IESG transparency

Harald Tveit Alvestrand harald@alvestrand.no
Wed, 13 Nov 2002 09:04:40 +0100


--On tirsdag, november 12, 2002 18:57:13 -0500 RJ Atkinson 
<rja@extremenetworks.com> wrote:

>
> On Tuesday, Nov 12, 2002, at 02:56 America/Montreal, Harald Tveit
> Alvestrand wrote:
>> the reason I asked is that *somewhere*, there has to be stated an
>> overarching purpose for the organization, which is the driver for the
>> actual content of the IESG charter.
>
> I could be confused, but I think the purpose of the IESG is "to manage
> the day to day processes, Areas, and Working Groups of the IETF".

manage them to what purpose?
you can't make a value judgment on whether the IESG is doing well or badly 
without looking at how its performance impacts the organization's ability 
to reach its goals.
And that requires a consensus on those goals.

>> If we put that into the IESG charter, we have to change it if we change
>> substantially the way the IESG works.
>>
>> If it is on the outside, it may be more stable.
>
> Having an IETF charter is not a substitute for having an IESG charter.
> One of the reasons folks want an IESG charter is to have the IESG's
> powers delineated (even if that is done broadly).  Right now there is
> not a common, shared understanding of what powers the IESG has.

RFC 2026 and 1603 are reasonably explicit in a lot of places.

PS - the reason I'm pushing back on this now (apart from the fact that I 
haven't done my homework and drafted those charters since Yokohama) is that 
I'd like to keep focus on the problems/issues, not the solutions - the 
problem you identified is "there is not a common, shared understanding of 
what powers the IESG has", and writing an IESG charter is a possible 
solution to that.

Other problems might be:

- the IESG has too much power (specifics)
- the IESG has too little power (specifics)
- the IESG doesn't wield the power it has brutally enough (specifics)
- the IESG wields the power it has too brutally (specifics)

If those are the basic problems, writing a charter describing the status 
quo ante won't solve them (but might make them come more closely into 
focus).

                     Harald