--On Friday, 25 May, 2007 15:17 -0700 Lakshminath Dondeti
<ldondeti(_at_)qualcomm(_dot_)com> wrote:
Glad to hear that you see the value in making the IAB reports
public. I think that this is something that needs to happen
on an urgent basis. Please see inline for additional notes:
...
That all sounds too political! Most of this should be
transparent. What are people on the IESG/IAB afraid of in
sharing their honest views on whether a particular BoF
proposal is bad/ugly/good/ok? Being recalled? That never
happens!
That may be a separate problem. However, while I would hope
that the frequency is low, I've been parts of discussions --as
an IESG and then as an IAB member-- in which people have said
things equivalent to "while my employer is pushing this, I think
it is a terrible idea because...". So, for those few cases, you
might consider whether "fear of being fired" is an issue.
As to picking chairs, why is the BoF process any different
than the WG chair picking process (interim appointments)? The
sponsoring/advising AD may send a call for nominations, may
seek input from the community (some of them may be on I*,
sure) and makes a decision. He/she might write a blurb on why
a certain person was selected too.
There is no need for any significant "private" discussion
(except for discussion on personnel, legal and financial
aspects). Let's just say that I like BCP 39's Section 3.6
better than Section 3.2 of 3710.
I know I'm in the minority in the community about this, but I
think the IAB and IESG are likely to make better decisions if
they can consider issues, discuss them privately from their
different perspectives, and then decide. If, by making
everything public, you prevent people from exploring ideas and
encourage them to "play to an audience", you may get worse
results. While I have not been on the Nomcom and don't know
anything about the internal discussions, there is much evidence
that many of the choices of the last few years have favored
people who don't offend anyone over people who are determined to
exercise their very best judgment to get the right things done,
even if those decisions are unpopular. Of course, if one is
going to have collective decision-making processes that work and
are subject to appropriate checks, one must have an appeals
process that works, a nomcom process that works, and a recall
process that works, or appropriate substitutes for all three.
In addition, if you want thoughtful group decision-making, you
need to be able --and willing-- to get the group to explain
those decisions and then hold them responsible as a group.
I'd give the appeals process a reasonably high score but the
recall process has become purely theoretical and, despite a
great deal of hard work and good intentions, I don't have a lot
to say about the nomcom process that is really positive and
would observe that notions of not changing out too many people
in order to preserve continuity work against holding groups
responsible as a group.
...
Having been on the nomcom, my recollection is that people say
the right things in their questionnaires or interviews. So, I
wonder what's going on.
What almost anyone who had taken political psychology 101 or its
equivalent would tell you is that you have just answered your
question. People say the right things. Saying the right things
becomes more important than an understanding of them and how
they will behave. People who don't say the right things don't
get selected. And, insofar as the people who are saying the
right things do so because they _want_ those positions for
whatever it will bring to them personally or corporately, you
get bad behavior in the long run.
So, I would see value in the IAB's BOF reports being made
public, as far as their technical content goes, but on the
clear understanding that there will be private communication
on sensitive issues.
Let's start making the IAB BoF reports public! Do we need to
write a draft for this or does the IAB just need to start
doing the right thing?
Let's assume that there are three types of information in those
reports. There is material that could easily and reasonably be
made public, although the IAB members may have developed a
shorthand for discussions among themselves and with the IESG
that might take some effort to explain. There is material that
could be made public, but only at the risk of offending people,
especially people who might later turn up on, or influence, a
Nomcom. And there is material that, for one good reason or
another, should not be public. Just separating the three and
providing those additional explanations increases the IAB member
workload. I don't know if it does so significantly or not but
my sense when I was on the IAB was that only a small fraction of
the membership were regularly producing BoF reports that could
actually be useful. If you discourage people from writing
reports, or reduce the number of BoFs that an effective IAB
member is willing to cover, that isn't necessarily a good
tradeoff.
Nothing is free, including lunches and beer.
Speaking bluntly --and as someone who has given up on wanting or
being willing to take official positions sufficiently to not be
worried about retaliation-- I think you need to think about this
further and, in particular, be more sensitive to unintended
consequences.
From your later note...
Coming to the fear of retaliation issue (I guess we are
talking about unethical behavior on part of an IESG or IAB
member at this point), we need to find a way to fix that. On
this, we seem to be worse off than the outside world.
[...] Yet,
our own processes allow ADs to do exactly that (more
specifically, someone who becomes an AD might try and see what
all he or she can get away with and the push back is often too
little or too late).
Then you need a recall procedure that actually works, that can
be used, and that is as public as possible (perhaps more public
than the Nomcom process). Making more of the discussions that
go into regular decision-making public won't help: all a
potentially-misbehaving IAB or IESG member would need to fear
from having the misbehavior be more public would be the
possibility (not the certainty for a number of bad reasons) that
a Nomcom might not return him or her in a couple of years.
Suggestions have been made over the years about how to do that.
They have included standing or standby committees that don't
need a long and drawn out selection and appointment process to
begin considering action, restoring the ability of IAB and IESG
members (who might be the only ones who know the details of
behavior patterns) to initiate recalls, and changing the nature
of the Nomcom review model for incumbents. None of those
proposals have gone anywhere: those who are inclined to see
conspiracies and power grabs assume this is because the IESG
would have to approve them and doesn't like the idea of more
controls on its authority; I'm more inclined that, beyond
participation in an occasional conversation on the IETF list,
the community has stopped caring.
john
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