Re: Sunshine Law

Hi,

I fully agree that the best way to manage any organization, ideally, will be
NO ANY secrecy, full openness in every step, every decision. And this
include, and specially, how we should manage IETF.

I've been very concerned, and is not a matter of discussion here, but just
to show the situation, about the way the WG chairs, ADs, secretariat and
even the IETF chair, took a lot of decisions.

I'm always for a complete openness, but I also understand that is not so
simple, and we need to balance.

Having every single conversation or meeting scripted is not simple, if not
impossible and costly, even when the technology can help a lot.

For example, having every email going through mail exploders which are
archived and publicly open, will be easy, but how we can actually (if we
should) force all the participants to not use private emails, outside of the
list ?

Can some of the participants not talks so openly if they know that their
messages or conversations, are open to everyone ?

So, yes, we MUST try up to the limit, and clarifying rules and processes
will probably help as much as getting any kind of minutes or email traffic
being open.

And of course, a last and valid resort should be always to be forced to
reply to any IETF member very frankly, openly and honestly about any
question he might ask.

If the people who took a decision is not open about it, then that people
should be immediately removed from its position.

Just my 2 cents.

Regards,
Jordi

De: Margaret Wasserman <margaret(_at_)thingmagic(_dot_)com>
Responder a: ietf-bounces(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Fecha: Sat, 23 Oct 2004 11:46:51 -0400
Para: Brian E Carpenter <brc(_at_)zurich(_dot_)ibm(_dot_)com>, 
ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Asunto: Re: Sunshine Law


Hi Brian,

At 2:23 PM +0200 10/23/04, Brian E Carpenter wrote:

This is, I believe, one reason why our process includes a recall procedure.
It's interesting that this has never been exercised, but I think its
existence already puts the IESG and IAB on notice. However, it's always
going to be a judgement call which decisions are purely operational and
get made quickly by the I*, and which ones deserve debate in the sunshine.


There are several important things that your response glosses over...

Secrecy and closed meetings are not simply a matter of expedience in
the IETF, they are supported by our prevailing culture and documented
rules.  We currently, and quite explicitly, expect our leadership to
use their judgement in deciding what the community should and should
not be told.

It is a fact that the IAB and IESG regularly hold meetings, hold
mailing list discussions, make decisions and/or receive information
that is not shared with the rest of the community.  This is a
perfectly valid way to run an organization (most commercial
corporations are run this way, for example), but it is not (at least
in California!) considered to be a reasonable way to run a
government.   And, I personally do not think that this is the way we
should be running the IETF.

To illustrate the fact that the IETF is not organized or run in
accordance with the "Sunshine Law" today, let me give some examples:

RFC 3710 (the IESG charter) says:

  The IESG also has private group discussions, using any means of its
  choice, including email.  Records of those discussions are not
  required to be made public.  This is believed to be vital in
  permitting a frank exchange of viewpoints and worries, allowing
  people to speak out freely on topics known to be controversial, and
  permitting people to change their minds based on presented arguments.
  Decisions and their justification are a matter of public record.

What this paragraph says is that our IESG deliberations are allowed
to be secret.  Only our decisions and their justifications are
recorded and accessible to the community.  And, in fact, we make many
decisions that are not recorded, and others that are recorded without
enough detail to understand their justifications.

RFC 3710 then goes on to offer even more reasons why the IESG, in
particular, might decide to hold a discussion of which the community
is not informed:

  However, discussion of personnel matters and possibly legal and
  financial matters may sometimes be required to be kept confidential,
  and the chair may, with the consent of the full members, exclude
  liaison and ex officio members whose presence is seen as
  inappropriate for the particular discussion.

Although RFC 2850 (the IAB charter) does not empower the IAB to have
any "private group discussions" that are not minuted, it does say
basically the same things about personnel, financial or legal matters:

  However, discussion of personnel matters and possibly legal and
  financial matters may sometimes be required to be kept confidential,
  and the chair may, with the consent of the full members, exclude
  liaison and ex officio members from such discussions.

The passive voice in these sections is a bit ambiguous, but it is
clear that the IETF Chair and IAB Chair believe that they can jointly
require that the IAB and IESG keep information regarding legal or
financial matters confidential.  They apparently also believe that it
is appropriate for the Chairs to keep some information confidential
from the IESG or IAB.

The IETF Chair and the IAB Chair have, on several occasions chosen to
hold substantive discussions or make decisions in small groups that
exclude most of the IAB and IESG.  These groups are sometimes
justified based on prevailing thinking regarding directorates which
allows the leadership (at least IESG members) to hand-pick small
groups of people for advice, etc.

Brian, I believe that you and John Klensin were both members of one
such group -- the IAB Advisory Committee that did the initial
AdminRest work.  As far as I know, your meetings were not minuted and
your mailing lists archives were not open, although you did produce a
public report in RFC 3716.  Is it your belief that the public report
includes all of the substantive information that you received, and
all of the substantive issues that you discussed as members of that
advisory team?  Or did the team make some decisions regarding what
the community did or did not need to know?  Is there any reason why
your mailing list archives were not made publicly accessible?  What
it even considered?

I do not believe that, today, we can recall our leaders for using
their judgement in accordance with our prevailing culture and
documented rules.  So, if we want the IETF to be more open and
transparent, I think that we need to change those rules or pass a new
rule that overrides them.

We, the IETF community, need to decide how we want the IETF to be
run.  I personally believe that we should make substantial changes to
our culture and rules by adopting our own version of the Sunshine Law
and holding ourselves to that standard, but I am not of the opinion
that this would be a small change or that it would be easy to affect
this change quickly.

The community may very well decide that our current culture and rules
are appropriate and that we don't want to change them, but let's not
kid ourselves into believing that our current organization is run in
a truly open and transparent manner.

Margaret





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