Network Working Group P. Hoffman Internet-Draft VPN Consortium Intended status: Informational January 5, 2011 Expires: July 9, 2011 Requirements for a Working Group Charter Tool draft-ietf-genarea-charter-tool-03 Abstract The IETF intends to provide a new tool to Area Directors for the creation, re-chartering, and closing of Working Groups. The tool will also allow the IETF community to view the status of the chartering process. This document describes the requirements for the proposed new tool, and it is intended as input to a later activity for the design and development of such a tool. Status of this Memo This Internet-Draft is submitted in full conformance with the provisions of BCP 78 and BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. The list of current Internet- Drafts is at http://datatracker.ietf.org/drafts/current/. 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." This Internet-Draft will expire on July 9, 2011. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2011 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 1] Internet-Draft WG Charter Tool Reqs January 2011 described in the Simplified BSD License. Table of Contents 1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. WG Charter Process Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.2. Discussion of These Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 2. Tool Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.1. Requirement: Creating a new WG record . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.2. Requirement: Modifying an existing WG record . . . . . . . 4 2.3. Requirement: Moving a charter through all steps in the review process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2.4. Requirement: Adding comments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.5. Requirement: Requesting the closing of a WG . . . . . . . . 5 2.6. Requirement: Wording of announcements . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.7. Requirement: Access by the IETF Secretariat and IETF Chair . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.8. Requirement: Seeing differences between versions of pre-approval wordings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.9. Requirement: Showing some information only to ADs and the Secretariat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.10. Requirement: Viewing and searching the charter database . . 6 2.11. Requirement: Initializing the tool . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 5. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Appendix A. Some Known Open Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Appendix B. Differences between -02 and -03 . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 2] Internet-Draft WG Charter Tool Reqs January 2011 1. Introduction [RFC2418] describes the guidelines and procedures for formation and operation of IETF Working Groups (WGs). Since its publication in 1998, the IETF has started many dozen new WGs, has shut down many dozen, and every WG that has had some (often dozens) of changes to its charter. Currently, virtually all of the tasks associated with creating, rechartering, and closing a WG are performed manually. An Area Director (AD) requests one of these actions by manually sending a message to the Secretariat's ticket system. A member of the Secretariat staff manually updates the internal Secretariat database and the IETF Datatracker, manually places the WG on the IESG teleconference agenda (when appropriate), and manually sends out all of the required messages and announcements. The IAOC would like to create a better tool for those tasks, and this document lists the requirements for such a tool. When complete, this document may be used to issue an RFP for the design and development of the tool. This document was prepared at the request of the IAOC. 1.1. WG Charter Process Overview As described in [RFC2418], a key responsibility of the IESG is the creation, re-chartering, and closing of WGs. Creation and rechartering of WGs is a multi-step process that involves internal review of a draft charter by the IESG and IAB, an external review of the draft charter by the IETF community, and (likely) approval of a final charter by the IESG. The internal review by the IESG and IAB, and the external review by the IETF community, often result in revisions to the draft charter. Closing of a WG does not require review or approval by the IESG. Rather, a WG may be closed at the request of an AD, (normally the Area Advisor for the WG). 1.2. Discussion of These Requirements This document is being discussed on the charter-tool@ietf.org mailing list. See for more information. NOTE: This -03 draft will be followed soon by a -04 draft with many changes to the state machine, based on the current procedures used by the IESG and IETF Secretariat. Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 3] Internet-Draft WG Charter Tool Reqs January 2011 2. Tool Requirements The tool described here holds records for new WGs that are being considered as well as for all WGs whose charter are under review. 2.1. Requirement: Creating a new WG record Any AD can create a new WG record with a proposed charter using a simple web form. Creating a record should succeed as long as there is no other WG with the same name. The AD who creates the record becomes the initial shepherding AD. The shepherding AD of an existing WG can create a new record in the tool when a WG's charter is expected to change or when that AD agrees to sponsor a BoF. 2.2. Requirement: Modifying an existing WG record Any AD can modify an existing WG record. These modifications include (at a minimum) changes to the charter text, to the name of of the shepherding AD, to the suggested WG chairs, to the applicable Area, to the name of the WG, to the WG's abbreviation, and to the location of the mailing list. The AD must be also able to include a pointer to an older location for the mailing list. 2.3. Requirement: Moving a charter through all steps in the review process Any AD can directly change the state of a WG record to any of the following states: o Internal IESG review -- This causes a message to be sent to all IESG members. o Scheduled for IESG teleconference -- This causes an item to be added to the teleconference agenda. o In IETF review -- This causes a message to be sent to the Secretariat, who can then send a message to ietf-announce@ietf.org and start a timer for remind the sponsoring AD when the review completes. In addition, any AD should be able to easily send a message to the Secretariat to tell the new-work@ietf.org mailing list about the proposed WG. Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 4] Internet-Draft WG Charter Tool Reqs January 2011 2.4. Requirement: Adding comments Every AD can add a comment to the record of a WG that is under review. Each comment can be flagged as private, meaning that it is only to be viewed by the IESG and IETF Secretariat. Also, each comment can be flagged as either "discuss" (meaning blocking forward movement until it is resolved) and "regular" (meaning that it is non- blocking but informative). 2.5. Requirement: Requesting the closing of a WG A shepherding AD can request the Secretariat to close an existing WG. The shepherding AD of an existing WG can create a new record in the tool when the WG is expected to shut down. The request action will prompt the AD to provide instructions regarding the disposition of any active Internet-Drafts (withdraw them or convert them to individual submissions), and the status of the WG mailing list (will it remain open or should it be closed). 2.6. Requirement: Wording of announcements The shepherding AD can view and edit all of the standard "WG Review" and "WG Action" announcements before they are sent out during the WG creation, rechartering, and closing processes. 2.7. Requirement: Access by the IETF Secretariat and IETF Chair The IETF Secretariat, and the IETF Chair, can perform all actions that can be performed by any AD in this tool. 2.8. Requirement: Seeing differences between versions of pre-approval wordings It needs to be easy to compare differences between different versions of proposed charter language and milestones, up to and including the approved version. When a WG is being rechartered, it needs to be easy to compare differences between different versions of proposed charter language and milestones, including with the existing charter. It also must be easy to compare the milestones in a proposed charter to the current milestones of a WG. 2.9. Requirement: Showing some information only to ADs and the Secretariat Some information, such as private comments, will be viewable only by ADs and the IESG Secretariat. Some information might be private for some charters but public for others; for example, some ADs have made Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 5] Internet-Draft WG Charter Tool Reqs January 2011 their choices for potential WG chairs public in some BoF charters. 2.10. Requirement: Viewing and searching the charter database All members of the IETF community can view the public portions of the charter database. They can also search for a WG record in the tool based on one or more of the following criteria: o WG name (full or partial) o WG acronym o WG charter state o Shepherding AD o Area o Text in any of the fields Further, all users can view all snapshots of earlier versions of a WG's charter. Snapshots include the Area, AD, WG name, WG acronym, chairs, charter text, and milestones 2.11. Requirement: Initializing the tool Records for all WGs that are being created, or are in the process of charter updates, will be added before the tool is first publicly deployed. The database should also be initialized with historical data, namely as much information as is currently known about closed WGs. 3. IANA Considerations None. 4. Security Considerations Creating a new tool for tracking the charter of WGs does not affect the security of the Internet in any significant fashion. 5. Acknowledgements This document draws heavily on, including wholesale copying from, Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 6] Internet-Draft WG Charter Tool Reqs January 2011 earlier work done on this topic by other writers. They will be acknowledged by name in a future version of this document if their identities are ascertained. Various members of the IESG contributed many suggestions to this document. In particular David Harrington, Robert Sparks, and Russ Housley contributed a great deal of wording and many ideas. 6. Normative References [RFC2418] Bradner, S., "IETF Working Group Guidelines and Procedures", BCP 25, RFC 2418, September 1998. Appendix A. Some Known Open Issues Given the very early stage of this document, there are actually many more open issues than are listed here. This list is mostly meant to remind the author of topics that need to be updated in future versions of the document, and to spur readers to think of even more open issues. o There needs to be a section on access control for ADs and Secretariat staff. o It is not yet clear whether the tool will have its own database or use the current Datatracker database. o There needs to be a requirement about Atom feeds for the charters. o What lists other than ietf-announce need to be told of external review? Appendix B. Differences between -02 and -03 In 1, removed the "very early draft" note. In 2.1, simplified the charter creation step. In 2.1, added "or when that AD agrees to sponsor a BoF" to indicate that an AD can start tracking even at the pre-BoF stage. In 2.2, changed the requirement for modifying the record from shepherding AD to any AD. In 2.2, added ability to change a WG's name and abbreviation, and Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 7] Internet-Draft WG Charter Tool Reqs January 2011 also information about the mailing list. In 2.2, changed the requirement for moving the steps from shepherding AD to any AD. In 2.3, change the automatic sending of mail to be to the Secretariat. In 2.3, added the requirement that the shepherd needs to be able to ask the Secretariat to alert the new-work mailing list. In 2.4, added the "discuss" and "regular" flagging for comments. In 2.8, added the second paragraph about being able to compare milestones. In 2.10, added that searching includes text in any field and clarified what is in a snapshot. In 2.11, added that closed WGs should be in the database as well. Author's Address Paul Hoffman VPN Consortium Email: paul.hoffman@vpnc.org Hoffman Expires July 9, 2011 [Page 8]