Last year, we talked about the need to review and possibly rework our
administrative arrangements at the IETF, dubbed the IASA 2.0 project [1].
We are now arranging a series of virtual workshops related to this effort.
For background, the IASA arrangements were created more than ten years
ago, when the IETF initially took charge of its own administration [2]. The
arrangements have served the IETF well, but there’s been considerable
change in the necessary tasks and in the world around us since then [3].
What administrative arrangements will best support the IETF going forward?
To make changes, we first need to understand what challenges or missed
opportunities there are in the current system. We believe there are a
number of areas in which we are currently facing challenges: structural
issues regarding the roles and interfaces between the IETF, the IAOC,
ISOC, the IESG, and contractors; availability of staff, contractor, and
volunteer resources compared to the administrative workload; internal
IAOC organizational issues; and challenges to the IETF funding model.
But we want to hear from the community about what problems you
see, and what you think is working well.
To do that we’re setting up two virtual workshops, open to everyone from
the community and people who are or have worked in some of these
administrative roles. Those who are less familiar with IETF administration
are strongly encouraged to read BCP 101 and draft-daigle-iasa-retrospective
prior to the workshops.
The workshops are virtual meetings where the participants can provide
their experiences and suggestions. The primary focus is on identifying
current challenges and opportunities. Proposed changes and solutions
will be dealt with in a later phase. Meeting notes and an Internet Draft
summarising the input will be produced afterwards.
The agenda will be the same for both workshops, but we are having two
to better accommodate participants in different time zones. The two
workshops are both on Tuesday February 28. The first one is at 11:00 UTC
(6:00AM ET / 12:00 noon CET) and the second one at 16:00 UTC (11:00AM
ET / 17:00 CET).
We will circulate a workshop agenda soon, but most of it will be about
giving you all an opportunity to provide your thoughts. Connection
details will be sent later.
We may also reserve agenda time at IETF 98 for follow-up discussion
depending on the outcome of the workshops. We’ve also set up a
mailing list for discussions related to this topic at
https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/iasa20.
Please join one of the workshops and/or the mailing list and provide
your input!
Jari Arkko, IETF Chair
Alissa Cooper, Incoming IETF Chair
[1]
https://www.ietf.org/blog/2016/11/proposed-project-ietf-administrative-support-2-0/
[2] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4071
[3] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-daigle-iasa-retrospective