I hope you don't mean a term limit. Making chair appointments annually
renewable might work - but limiting the pool of talent by imposing
term limits would be self-inflicted damage, IMHO.
At least in the WGs that I know, there are a fairly large number of
people who would be capable of leading the WG. Clearly, this may not be
the case everywhere. I don't think a strict term limit is needed, just
an expectation that chair positions are temporary and time-limited, with
regular review and explicit re-appointment. Having the chair report to
the community at such intervals might be part of the re-appointment
process. Meeting milestones would presumably be part of the reporting.
IMO, there is a quite a lot to be said about the above.
What we really need to do is _change_ the current culture, in which
chairs are sort of assumed to have the job for life (so long as they
want it), and having ADs make (involuntary) chair changes is painful
enough that it mostly only happens in extreme situations.
What would help is:
1) clear expectations of what the chair is supposed to do.
2) Regular/periodic performance review. I.e., is the chair doing what
is expected of them? Are there clear metrics that show this (like
concrete progress on documents, meeting milestones, etc.)
3) regular/periodic review of what type of chair the WG actually
needs, and whether the current chairs are still the best for the
job. (WGs go through different phases, and the skills needed to
make progress during the various phases varies.)
I am not personally a fan of term limits -- they have significant
downsides. But I do think that we should be more aggressive in moving
chairs around, and the community should both demand results from the
chairs and put pressure on WGs to perform better when they are not
meeting expectations.
Thomas
_______________________________________________
Ietf mailing list
Ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf