Internet M. Blanchet Internet-Draft Viagenie inc. Expires: May 27, 2003 November 26, 2002 Suggestions to Streamline the IETF Process draft-blanchet-evolutionizeietf-suggestions-00 Status of this Memo This document is an Internet-Draft and is in full conformance with all provisions of Section 10 of RFC2026. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http:// www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on May 27, 2003. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. Abstract The intent is to document problems in the IETF process and to suggest simple solutions that can be easily implemented and do not require major changes in the IETF organisation, following the value of "running code". 1. Use of keyword The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119. Blanchet Expires May 27, 2003 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Suggestions to Streamline the IETF Process November 2002 2. Document Structure This first version of this document was written during the presentations of the Atlanta ietf plenary on the subject of evolutionizing the IETF. It started with the author personal views of problems and solutions and then was revised based on feedback. The document is structered in the following way: for each problem, a problem statement is written and one or many solutions is listed. Problem statements are labeled and numbered with P## and suggested solutions with S## in order to identify them when discussing. P## and S## numbering are independant each other and are not ordered in any specific way. 3. Problem Statements and Suggested Solutions o P1: WG chairs that do not understand the process cannot use the tools available to them most effectively, and may bias or delay the outcome of the process. S1: WG chairs MUST be formed and know the details of the process. New wg chairs MUST attend to wg chair "course" on their first IETF meeting as chairs o P2: Groups work very slowly if the chair is not paying attention, fore example when WG chairs are busy with their own life/work. S2: a wg SHOULD have 2 wg chairs o P3: WG charters and requirements are not clear at the beginning S3: before wg is started, the charter AND the requirement document SHOULD HAVE reached concensus. o P4: Waiting for IETF meetings to identify/reach concensus sometimes delays too much the advancement of the working group. Judging concensus based on mailing list comments does not usually show the silent majority opinion. S4: A fair concensus tool between IETF meetings is required. An online voting tool to help sense concensus in the wg between ietf should be available for all wg. (This topic seems contentious in problem-statement mailing list. it could be withdrawn in next version.) o P5: The problems in a design that need expertise from other areas to catch are caught late in the process, if at all. Blanchet Expires May 27, 2003 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Suggestions to Streamline the IETF Process November 2002 S5: have area experts (i.e. for each area) pre-assigned to each wg. They report to the chairs and AD of the wg, not theirs o P6: Lack of transparency: design teams are perceived as a way to bypass the wg, to push forward the opinions of the members of these design teams. Design team member selection is often done behind the scenes. S6: Instead of using design teams, chairs ask many individuals to write a document on the subject matter, and use the wg procedures for that document. o P7: Interim meeting are often called with not enough notice in advance with the important information needed to schedule: agenda, location, dates. This results in important scheduling problems for people who want to attend the meeting. The final result is the absence of people that could give good input. * S7: interim meetings should be called with sufficient advance notice (6 weeks min.) which MUST include the proposed agenda, the location (nearest airport at least) and the dates. o P8: Some comments are lost without being addressed by document authors. It is hard for others to see what outstanding comments there are. * S8: have a formal tracking system to track document comments. o P9: Room concensus request are often unclear and do not give good results. * S9: any room concensus MUST use hands NOT humms. Questions and choices to vote MUST be written on the screen and the meaning being verified and agreed before proceeding to the concensus pool. o P10: Non-English speakers find it easier to read questions from a screen than to be sure they understand a spoken question. S10: Chairs and proposers MUST write questions/proposals/... on the screen before any discussion o P11: The chairs and ADs might be seen to use their status for pushing their own documents or proposals. * S11: If a wg chair or AD is an author of a wg doc, he should find a co-author and have his co-author make presentations. Blanchet Expires May 27, 2003 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Suggestions to Streamline the IETF Process November 2002 4. Security Considerations If we don't streamline the IETF process, we might end up either: doing too late standards to secure the Internet or pushing bad unsecure protocols. 5. Acknowledgements All the people involved in the idn working group helped me to learn to try to be a wg co-chair are acknowledged here, in particular Thomas Narten, Erik Nordmark, Harald Alvestrand, John Klensin, James Seng and Paul Hoffman. The new revision of the document was based on suggestions from: Harald Alvestrand. References [1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997. [2] Bradner, S., "The Internet Standards Process -- Revision 3", BCP 9, RFC 2026, October 1996. [3] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998. Author's Address Marc Blanchet Viagenie inc. 2875 boul. Laurier, bureau 300 Sainte-Foy, QC G1V 2M2 Canada Phone: +1 418 656 9254 EMail: Marc.Blanchet@viagenie.qc.ca URI: http://www.viagenie.qc.ca/ Blanchet Expires May 27, 2003 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Suggestions to Streamline the IETF Process November 2002 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved. This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind, provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to translate it into languages other than English. The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns. This document and the information contained herein is provided on an "AS IS" basis and THE INTERNET SOCIETY AND THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION HEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Acknowledgement Funding for the RFC Editor function is currently provided by the Internet Society. Blanchet Expires May 27, 2003 [Page 5]