RFC 5078
IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and Recall Process: Revision of the Nominating and Recall Committees Timeline
Network Working Group 🎀 RFC 5078
Okay bestie, so this one is RFC 5078, written by S. Dawkins from Huawei (USA) in October 2007. It's labelled Category: Informational 💅, which means it gives information to the Internet community and doesn't specify an Internet standard. It Updates: 3777, so it changes the timeline in RFC 3777 (the NomCom spec), and it doesn't obsolete anything 🧚. The title is "IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and Recall Process: Revision of the Nominating and Recall Committees Timeline" 💖.
Status of This Memo ✨
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Abstract 🌸
RFC 3777 defines how the Nominations and Recall Committee (NomCom) works, and it includes a sample timeline for the big steps in the NomCom process that still meets the minimum normative requirements 📋. Recent NomComs have been using that sample timeline to schedule, and the chairs of the last three NomComs, Danny McPherson (2004-2005), Ralph Droms (2005-2006), and Andrew Lange (2006-2007), all said it's very aggressive and suggested starting earlier 😭. This document restructures the sample timeline, but makes no normative process changes 🫶.
Table of Contents 🦋
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2. The Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
3. Interaction with IETF Face-to-Face Meeting Schedule . . . . . . 3
4. Proposed Solution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
5. Sample Timeline for 2008-2009 NomCom Schedule . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Some Observations from the 2007-2008 NomCom Experience . . . . 6
7. Out-of-Scope Suggestions Requiring Normative Text Changes . . . 6
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
9. Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
10. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71. Introduction 🎀
Okay so RFC 3777 ([RFC3777]) is the complete spec for how IAB and IESG members get selected, confirmed, and recalled, as of the day it was approved 👑. [RFC3777] has normative requirements for how much time each step gets, and it also has an informative appendix, Appendix B, with a timeline built on that normative text 📅.
The normative time requirements in [RFC3777] are end-of-task, which is the key part 🔑. That means you can adjust the informative timeline to start earlier without touching the normative text in [RFC3777] at all 💅.
In the IETF 68, IETF 65, and IETF 62 plenary reports, NomCom chairs kept saying they wanted the NomCom cycle to start earlier 🙈. This document describes a timeline that meets that need. It replaces RFC 3777, Appendix B, and makes no other changes to [RFC3777] 🌈.
2. The Problem 💀
There are a few reasons people have given for the schedule pressure recent NomComs have reported, so let's break them down 🍓.
- A few common practices aren't accounted for in the Appendix B timeline [RFC3777]. For example, it's common to allow a week for notifying unsuccessful nominees before the formal announcement is made. That week isn't in the timeline 😤.
- Some tasks just take longer than the minimum interval 🐢. For example, a public "call for volunteers" must be open for 30 days, but the list of voting NomCom participants probably isn't announced at midnight on day 30. Anecdotal evidence says allowing about 6 weeks matches recent experience better ✨.
- The NomCom, and the community it serves, tends to celebrate a bunch of holidays between the third IETF and the first IETF of the next year. So people may be out of the office, may wait to respond, and so on 🎄.
- The Appendix B timeline doesn't leave any flexibility for problems 🚨. For example, the NomCom chair "reset" the random selection of volunteers for the 2006-2007 NomCom, which meant waiting another seven-day delay for the announcement of the date of random selection 😩.
All of these reasons can be handled by simply starting earlier than is absolutely required 💜.
3. Interaction with IETF Face-to-Face Meeting Schedule 🧚
On top of those reasons for schedule pressure, it's worth noticing that the NomCom schedule and the IETF face-to-face meeting cycle don't really complement each other 🙃.
- When NomCom volunteers are selected after the second IETF, they don't get to meet face-to-face and "get organized" until the third IETF, which is when they should be wrapping up their deliberations. That missed opportunity forces them to use teleconferences and other less efficient means of communication to get organized 📞.
- The NomCom volunteers don't get to interview the community, or nominees, until the third IETF, which is the height of the NomCom effort 😵. If the NomCom effort happened before the third IETF, the NomCom could work on difficult nominations and meet face-to-face with the nominees under consideration 🤝.
- If the NomCom is able to start interviews during the second IETF meeting, starting earlier than is absolutely required may also help NomCom be more effective 🔥.
4. Proposed Solution 💖
The high-level description of this proposal is, of course, "start earlier", but a bit more precision would help 🎯.
A sample, hypothetical timeline that meets these guidelines is shown in Section 5. Please note that, like Appendix B in [RFC3777], this timeline is not normative, but it does meet the normative requirements stated in [RFC3777] 🫶.
Other timelines are definitely possible, including timelines that let the NomCom report its results more than one month before the first IETF, where the slate of nominees is announced. Finishing early may be a good thing 🌟.
It's also worth noting that the first step in the timeline is "ISOC president appoints NomCom chair". That doesn't happen as an IETF responsibility, but the reality is the ISOC president needs to identify NomCom chair candidates around the time of the first IETF, and she needs a shortlist 3 or 4 weeks after the first IETF 👀. This document suggests (but does not add a normative requirement to [RFC3777]) that the outgoing NomCom Chair should verify that this process gets triggered during the first IETF 🧾.
Here's the list of changes to the timeline, in order 📝:
- One week is allowed for the NomCom chair to publish milestones.
- Six weeks are allowed for solicitation of NomCom participants.
- One week is allowed for confirmation of the selection of voting members, to allow at least some time for resolution if there's a problem 🛠️.
- The recommended time for NomCom self-organization is increased to six weeks 🙌.
- One week is allowed for NomCom establishing milestones.
- In the sample timeline (Table 1), an additional five weeks is allowed for the nominating bodies to select candidates 🎉.
- The timeline is adjusted to allow one week at the end of the process for notification of unsuccessful candidates 💌.
This significantly increases the amount of time available for NomCom to select candidates while still meeting the normative requirements of [RFC3777] 👑✨.
Okay that's the first half, bestie 🥹. Part 2 picks up with the sample timeline in Section 5 and the rest of the document 💜🦋
5. Sample Timeline for 2008-2009 NomCom Schedule 📅✨
okay so this section is the sample timeline for the 2008-2009 NomCom schedule 🎀 It's built on the IETF dates for the second IETF (72nd IETF, held July 27 - August 1, 2008), third IETF (73rd IETF, held November 16-21, 2008), and first IETF (74 IETF, held March 22-27, 2009) 🧚
Each milestone step's duration gets adjusted as needed for each NomCom, bc the scheduled IETF dates change from year to year 💅 The timeline lets the NomCom begin self organizing at the Second IETF (that's what "on time" means in the table) 🫶
+------------+-----------------+----------+--------------+----------+
| RFC 3777 | What happens | new | start date | old |
| Appendix B | | duration | (YYYY/MM/DD) | duration |
| reference | | (weeks) | | (weeks) |
+------------+-----------------+----------+--------------+----------+
| 1 | ISOC president | 0 | 2008/05/25 | 0 |
| | appoints NomCom | | | |
| | chair | | | |
| 2 | NomCom chair | 1 | 2008/05/25 | 0 |
| | publishes | | | |
| | milestones | | | |
| 3 | Solicitation of | 6 | 2008/06/01 | 30 days |
| | NomCom | | | |
| | participants | | | |
| 4 | Announce date | 1 | 2008/07/13 | 1 |
| | of random | | | |
| | selection | | | |
| 5 | Announce NomCom | 1 | 2008/07/20 | 1 |
| | membership, | | | |
| | challenge | | | |
| | period | | | |
| 6 | Verify NomCom | 0 | 2008/07/27 | 0 |
| | membership | | | |
| | during | | | |
| | challenge | | | |
| | period | | | |
| 7 | Confirm NomCom | 1 | 2008/07/27 | 0 |
| | membership | | | |
| 8 | NomCom self | 6 | 2008/08/03 | 4 |
| | organizes (on | | | |
| | time) | | | |
| 9 | END | 0 | 2008/09/14 | 0 |
| | organization, | | | |
| | BEGIN selection | | | |
| 10 | NomCom | 1 | 2008/09/14 | 0 |
| | establishes | | | |
| | milestones | | | |
| 11 | Nominating | 17 | 2008/09/21 | 12 |
| | bodies select | | | |
| | candidates | | | |
| 12 | END selection, | 0 | 2009/01/18 | 0 |
| | BEGIN | | | |
| | confirmation of | | | |
| | candidates | | | |
| 13 | Present slate | 0 | 2009/01/18 | 0 |
| | of candidates | | | |
| | to confirming | | | |
| | bodies | | | |
| 14 | Confirming | 4 | 2009/01/18 | 4 |
| | bodies accept | | | |
| | or reject | | | |
| (added | Notify | 1 | 2009/02/15 | |
| step) | unsuccessful | | | |
| | nominees | | | |
| 15 | Slate announced | 4 | 2009/02/22 | 4 |
| | 1 month before | | | |
| | 1st IETF | | | |
| | 1st IETF | | 2009/03/22 | |
+------------+-----------------+----------+--------------+----------+
New Step 1 Date: 2008/05/25, Old Step 1 Date: 2008/08/29
Table 16. Some Observations from the 2007-2008 NomCom Experience 🔍
so the timeline in this spec makes no normative changes to [RFC3777] 🙌 That means the 2007-2008 NomCom process started using the new timeline to gain experience and shake out unexpected consequences 💀 Here's what they found:
- It's worth pointing out that the [RFC3777] requirement for eligibility,
"Members of the IETF community must have attended at least 3 of the last 5 IETF meetings in order to volunteer.", is affected when the NomCom chair issues an earlier call for volunteers 👀 For example, using the 2008-2009 NomCom example in the doc: under the old schedule, a prospective member would need to have attended three of IETF meetings 68-72. Under the new schedule, that becomes three of IETF meetings 67-71. 😭 - It's worth noting that when NomCom uses the earlier timeline, incumbents under review who were appointed to one-year terms have only one IETF meeting cycle to establish a track record before NomCom begins considering whether they should be retained. This situation is rare but not unknown 🙈 The recent split of the RAI area out of TSV created two one-year terms (one in RAI, and one in TSV), and this can also happens if an IESG or IAB member resigns with more than one year remaining in the member's term 🌸
7. Out-of-Scope Suggestions Requiring Normative Text Changes 🚧
okay so there are very few avoidable serialized delays in [RFC3777], but we noticed that the minimum 30-day delay for volunteers is serialized after the NomCom chair is named 🫠 This delay accounts for more than half the elapsed time between the NomCom chair being named and the NomCom itself forming 😩 If a future normative revision to [RFC3777] changed the mechanics for this call for volunteers, the call could be issued while the NomCom chair is still being selected 🦋 That would let the new NomCom chair start work by announcing the date of random selection, instead of just waiting for the volunteers to volunteer 💅
One possible trigger would be to have the outgoing NomCom chair issue the call for volunteers on behalf of the successor NomCom chair, who may not yet be identified, at the first IETF meeting each year 🧚
8. Security Considerations 🔐
The NomCom timeline changes suggested in this document do not directly affect the security of the Internet 🌈
9. Acknowledgements 🫶
This draft is based on conversations with the chairs of the last three NomComs: Danny McPherson (2004-2005), Ralph Droms (2005-2006), and Andrew Lange (2006-2007), and on their corresponding plenary NomCom Report presentations at IETF 62, IETF 65, and IETF 68, respectively 👑
The 2007 IESG discussed Andrew Lange's report at their face-to-face retreat and requested a proposal that adjusted the informative timeline with no normative changes 💜
Thanks to Russ Housley, current General Area director, for reviewing an early version of this draft ✨
Thanks to Brian Carpenter, who pointed out that the IETF NomCom portion of the timeline depends on the ISOC president appointing the NomCom chair soon after the first IETF ("NomCom chairs don't appear magically"), and provided a suggestion for ensuring that this happens in a timeframe that allows NomCom to begin self organizing at the Second IETF meeting each year 🍓
Thanks to Sam Weiler, who pointed out the shift in meeting attendance requirements described in Section 6 🎀
We should also thank the editors of previous NomCom procedures for developing a specification that we could "speed up" without changing normative text 🌸
10. Normative References 📚
[RFC3777] Galvin, J., "IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and
Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and Recall
Committees", BCP 10, RFC 3777, June 2004.Author's Address 🦋
Spencer Dawkins
Huawei Technologies (USA)
1547 Rivercrest Blvd.
Allen, TX 75002
USA
Phone: +1 469 229 5397
EMail: spencer@mcsr-labs.orgFull Copyright Statement ⚖️
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📦 where this page comes from
- ietf: rfc5078 2007-10
- 💖 girlified by claude-haiku-5-5 on : a language model's rewrite of the original, under its terms