--On Sunday, March 17, 2013 08:06 +0000 Brian E Carpenter
<brian(_dot_)e(_dot_)carpenter(_at_)gmail(_dot_)com> wrote:
...
I don't think it is at all clear that the confirming body
should be allowed to mess with the criteria suggested by the
IESG (or IAB or IAOC as the case may be) and then interpreted
and tuned by the NomCom. On the contrary, it is *only* the
NomCom that has full information, including confidential
information, and that is the point of Dave's proposed change.
Actually, if I correctly read the intent of 3777 (and its
predecessors going back to 2027) at the time and now, part of
the reason for having confirming bodies at all is to provide a
backup against a Nomcom screw up. That is especially important
in these days in which Nomcoms typically have to rely on
questionnaires and solicited feedback that are unlikely to be a
thorough representation of community knowledge. If the
confirming body knows things about a candidate that were not
available to the Nomcom, then it should apply that knowledge.
And, if the confirming body sees something in whatever the
Nomcom chooses to tell it about qualifications/expectations that
seems wrong (e.g., criteria that would permit selecting only an
incumbent or other single candidate), then it should respond
with vigor. Both assume that the confirming body may have
access to information that the Nomcom does not, not that the
Nomcom is assumed to have full information.
Without compromising anything that might be confidential because
it involves specific candidates or years, I have seen confirming
bodies say (approximately) "did you know X about candidate Y?"
and then go ahead and confirm on a "yes, we knew and considered
that" answer and to push back aggressively with a "no" one.
That is often a reasonable way to proceed, but is not the only
one, especially if the concerns are different.
I think we should be more explicit that the confirming body's
role is limited to verifying that the NomCom has done its job
and made its nominations in a fair and balanced way. I don't
think it's for the confirming body to say (inventing an absurd
example) "We need two intellectual property lawyers in the
IAOC, so we are rejecting the slate."
I don't either. I would expect confirming bodies to recognize
anything close to that absurd and not do it. I think that
trying to write rules to exclude cases like that would just get
us into more trouble by seeming to encourage decisions that were
almost equally absurd by not excluding them. If we are
concerned about confirming bodies having consensus is to be
stupid and irresponsible (or even to decline to have good-faith
discussions with the Nomcom), then, IMO, the best recourse
probably lies in strengthening the recall procedure so it can be
used more effectively and, as such, so the possibility of its
use provides a better control on behavior. In particular, we
might change the recall rules so that Nomcoms and their members
were allowed to initiate recalls and, if necessary, to share
confidential material with the recall committees.
IMHO, the confirming body should be a guardian of the process,
not part of the process.
I think what I outline above is consistent with "guardian of the
process". I believe confirming bodies should vigorously
debate whether any particular decision falls within that
guideline or, e.g., it trying to specify particular candidates
(in my experience, many have and have not always reached the
same conclusions, which should be ok). For me, a confirming
body would definitely be crossing the line if it said "the only
candidate we will ever confirm for position X is Jane Doe,
submit her name if you don't want this to go on forever" or even
"we've looked at the candidate list and Betty is more qualified
than Alice, so we aren't going to approve Alice". We have to
recognize that a sufficiently malicious confirming body could
disguise even those extreme cases as something else, so we
ultimately have to rely on them to be responsible. Again, if we
can't, there is something broken enough about either the system
or the membership of the confirming body that we need to adjust
the ways we deal with that class of problem, not about
fine-tuning the rules about what they are supposed to limit
themselves to considering.
best,
john