Subject: Separate ADs roles from IESG

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 13:37:24 +0200

Refering to the Change the Job subject of AD roles:

IMHO, the weakest point in the IETF process is having ADs in the IESG,
we need different expert directors roles in there. The AD can abuse
the system in his benefits because he can do ALL types of
participations at input and output, which I never seen that in any
organisation. Some one on the IETF list suggested two paralell IESG
which is nice to separate the area-output from IESG, but I think it is
better Separate ADs from IESG to have: 1) body of ADs and 2) the body
named IESG without current ADs (it may have past ADs experts of each
area). Similar
idea of having two groups of leading but different roles.

Also I always don't like when the IESG is discussing and I see that
the AD responsible for the I-D already made his decision, I prefer
that AD should wait until all put in their decision/discussions, and
then he may say what he thinks.

The ADs SHOULD have important-things in IETF that they are not allowed
to do. I don't like this off-hat and on-hat activities, or two/three
role-images per person in one volunteer organisation.

Best Regards
AB

On 10/17/13, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> On 10/18/2013 3:54 AM, Tim Chown wrote:
>> I believe the "intense service" you mention is a significant deterrent for
>> many.
>>
>> I'm sure it's been suggested before, but is there mileage in rethinking
>> the
>> AD roles,
>
>
> It has been suggested many times.  The suggestion has been ignored.
>
> We have been having some very serious recruitment problems for a number
> of years now.  This year's crisis was entirely predictable.
>
> The only way the situation will change meaningfully is to make the job
> less onerous, and especially make it possible for the AD to continue
> doing real work for their company.
>
> ADs are senior folk.  That makes them a strategic resource for their
> company.  Or, at least, they'd better be.  Only very large companies can
> afford to lose a strategic resource for years.
>
> Looking for alternative funding does not make the job less onerous and
> does not permit the AD to continue doing real work for their company.
>
> Re-define the bloody job.  At a minimum, make the workload realistically
> no more than 50%, but I actually suggest trying for 25%, given that
> reality will increase the actual amount above that.
>
> This means taking the current list of AD tasks and deciding on the ones
> that absolutely cannot be done by others, and specifying other ways to
> do the remainder.
>
> d/
>
>
> --
> Dave Crocker
> Brandenburg InternetWorking
> bbiw.net
>

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 12:49:19 +0000

Hi, AB

We don't have enough world-class experts on [insert subject here] that we can delegate some of them to "administer but don't participate" roles, and some others to "review but don't participate" roles. The same goes for WG chairs - if the WG is facing a contentious issue, it doesn't make sense to require the chair to shut up about it just to make the process more neutral. I'm afraid we'll have to live with the with-hat/without-hat thing regardless of any changes to the process of the job description.

The ADs have multiple functions:
 - managing the working groups, scheduling
 - reviewing all documents
 - incubating new work - BoFs.
 - representing the IETF, "steering", community stuff.

These functions could be separated, but only at a cost of more people. And nobody would take any of those jobs if it means they can't speak at technical meetings.

Yoav

---

From: Loa Andersson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 21:47:52 +0800

Yoav,

I was very tempted to just respond "+1", but since I often told people
that they should do more than so.

Folks,

I agree (mostly) with Yoav, but believe that we could (at least in some
cases) find people that would take these jobs. However; I'm also fairly
convinced that is also the people we don't want to have on those jobs.

I think AB demonstrates a fundamental lack of understanding of how the
IETF works; I don't think we need to discuss it further.

I wish I could set a troll-filter, but as wg chair I understand that I
can't do that.

/Loa

-- 

Loa Andersson                        email: [email-masked]
Senior MPLS Expert                          [email-masked]
Huawei Technologies (consultant)     phone: +46 739 81 21 64

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 10:18:26 -0400

> convinced that is also the people we don't want to have on

FWIW, I think a separation is plausible if that was what we
wanted to do. That is very different from endorsing Abdussalam's
suggestion or the reasoning (if "I don't like" is reasoning)
behind  it.   The advantages are clear and have been discussed
before, including both reducing the workload on any one set of
individuals enough that maybe we could get more people to serve
and eliminating the inherent conflict in loyalties between
taking the lead in establishing a WG and its charter, selecting
and overseeing its leadership, managing it in other ways, and
being expected to be its lead advocate to the rest of the IESG
on the one hand and providing a critical review of its work on
the other.  

I note that the roles of managing/steering and document review
and approval were originally separated (with the latter
belonging to the IAB under the old structure).  The problem with
that model at that time was that the IAB got out of touch.
Maybe, in retrospect, we had the right problem diagnosis but
partially the wrong solution.

Because working together with others on final document reviews
and providing a final verification that all necessary bits are
in place shouldn't require nearly the job-learning time that the
IESG/AD role does, one could consider asking members of that
review body to serve only a year or maybe six months, and
possibly relax the meeting attendance requirements, either of
which should vastly increase the pool of plausible volunteers,
including some people we would very much like to have in those
jobs but who can't take on the IESG workload or long-term
commitment.

For an earlier and somewhat different take on this issue and a
variation on a proposal, see the long-expired
draft-klensin-stds-review-panel-00.

> IETF works; I don't think we need to discuss it further.

While I agree about the lack of understanding part (and even
more strongly about proposals rooted in what some individual
says he or she "...always don't like..." rather than a real
understanding of the IETF or organizational and SDO
decision-making generally), let's not fall into the trap of
dismissing an idea because of where it seemed to come from.  Not
only is a stopped clock correct twice a day, but the separation
idea is not original (it wasn't even original when the draft
mentioned above was posted in 2005).

best.
   john

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 08:38:45 +1300

On 21/10/2013 03:18, John C Klensin wrote:
...
> possibly relax the meeting attendance requirements, 

I think we could totally remove attendance requirements. There
are cases where understanding a document requires background knowledge,
but if the document doesn't contain pointers to that knowledge, it's
a defect in the document, not in the reviewer. In fact, we can argue
that since the acid test for a document is whether a reader who has
zero IETF experience can understand it without ambiguity, at least
one reviewer should have limited background knowledge.

I don't think a time limit is the critical issue - it's how many
documents a given reviewer has to review per year, or to be more
precise, how many pages. Clearly the burden in pages/year on a
conscientious AD at the moment is silly.

> either of

The high-order bit is whether we can separate the functions of
(a) steering the work of the IETF and (b) applying final quality
control to the documents. At the moment, these two jobs are bound
up with each other in the IESG.

    Brian

---

From: "Joel M. Halpern" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 15:54:40 -0400

The obvious risk if one separates WG management from review is that one 
could easily get the situation where the manager, in working with the 
WG, says that the document needs X, Y, and not Z.  And then the reviewer 
says "needs Z".  And there are more extreme versions of this.
Currently, the ability for the managing AD to say "no, this won't pass 
muster" is part of his management tool.  If he is not the reviewer, he 
seems to have lost an important tool.  I hope I am missing something 
that would make this sort of approach workable.

Yours,
Joel

---

From: "Adrian Farrel" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 21:12:28 +0100

A better management/technical split that I can see would be exemplified by the recent proposal of an anti-harassment statement (q.v.).

At the moment it is the IESG's responsibility to produce such statements and it is currently the IESG's responsibility to hear appeals etc.  That *seems* like a very different task from reviewing documents or keeping a WG within charter and working to its millstones.

Adrian

> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Joel M.
> Halpern
> Sent: 20 October 2013 20:55
> To: Brian E Carpenter
> Cc: John C Klensin; IETF Discuss
> Subject: Re: Separate ADs roles from IESG
>

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 22:43:48 +0200

On 10/20/2013 09:54 PM, Joel M. Halpern wrote:
> The obvious risk if one separates WG management from review is that
> one could easily get the situation where the manager, in working with
> the WG, says that the document needs X, Y, and not Z.  And then the
> reviewer says "needs Z".  And there are more extreme versions of this.

Without having scanned every suggestion in this thread....

In my opinion, it is critical that it is clear who's got the final say
in whether a document is approved or not. At the moment, it's the IESG,
and I think it's likely that it should remain the IESG - if approval
authority isn't in the same chain of responsibility as management
authority, one has to find a way to deal with conflicts between the two
- and I think that's not a good way to go.

When I was on the IESG, and instituted the General Area Review Team, I
chose to trust reviewers to the degree that I would not read the
document unless my reviewer said I needed to. But the final decision on
the approval call was still mine; the reason I could do this was because
I trusted my reviewers.

Placing this amount of trust also means that it must be clear what
happens if the trust is broken - such a reviewer HAS to serve at the
pleasure of the AD.

If one wishes to shuffle around the responsibility differently, the
equations change. But splitting review from the IESG doesn't have to
mean splitting the authority for approval from the IESG.

-- 
Surveillance is pervasive. Go Dark.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:02:33 -0400

> that would make this sort of approach workable.

"Manager"?

Who's that?

ADs do not 'manage' working groups, and frankly neither do Chairs.

Yes, there's quite a lot of management activity done by both, but you've 
used the term manager in a way that reflects classic hierarchical 
authority models in typical organizations.

And that really isn't appropriate for the IETF, where we say that 
working group consensus rules working group decision-making and after 
that the IETF consensus rules.

The sort of thing you probably mean is that quality control processes 
outside the working group produce concerns and recommendations that run 
contrary to, or go beyond, what the working group has done.  That's 
fine, but that's not (necessarily) done by a "manager".  And in spite of 
giving ADs a unilateral authority to (temporarily) block progress, the 
resolution of concerns is a negotiation, not further unilateral 
decision-making by a higher-authority "manager".

The model that has ADs trying to be content experts, in addition to area 
facilitators, is exactly the underlying problem here.

d/

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 17:58:06 -0400

Just responding to one part of this that I find interesting and that

> then he may say what he thinks.

This is a very interesting idea, but I don't know that we can do
anything along this line that would have any real effect.  To
understand this, you'll need to know how the process works on our (the
IESG's) end today:

When a document comes out of one of my working groups, I do my AD
evaluation, perhaps do a round or two of edits with the WG (or perhaps
not), then request last call.  While I do that, I prepare the "ballot"
for the IESG.  After last call, the document's status goes back into
"Ad follow-up" state, and I schedule it for a telechat and issue the
ballot.  (Some of these things can overlap, depending upon the
document, but that's not important here.)

The ballot is where ADs record their positions: "no position", "yes",
"no objection", "discuss", "abstain", or, in rare cases, "recuse" (and
all ballots can have comments associated with them).  All documents
require one "yes" ballot and no "discuss" ballots in order to be
approved.  A Standards Track or BCP document *also* requires 9 other
"yes" or "no objection" ballots (specifically, 2/3 of the non-recused
ADs).

Now, when I issue the ballot, the datatracker automatically sets *my*
ballot position to "yes", and those of all the other ADs to "no
position".  That's because a "yes" ballot is required, and it's
reasonable to assume that the sponsoring AD, the one who is bringing
the document to the IESG, will ballot "yes" -- why else would she
sponsor the document, if not?

In principle, I like AB's idea: don't have the sponsoring AD
contaminate things by pushing her "yes" in front of everyone, and let
her judge the consensus of the IESG's discussion before balloting.  It
sounds useful, and correct.

Unfortunately, in practice, what I say two paragraphs ago would get in
the way: everyone will always *assume* that the sponsoring AD supports
the document and would issue a "yes" ballot, so even if the rest of
the IESG doesn't actually *see* the "yes" ballot initially, nothing
would really change.

In fact, there are occasions when a sponsoring AD ballots "discuss",
with a clear explanation of why, and, again, the assumption that it
will become "yes" when the issue is resolved.  It's theoretically
possible for the sponsoring AD to explicitly change the ballot to
"abstain" (or, even more oddly, "no position"), but this would cause
immediate questions from the other ADs as to what was going on, and
why were they being asked to spend their time on this document when
the sponsoring AD wasn't willing to support it.

So: this sounds good, and might be worth some discussion of how it
*could* be workable.  Given the explanation above, does anyone think
we can or should do anything here?

Barry, Applications AD

---

From: Barry Leiba <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 18:02:07 -0400

> role-images per person in one volunteer organisation.

This also sounds self-evident, but I'm afraid it would make people
even *less* likely to volunteer for AD positions if they were
explicitly not allowed to participate in the normal IETF discourse.  I
think most of us do choose to limit our non-AD participation, because
we are aware that even when we *say* we're speaking only as
participants, some people will give our comments more weight than they
(the comments) deserve, simply because we also have AD roles -- which
is, of course, AB's point.

But if we made an explicit rule that ADs should not participate in,
say, technical discussions in working groups, I think we'd make things
worse than they are, not better.

Barry, Applications AD

---

From: Melinda Shore <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 14:07:30 -0800

> worse than they are, not better.

Yes, excluding the most senior, most experienced people from
technical discussions is a pretty terrible idea.

Melinda

---

From: Abdussalam Baryun <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:23:25 +0200

Hi Yoav,

I just want the IESG to have a special hat. Any person in IETF is a
participant that edits, discusses, reviews and comments, including
managers, which I think is a good system model, but having to add
management and decision-making in the same time can create a problem
in that model. The AD has three authority-hats: one the normal
participation/part-of-community one we all have, the second is AD hat,
and the third is the IESG hat (I don't like to think titles only have
hats off-or-on, because I have a nice hat in IETF for participation).
I have no problem with WG Chair hats because they use two per document
and I prefer only two level influences on documents process.

On 10/20/13, Yoav Nir <[email-masked]> wrote:
> Hi, AB
>
> We don't have enough world-class experts on [insert subject here] that we
> can delegate some of them to "administer but don't participate" roles, and
> some others to "review but don't participate" roles. The same goes for WG
> chairs - if the WG is facing a contentious issue, it doesn't make sense to
> require the chair to shut up about it just to make the process more neutral.
> I'm afraid we'll have to live with the with-hat/without-hat thing regardless
> of any changes to the process of the job description.
>

The last function is not reasoable because it is not related to the
Area needs including IETF best output and the function is related to
the IETF decisions. Why does the AD be part of that decision for his
area's documents, I think better to be separated because he can have
used the normal hat in WG and then AD hat, so only maximum two hats
used per document. IMHO, the current system is that one AD person can
be using three hats per document flow through the system.

>
> These functions could be separated, but only at a cost of more people. And
> nobody would take any of those jobs if it means they can't speak at
> technical meetings.

I agree, but we have already majority people that don't like to take
those functions together (we are short of ADs) which I reduced one
function out. All SHOULD speak equaly in any meetings and I never say
that some one should not speak/comment. I want simply that who do IESG
to not do AD works, to reduce the three authority-hats of the AD to
only two hats.

My concerns are not three level-influences in only technical
discussions but also procedural discussions.

AB
with my IETF participation hat on

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2013 19:15:21 -0400

> up with each other in the IESG.

It's worth noting that there is a synergy between steering, managing working groups and reviewing documents; if you separate out document review, some of what IESG members need to engage in steering and managing may go away.

BTW, steering doesn't mean dictating the direction the IETF goes; it means being aware of issues that are cropping up, identifying themes that are common, and trying to make people who have less of a bird's-eye view aware of them.   It's not clear to me that you can get this view without consuming a fairly significant amount of time.   Joel's two hours a day is probably enough, but I wouldn't want to see it go a whole lot less than that.

---

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 03:04:03 +0100

Agreed, reviewing documents can be separated out.

There's a lot of technical expertise able to review documents, but outside the WG chair/AD/IESG formal hierarchy (and in very different timezones) that may be able to provide document reviews. Provided they never have to go on concalls.

Lloyd Wood
http://sat-net.com/L.Wood/

________________________________________
From: [email-masked] [[email-masked]] On Behalf Of Ted Lemon [[email-masked]]
Sent: 21 October 2013 00:15
To: Brian E Carpenter
Cc: John C Klensin; IETF Discuss
Subject: Re: Separate ADs roles from IESG

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 00:18:40 -0700

Hi John,
>draft-klensin-stds-review-panel-00.

Some of the comments on the thread point to document review being 
less than a quarter the  time the Area Director spends weekly on the 
role.  draft-klensin-stds-review-panel-00 is a starting point to 
tackle the time commitment.

The document defines an Internet Standards Review Panel with 
responsibility for final  processing review of documents for 
standardization.  Section 2 mentions that the body would not have any 
role in negotiation the contents of documents.  It may sound like a 
hard line.  The question the Review Panel is asked is:

   Should the document be published?

It is a simple question and the answer can either be "yes" or 
"no".  The fairly hard line is better.  It is easy to lose sight of 
the specification as a whole when people focus on specific points in 
a specification.

In Section 2.1:

   "A clear shortage of competent and willing reviewers for a given
    specification should be taken as an indication that the specification
    is not of interest to the IETF community"

You and I could argue about whether the above is a good indication or 
not.  However, the fact is that if there isn't anybody to review the 
"has been reviewed by the IETF and is suitable for publication" is 
not applicable.

It is better to keep the membership (see Section 2.2) to a small 
number with people with specific (area) expertise and people with 
cross-area expertise.  It has been mentioned on the thread that some 
Area Directors only perform a detailed review when a proposal is 
relevant to their area.

Section 6.1.2.2 proposes that a Last Call can be requested for an 
Individual Submission if its proponents demonstrate that there is 
significant community support for the proposal.  It removes the 
perception of arbitrariness when the matter is subject to Area 
Director discretion.

It is worth giving some serious thought to the proposal.  Some people 
are good at steering.  Some people are good at performing technical 
reviews.  It may be easier for people to volunteer if the roles are separated.

 From a different message:

At 07:57 20-10-2013, John C Klensin wrote:
>What I haven't seen since the changes of the first half of the
>1990s is real community consensus that it is time to do
>something rather than agonize about particular symptoms (e.g.,
>Nomcom problems getting ample good candidates for all areas),
>complain or whine, and ultimately do nothing.

Yes.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: Yoav Nir <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 10:51:06 +0000

Hi, Joel

I think this assumes that the quality of the document set that is the output of the IETF is the responsibility of the particular AD.

The proposal as I see it is that there is a different review body. So when the working group is done with a document, the AD may review it (or leave it to the shepherd), call the IETF last-call, and then both AD and shepherd present it to the review panel. That means that the IESG no longer has bi-weekly meetings to approve documents, because that is the function of the review panel. The AD and shepherd join a conference call with the review panel, but only for the document they are championing.

This means that the responsibility for quality control of a particular document and for the entire body of IETF RFCs rests with the review panel, freeing the IESG members to set up, recharter, and close working groups, and do the other things. They can still review things (like everybody else).

One advantage of this is that we can align the reviews along different lines from those that the areas are split along. For example, the Security area deals with all kinds of security protocols, many of them related to cryptography. So there's protocols like TLS, IPsec, and Kerberos. This is a wholly separate thing from the security of a particular protocol or from security considerations for its implementation. It's important for TLS to be secure, but it is no less important for HTTP to be secure. And yet SecDir reviews have become security reviews. They look at the protocol and the security considerations section, not in particular to how the proposal works with security area protocols. What SecDir (and the security ADs) check has only a tenuous relationship to what the security area works on. 

This is even more clear with the routing area. There is a routing area because there is a lot of work on routing protocols, not because every protocol out there is somehow related to routing. Is there any particular value in a review of some generic protocol (say, HTTP/2.0) by a routing area directorate or by a routing area director? This is not a dig at Stewart and Adrian. They may have a lot of meaningful things to say about HTTP/2.0, but I don't think that has anything to do with their routing area position or expertise.

Separating the review function from the IESG allows us to find reviewers along particular relevant review topics: (just off the top of my head)
 - security (both considerations for implementing and the security of the protocol itself)
 - deployability (has the working group considered interactions with all kinds of middleboxes? Does it require any non-generally available infrastructure? Does it require high bandwidth to function properly?)
 - usability (when protocols have interaction with a user interface, does the document cover that enough?)
 - networking impact (would it cause congestion? would it slow down other flows?)

There could be more areas. The review panel could use its own permanent members, or call in subject matter experts for particular protocols.

The question, though, is how much would that reduce the load on the IESG. If all we've done is get it down from 35 hours/week to 28 hours/week, I'm not sure it's worth it, because you still can't hold another full-time job.

Yoav

On Oct 20, 2013, at 10:54 PM, Joel M. Halpern <[email-masked]> wrote:

> The obvious risk if one separates WG management from review is that one could easily get the situation where the manager, in working with the WG, says that the document needs X, Y, and not Z.  And then the reviewer says "needs Z".  And there are more extreme versions of this.
> Currently, the ability for the managing AD to say "no, this won't pass muster" is part of his management tool.  If he is not the reviewer, he seems to have lost an important tool.  I hope I am missing something that would make this sort of approach workable.
> 
> Yours,
> Joel

---

From: Phillip Hallam-Baker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 07:08:55 -0400

The three questions of power:

1 How did you get it?
2 For whose benefit do you use it?
3 How do we get rid of you?

Unless there are satisfactory answers to 1 and 3, the answer to 2 is going
to always be unacceptable. Concentrating decision making power in yet
another unelected, unaccountable body is not viable.

---

From: SM <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 08:31:45 -0700

Hi Phillip,
>The three questions of power:

The persons are selected by NomCom.

>2 For whose benefit do you use it?

Each person has his/her own motivation.  A person can do it for 
money.  A person can do it to look important.  A person can do it for 
other reasons.

>3 How do we get rid of you?

It could be through a Recall petition.

>Unless there are satisfactory answers to 1 and 3, the answer to 2 is 
>going to always be unacceptable. Concentrating decision making power 
>in yet another unelected, unaccountable body is not viable.

An election is a popularity contest.  It is possible to have 
accountability without resorting to popularity contests.

Regards,
-sm

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:42:00 -0400

Joel, 

While others have touched on pieces of the response I'm about to
give, I feel some obligation to respond directly to my
understanding of your point.

--On Sunday, October 20, 2013 15:54 -0400 "Joel M. Halpern"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> The obvious risk if one separates WG management from review is
> that one could easily get the situation where the manager, in
> working with the WG, says that the document needs X, Y, and
> not Z.  And then the reviewer says "needs Z".  And there are
> more extreme versions of this.

Noting Dave Crocker's concern about the use of terms like
"manager", very little would change that would affect your
scenario.  The decision as to when a document was ready to go
into IETF LC would remain up to the relevant AD and IESG
(however the IESG decided to handle that which, as you know, has
varied over the years).  So, if the relevant AD said "needs X,
Y, and not Z", he or she could presumably keep the document in
the WG until either that requirement were met, he or she was
talked out of it, or the issue was appealed.  ADs would continue
to be fully aware of and to a considerable degree, accountable
for, "their" WGs and the quality of their technical work
(presumably including reviewing shepherd's reports), so that
part of the workload doesn't change.

If the IESG decided to force full IESG review and approval prior
to IETF Last Call, this family of proposals would not reduce
their workload at all and might ultimately increase it.  At the
other extreme (and preferably), if the relevant AD reviewed
materials to be sure everything was in order (procedurally and
technically), consulted other ADs, directorates, etc., as she
felt needed to be assured that things were in order, worked with
the WG and its leadership on what appeared to be outstanding or
problematic issues, and then forwarded the specification for
IETF Last Call, we would eliminate both the intensive,
word-by-word IESG reviews of documents, the need for the IESG to
take a "vote", and the requirement that ADs either perform or
arrange for extensive cross-area reviews (or carefully review
out-of-area documents themselves).  Note that also implies that
the IESG wouldn't get tied in knots over DISCUSS positions on
document approval: it would just not be their job and, if ADs,
especially ADs outside the relevant area, had concerns, their
obligations would stop when they brought those concerns to the
attention of the review body (with AD concerns presumably
carrying more weight than random comments on the IETF List
during LC, but not much more than a community LC comment that
was equally well justified).

And the responsible AD would be in a position to explain or
advocate for the WG's work/proposal to the review panel or could
delegate that job completely to a shepherd with a
slightly-revised "job" description.

Much of the management (sic) of IETF Last Call would fall on the
review body (details to be worked out).  That body could, as
others have suggested, solicit additional reviews from
individuals or groups, including asking ADs for advice on the
right people or groups to do that.  But they would bear the
final review and approval responsibility and would be directly
responsible to the community for it.    If, using your scenario,
they said "do Z", it would be no better and no worse than a
responsible AD imposing requirements X and Y before a Last Call
was conducted and then the IESG coming along and imposing
requirement Z after IETF LC completed -- modulo quibbling about
the difference between "requirements" and "comments to which
you'd better pay attention", that happens, a lot, today.

> Currently, the ability for the managing AD to say "no, this
> won't pass muster" is part of his management tool.  If he is
> not the reviewer, he seems to have lost an important tool.  I
> hope I am missing something that would make this sort of
> approach workable.

Again, the responsible AD still has to clear a specification for
IETF LC, so that doesn't change (regardless of what one thinks
about "management").

 best,
    john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 13:52:42 -0400

--On Monday, October 21, 2013 10:51 +0000 Yoav Nir
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> The question, though, is how much would that reduce the load
> on the IESG. If all we've done is get it down from 35
> hours/week to 28 hours/week, I'm not sure it's worth it,
> because you still can't hold another full-time job.

Yoav,

As others have pointed out, we don't have any large-scale
statistics about why people say "no".  But, speaking quite
anecdotally from situations I've been involved in, there is a
huge difference between allowing someone to cut productive
day-job work hours down to four or even 2 1/2 or three days a
week and having to give them up entirely for two years.  

In many situations, the choice isn't between "full time
availability for non-IETF work" and "IETF is the full time job".
It is whether someone has enough cycles left over after IETF
commitments to be substantially useful in the "day job"
environment.  

In addition and for better or worse, I don't think the IESG (or
IAB) are ever likely to become the sort of role that is suited
to someone who puts in 40 hours a week (or 35 in some countries)
and then goes home and forgets about the job or role.  In
practice, 28 hours / week might be considerably less than
half-time. 

   best,
    john

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 14:05:50 -0400

--On Monday, October 21, 2013 00:18 -0700 SM <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> Some of the comments on the thread point to document review
> being less than a quarter the  time the Area Director spends
> weekly on the role.  draft-klensin-stds-review-panel-00 is a
> starting point to tackle the time commitment.

I want to stress that it is just a starting point, that it is
now very old, and that, if I were to write up a proposal today
(including after reflecting on the discussions of the last
several days), it would almost certainly be different.

So, while I appreciate your point-by-point analysis, I think
many of those things could be adjusted as needed to meet
community needs.    One of them is specifically the "yes" or
"no" part.  Today, I would expect the panel to justify a "no"
although less in terms of "change Y" (see my response to Joel)
and more in terms of "think more about this".   Either way, a
"no" returns the document to the responsible AD who could decide
(presumably with the advice and consent of the IESG and
consultation with the WG as appropriate) to kill the document,
hand it back to the WG, better document why it should be
approved and hand it back, or, in extreme cases, to kill or
reorganize the WG and/or decide to handle the document in some
other way.

best,
    john

---

From: Andy Bierman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 11:07:20 -0700

Hi Joel,

Delegating authority without responsibility is a bad idea.
The question of "does an AD have too much responsibility"
seems to be the underlying issue here.

It seems the main IESG areas of responsibility are:
   1) Steer the IETF (e.g, approve BoFs, WG charters)
   2) Manage all IETF working groups (e.g., deliver milestones)
   3) Review all drafts for RFC publication

Why not have Area Managers as well as Area Directors? (split out (2))
They would be responsible for getting WGs in the area
to complete their milestones on time. (e.g, they have WG conflict
resolution authority, not the ADs). The desired skill set focus for an AM
would be
management, not technology.

Andy

On Sun, Oct 20, 2013 at 12:54 PM, Joel M. Halpern <[email-masked]>wrote:

> could easily get the situation where the manager, in working with the WG,
> says that the document needs X, Y, and not Z.  And then the reviewer says
> "needs Z".  And there are more extreme versions of this.
> seems to have lost an important tool.  I hope I am missing something that
> would make this sort of approach workable.
>
> Yours,
> Joel
>
>>> draft-klensin-stds-review-**panel-00.
>>>
>>

---

From: Wesley Eddy <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 14:31:39 -0400

> facilitators, is exactly the underlying problem here.

I'm not fond of the word "management" to describe the job either.  The
role is Area _Director_, not Area Manager, but I do think working
group management is a fine name for the task performed, as long as it's
understood to be in line with "We reject kings, presidents, ...".

The AD *facilitates* the working groups and BoFs by being able to
provide and shuffle resources (mailing lists, webex, meeting rooms,
etc), by trying to find and keep appropriate WG chairs, and by working
with them through chartering, re-chartering, and the later stages of
document publication.

The AD *directs* the area by being able to encourage or discourage
new work (via BoFs and rechartering), to send proposals towards
particular working groups, to end working groups when they cease to
be productive, and to ballot on work in other areas being proposed
in a charter or recharter.

To the question of splitting the document reviews from the working
group "management" tasks: When I was an AD, I found the document
reviews to be very useful in figuring out what was going on in other
areas that might be related to working groups in the area I was
responsible for, and in calibrating expectations for documents to
come out of my area's working groups.

If the document review and working group management roles were
split, I don't know how the AD doing working group management
would maintain broader awareness to avoid too much overlap or
conflict between WGs, or to know what the relevant things to
look for are in a MIB document, requirements document, etc. that
their WGs are producing, before sending them to IETF LC.  Certainly
they could find other ways to do this than reviewing every document
and sitting in the entire telechat though ...

-- 
Wes Eddy
MTI Systems

---

From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 07:58:07 +1300

> management, not technology.

We mustn't forget that although ADs almost always attempt to steer
(or manage) by persuasion and reasoning, they do have two or three
ultimate weapons - the powers to replace WG chairs, to close WGs,
and to decline to advance a document. This is what makes it hard
to split 1) from 2), and makes it plausible to separate 3) from
1)+2), IMHO.

    Brian

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:12:52 -0400

> to split 1) from 2), and makes it plausible to separate 3) from

Offlist, Joel reminded me of these points, which do formally qualify as 
attributes of 'managers'.  Still I think we should stop using terms like 
manager and director, because they invoke the wrong organizational tone, 
which I believe counters the underlying nature of the IETF.

That is, terms like manager or director invoke a model of daily 
hierarchical authority that does not match IETF reality.  Worse, it 
encourages ADs to think of themselves as having and being authorities, 
rather than facilitators.

Area Directors actually do not 'direct' the work in the area.  They 
almost never initiate it.  They almost never define it.  They almost 
never directly contribute to its substance.  Rather, they facilitate 
grass-root processes to integrate it into the IETF and monitor its 
progress.

The "management" functions that are classic are hiring and firing 
chairs, refining charters, and prodding chairs to make wg progress. 
That's all real, and one can cite them to justify the terms.

But this fact misses the day-to-day reality of the IETF which is a bunch 
of grass-roots volunteers who combine to solve a problem that they, the 
grass roots folk, want solved.

d/

---

From: Stephen Farrell <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 16:14:41 +0100

> and sitting in the entire telechat though ...

I think that's a point worth making. The purpose of the
IESG is not to educate ADs, but one side-effect of the
document review is just that, and it does help - I think
I'm less of a dummy about stuff that goes on elsewhere
in the IETF as a result, and I think that an IESG that's
more educated in that way is likely to be a lot better
on the whole.

S.

---

From: Dave Crocker <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 11:17:55 -0400

On 10/22/2013 11:14 AM, Stephen Farrell wrote:
> document review is just that, and it does help -

Yes, but...

It's late-stage education.

For doing better cross-area coordination, ADs need to know about 
activities during their formative stage, not when the activities are 
finished.

d/

---

From: Ted Lemon <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 15:25:47 +0000

On Oct 22, 2013, at 11:17 AM, Dave Crocker <[email-masked]> wrote:
> For doing better cross-area coordination, ADs need to know about activities during their formative stage, not when the activities are finished.

No problem.   We'll just need to add some more to the AD review load to address this.   :)