RFC 5633

Nominating Committee Process: Earlier Announcement of Open Positions and Solicitation of Volunteers ✨

• RFC: 5633
• BCP: 10
• Category: Best Current Practice
• Date: August 2009
• Updates: 3777
• Author: S. Dawkins, Ed. (Huawei (USA)) 💖
• Network Working Group 🌸

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Abstract 🦋

okay so this doc updates RFC 3777, Section 4, Bullet 13 🎀 It lets the announcement of open positions and the call for volunteers happen before the Nominating and Recall Committee Chair has been named by the Internet Society President. no more waiting around! 💅

Status of This Memo 📜

This document specifies an Internet Best Current Practices for the Internet Community, and requests discussion and suggestions for improvements. Distribution of this memo is unlimited. 🫶

Copyright Notice ©️

Copyright (c) 2009 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 in effect on the date of publication of this document (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info). Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. 💜

Table of Contents 🧚

1. Introduction ....................................................2
2. Background ......................................................2
3. Discussion ......................................................3
4. Updated Text from RFC 3777 ......................................4
5. Possible Topics for Later Discussion ............................4
6. Security Considerations .........................................5
7. Acknowledgements ................................................5
8. References ......................................................5
   8.1. Normative References .......................................5
   8.2. Informative References .....................................5

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1. Introduction 👑

okay so the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG), the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), and the at-large IETF representatives to the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC) all get picked by a "Nominating and Recall Committee" (everyone just calls it "NomCom" 🙈). [RFC3777] is the doc that spells out how the NomCom gets selected and what steps it follows when it picks people for those spots. 🍓

This doc is about an issue with [RFC3777] that causes a totally avoidable delay in the NomCom process, and it sets out a normative update to fix it. ✨

2. Background 🌸

[RFC3777] is the newest version in a line of revisions to the NomCom process. It got updated once since 2004, but that update ([RFC5078]) didn't change any normative text. It just replaced a sample timeline. 💅

[RFC5078] points out a serial delay in the process described in [RFC3777], in Section 4 ("Nominating Committee Selection"), Bullet 13. Here's what that bullet says:

The Chair obtains the list of IESG and IAB positions to be
reviewed and announces it along with a solicitation for names of
volunteers from the IETF community willing to serve on the
nominating committee.

The solicitation must permit the community at least 30 days during
which they may choose to volunteer to be selected for the
nominating committee.

The list of open positions is published with the solicitation to
facilitate community members choosing between volunteering for an
open position and volunteering for the nominating committee.

So the result is that the Incoming NomCom Chair is the only person who can announce the list of open positions and the call for volunteers, and that step needs 30 days of public solicitation. it's giving bottleneck 😭

Since this is the very first step in organizing the NomCom, any delay in picking the Incoming NomCom Chair turns straight into delays in issuing the solicitation and organizing the whole NomCom. 🔥

This actually went wrong in 2008-2009, when Joel Halpern was named NomCom Chair less than 30 days before the second IETF meeting of the year. If the 30-day solicitation had already happened, the NomCom could have done face-to-face interviews at that second IETF meeting. But because the required 30-day solicitation didn't start until Joel was named, he couldn't put his NomCom together before that meeting, so the NomCom had to do the interviews over email and conference calls. 🙈

It's really desirable to let the solicitation and announcement happen in a timely way, so that once an Incoming NomCom Chair is named, the NomCom Chair can jump right in and start running the NomCom process. ✨

3. Discussion 🎀

This doc proposes that four weeks after the first IETF meeting each year, the Internet Society President will either announce an Incoming NomCom Chair, or will direct the IETF Executive Director to issue the announcement of open positions and the solicitation for names of volunteers on behalf of the Incoming NomCom Chair. That way the search for the Incoming NomCom Chair and the search for volunteers can happen at the same time. 🦋

This process change only covers the announcement of open positions and the solicitation for names of volunteers. It does not let the NomCom process get to completion without an Incoming NomCom Chair. It's just there so the Incoming NomCom Chair can start running the NomCom process without an avoidable delay, and can make good use of face-to-face time at the second IETF meeting for that purpose. 💜

During discussions in the IETF 74 timeframe, someone suggested we also let the Secretariat handle other clerical tasks that aren't spelled out in the NomCom process but clearly don't need NomCom Chair judgment. This doc doesn't give guidance on which specific clerical tasks would be right for the Secretariat. Instead, either the Incoming NomCom Chair (if one has been selected) or the Outgoing NomCom Chair (if the search for an Incoming NomCom Chair is still going) may ask the Secretariat to do these tasks, with appropriate notice to the community. 🌈

4. Updated Text from RFC 3777 💖

[RFC3777], Section 4 ("Nominating Committee Selection"), Bullet 13, says:

The Chair obtains the list of IESG and IAB positions to be
reviewed and announces it along with a solicitation for names of
volunteers from the IETF community willing to serve on the
nominating committee.

This text gets replaced with the following text:

The Chair (or the IETF Executive Director, if no Chair has been
named four weeks after the first IETF meeting of the year) obtains
the list of positions to be reviewed and announces it along with a
solicitation for names of volunteers from the IETF community
willing to serve on the nominating committee.

If the IETF Executive Director issues the solicitation for
volunteers, the IETF Executive Director must also collect
responses to the solicitation and provide the names of volunteers
to the Incoming NomCom Chair when the Incoming NomCom Chair is
named.

At the Chair's request, the IETF Secretariat may perform other
clerical support tasks, as long as the task being performed does
not require NomCom Chair judgment, in the NomCom Chair's opinion,
and as long as the community is appropriately notified that this
request is being made.  This request may come from the Incoming
NomCom Chair (if one has been selected for this NomCom cycle) or
the Outgoing NomCom Chair (if the search for an Incoming NomCom
Chair is still underway).

Note: This text no longer specifies the list of bodies that NomCom reviews, rather than adding IAOC to the list of bodies in the text, so that this text need not change further when NomCom responsibilities change.

5. Possible Topics for Later Discussion 🧚

This section has topics that came up while this doc was being discussed, but got ruled out of scope. The goal here was incremental improvement, and these topics were more than incremental changes. They might get discussed later, or not, but we're less likely to forget them completely if we write them down. 📝

[RFC3777] tightly couples the announcement of open positions and the call for volunteers, and this doc didn't try to unravel those two separate actions. During discussion, someone asked to separate them, so that a NomCom could look at the management structure of the IETF and the position descriptions that the leadership bodies provide before announcing the positions being reviewed. 🌸

6. Security Considerations 🔐

This specification describes issues with the current IETF Nominating Committee process [RFC3777] and proposes an update to avoid a serial delay. No security considerations apply. 🫶

7. Acknowledgements 💅

The editor thanks the following folks who gave useful observations and guidance on previous versions of this document: Scott Bradner (who suggested that the IETF Secretariat have this responsibility), Brian Carpenter, Ralph Droms, Jim Galvin, Joel Halpern, Danny McPherson, and Pekka Savola. 💖

The editor also thanks the Wednesday evening plenary session participants during IETF 74 who gave useful feedback on previous versions of this document [w74plen]. 🎀

8. References 📚

8.1. 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.

8.2. Informative References

[RFC5078]  Dawkins, S., "IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and
           Recall Process: Revision of the Nominating and Recall
           Committees Timeline", RFC 5078, October 2007.

[w74plen]  "IETF 74 Wednesday Evening Plenary Minutes", March 2009.

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Author's Address 🦋

Spencer Dawkins (editor) Huawei Technologies (USA)

Phone: +1 214 755 3870 EMail: spencer@wonderhamster.org 💜