On 2008-03-07 21:10, Harald Alvestrand wrote:
Lakshminath Dondeti wrote:
...
The other question is why should the IAB get any special consideration
here? Surely, the IESG and the ISOC BoT could ask for more
information too and should be privy to the same level of information
that IAB is privy to.
I think the ISOC Board is far more reticent about questioning the
choices of the Nomcom than the IAB is, for multiple reasons.... agree
that it's reasonable to get their expectations on the table, too.
The three cases are a little different, which explains the different
interpretations, I think:
The IESG is asked to confirm a single IAOC appointment. Given that
the nominee is almost certain to be an experienced and reasonably
prominent IETF participant, the chance that several IESG members
know the nominee quite well is very high. So it seems very unlikely
that the IESG will ask for extra information.
The ISOC Board is asked to confirm a slate of generalists, from
a technical community, whereas the Board members are mainly
drawn from a wider and more managerial community. They are more
or less obliged to take the slate on trust, unless there is some
very glaring anomaly. Although the ISOC Board might ask questions
if something looks anomalous, they are much more likely to ask
"Are you sure about that?" than to request extra details.
The IAB is asked to confirm a set of specific managerial
appointments, sometimes including people who are virtually
unknown to the IAB, sometimes for jobs where there are known
to be contentious or unresolved issues. It's no surprise that
the IAB is likely to want more detailed input than the other
two confirming bodies.
So, we also need to be consistent, however we choose to do this going
forward. What is not good is to leave it be and let each nomcom fight
it out with the IAB.
Fully agree. In fact, given that the IAB expectations have been on
the web for >4 years, it's surprising this debate hasn't happened
before.
My opinion: There's nothing in 3777 that limits the supporting
information that NomCom may provide to the confirming body,
although this would be clearer if section 5 point 14 included the
words "at least".
The confirming body is explicitly allowed to "communicate with
the nominating committee both to explain the reason why all the
candidates were not confirmed and to understand the nominating
committee's rationale for its candidates." What isn't quite clear
in this is whether this communication can be interim (i.e. "we need
to know more about X and Y before we can confirm them").
Rationally, that should be allowed.
However, my feeling is that the IAB requirements listed since
2003 look more like second-guessing the NomCom than I believe
was intended by the consensus behind 3777. I don't want to
criticise the IAB for performing due diligence, or to suggest
that they can't be trusted with the confidential information,
but should they really be checking NomCom's every move? That
was not the practice up through 2002.
Just to be clear: I left the IAB as a regular member in 3/2002,
and I was an IAB member as IETF Chair 3/2005-3/2007, but
recused from all discussion of this issue. I was also ISOC's
liaison to NomCom in 2003/2004 (under the old RFC2727 rules).
Brian
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