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Re: Last Call: draft-dawkins-nomcom-dont-wait (Nominating Committee Process: Earlier Announcement of Open Positions and Solicitation of Volunteers) to BCP

2009-06-04 08:27:09
On Wed, 27 May 2009, The IESG wrote:
- 'Nominating Committee Process: Earlier Announcement of Open Positions
  and Solicitation of Volunteers'
  <draft-dawkins-nomcom-dont-wait-03.txt> as a BCP

I have two issues with this.

 1) This places a new responsibility at the feet of IETF secretariat.
    That's a new actor (not even a person but a role) in the process.
    This is not good.

    Better would be that the process allowed some already responsible
    party (be it ISOC president, former NomCom chair, IETF chair, IAB
    chair, or all of the above) the _option_ to allow IETF secretariat
    to perform this announcement. (More about the "option" issue
    below)

 2) As proposed, the IETF secretariat's role is exclusive.  In the
    future no one else would have the authority to publish the
    solicitation.  I don't think this is good.  The role should be
    optional, if _responsible_ party(ies) chooses to take that path,
    or at most inclusive of other parties' authority.

More detailed background on 2) below:

Abstract says:

   This document updates RFC 3777, Section 4, Bullet 13 to allow
   announcement of open positions and solicitation of volunteers to be
   issued before a Nominating and Recall Committee Chair has been named
   by the Internet Society President.

But the new bullet says:

      The IETF Secretariat obtains the list of positions to be reviewed
      and announces it along with a solicitation for names of volunteers
      from the IETF community willing to serve on the nominating
      committee.

      At the NomCom Chair's request, the IETF Secretariat may perform
      other clerical support tasks, as long as the task being performed
      does not require NomCom Chair judgement, in the NomCom Chair's
      opinion, and as long as the community is appropriately notified
      that this request is being made.  This request may come from the
      Incoming NomCom Chair (if one has been selected for this NomCom
      cycle) or the Outgoing NomCom Chair (if the search for an Incoming
      NomCom Chair is still underway).

"Allow" can be read two ways, one of them conflicts with the actual text.

Is the intent that the IETF Secretariat has an authority to obtain the list of positions and announce them (but other parties also have this authority), OR that it has the ONLY authority.

The narrow reading of the actual text above suggests that in the future no one else could do the announcement.

--
Pekka Savola                 "You each name yourselves king, yet the
Netcore Oy                    kingdom bleeds."
Systems. Networks. Security. -- George R.R. Martin: A Clash of Kings
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