominees after step 1.

Frankly this sounds like an entirely independent issue, unrelated to the current 
proposal.

d/

-- 

   Dave Crocker

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:57:09 +1300

On 2008-03-19 16:40, Dave Crocker wrote:
>>>>> *The names of the people who agreed to serve if selected should be
>>>>> kept secret.
>>>> +1
> Since the proposal was for disclosure much earlier in the process, what
> is the point of introducing the issue of being selected by Nomcom?
> 

Afaik "nominated" in the RFC 3777 context means nominated
to the slate; at every earlier stage the people under
consideration are "candidates". Hence my confusion...

> 
> Hence, any public comment would be accepted during the same period as
> the Nomcom normally seeks comments explicitly.  No change in timeline is
> needed.
> 
> 
> Frankly this sounds like an entirely independent issue, unrelated to the
> current proposal.

I don't think so. If we switch to comments from the public on a public
list, I can't see any role for the confirming bodies in debating
the NomCom's individual choices.

   Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:26:22 -0700

...
...
> consideration are "candidates". Hence my confusion...

Well, the odds were at least even that the "without reading carefully" was mine 
rather than yours, but I took the particular 2-bullet list of Harald's to mean 
that "selected" came later.  Indeed, later in his message there is:

      "The reasoning I have is that several people argued that they did not
want it publicly known that they were willing to stand against an
incumbent - but they could always blame the fact that they were
nominated on someone else"

which seems to confirm that he meant "nominated" in terms of a name being given 
to Nomcom for consideration among a set of candidates.

> the NomCom's individual choices.

Some plausible reasons for continuying the role of the confirming bodies:

1. Making names who are nominated public is separate from conducting public 
discussion about those named.

2. Given extensive IETF history, it is unlikely that public discussion would 
converge.

3. For all of the public discussion that might occur, there are likely to be 
facts and concerns that are available privately that are not available publicly.

d/
-- 

   Dave Crocker

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From: Alexey Melnikov <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:36:51 +0000

+1