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Re: Proposed IESG structure change

2014-10-10 08:42:33


--On Friday, October 10, 2014 07:54 -0400 Eric Burger
<eburger(_at_)standardstrack(_dot_)com> wrote:

This is really tempting and has a lot going for it. However,
my main concern is once we build a bureaucracy, it never goes
away. In the case under discussion, the Division of
Applications would still be with us in 2050 (if the IETF
lasted that long). So, I think a professional secretariat
helping with the technology would help in the short term, but
will kill the relevance of the IETF in the long term.

Eric,

Yes, that is one of the important counterarguments although one
can imagine cultural and structural safeguards against it.
There are others, probably equally important.  It is not an
accident that many people in the IETF community have spent
energy deriding the organizations that use that model and their
outputs over the years.

It is probably not particularly important but moving to more
technical secretariat support does not require staff dedicated
to areas.  Some organizations do that, some don't.  And, as soon
as very long-lived WGs became common in the IETF rather than an
exceptional case or two that many people accepted grudgingly but
as necessities, we started to develop the patterns you describe
with no help from a technically professional secretariat.  The
latter, if not controlled, would probably accelerate the trend,
but one can ossify almost any environment.

My broader point was that, as we start looking beyond seeing an
issue with Apps and start wanting to make some adjustments into
thinking about how our basic "steering" and management structure
should evolve with the times, things similar to Stewart's model
of AD-plus-assistants aren't the only alternative.  There are
others, including several variations on a more active
technical/standardization role for the secretariat.  Indeed,
those two might converge at the point that one looked at
Stewart's suggestion and asked how we could staff ADs and a
bunch of assistants without turning everyone who is actually
willing to invest time beyond one or two topics or WG into
managers with no one left over to do the work: paying someone
would be one fairly obvious answer, just as it has been the
answer some minute-taking needs.  

If we really have an issue with Apps and Area boundaries, then
let's address that issue.  There is, however, a chance that the
current Apps issue, the recent issues with Transport, increasing
homogeneity in the IESG and exclusion of people who don't have
strong corporate/organization support, and questions about work
migrating out of the IETF that used to be obviously done here
are part of a pattern.  If that were the case, then, IMO, we
should be taking a broader look at organizational structure and
the evolving environment in which we work as more important than
trying to tune one Area a bit.   

I took Stewart's comment as starting to address those broader
questions --questions I personally think are important-- and
tried to respond in the same context.

   john



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