Subject: [Iasa20] Notes from Joe Hall for IASA 2.0 BoF at IETF 99

From: Joseph Lorenzo Hall <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2017 16:50:32 +0200

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# IASA 2.0 BoF at IETF99 Notes

   - Note Well

   - Introduction

   - Design Team Report (15:55)

   - Status

   - Don't have fully specified options yet

   - Specified what feedback we'd like to get here:
   https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/99/slides/slides-99-iasa20-design-team-slides-on-draft-haberman-iasa20dt-recs-00-01.pdf

   - Areas of possible reorg

   - Three potential options (IASA++, ISOC subsidiary, IETForg)

   - would love to hear other options if you have them.

   - (brian goes through the outline of each option)

   - (brian goes through feedback received)

   - Discussion (14:10)

   - Jordi: risk of being independent entity is that we will depend
   directly on sponsors (big corps, vendors). Not sure that's good for being
   an independent SDO. It seems risky. We are probably better staying within
   the ISOC umbrella, but clearly separate staff and such.

   - Brian: taking considerations from other comments that people have been
   making... will be an important aspect to choose between tham.

   - Bob Hinden: I view the IETF as a volunteer organization, essentially.
   Because some of these alternatives require much more staff and that will
   fundamentally change the character of the organization. That is something
   to consider from going to a fiduciary board. You need to examine that in
   this work.

   - Jon: clarify how that would change the nature of the IETF.

   - Bob H: It would rest more decision-making authority with staff... a
   lot of things that the IETF will care about will start to be decisions that
   are made by staff. Those decisions are made by the IAOC and the larger
   community. The Staff executes what the IAOC proposes to do.

   - Brian: we discussed what are the trade-offs between operational and
   strategic decisions. We'll need to identify that.

   - Ted Hardie: my understanding is that we're giving feedback to the DT.
   At some later point we'll get to design decisions? (Jon: Yes.) All of these
   options are workable if you have people in place whose training and
   experience gives them the ability to make the kind of decisions that we
   delegate to them. That may be because of the pool of people that we draw
   upon.

   - Hope is not a strategy.

   - Brian: you want 1) skill factors needed; and 2) estimate of the
   workload required for options.

   - Leslie: there are aspects of this that we need to keep in mind...
   including what problem we are trying to solve.

   - There are aspects of running our business that are constrained by ISOC
   processes. For example, our contracting processes have to match ISOC's
   contracting processes, and that's not necessarily ideal.

   - We Need to stay focused on the split of responsibilities vs. oversight
   and strategic responsibility. [Leslie's draft] tried to do some of that.
   Responsibility falls on the IETF Chair which can overburden that role.

   - We need to articulate more the problems solved by particular models.
   The only reason we can make any changes is that the IETF sees problems and
   need to change.

   - Jonnie Soininen: doesn't really matter how you organize a company, the
   board can still act as the IAOC does. So we need to look at how to change
   the culture in addition as to how to change the structure.

   - which of those targets that the DT has identified actually require
   structural changes?

   - *We may need a transition plan.*

   - There are examples of orgs, i.e., Linux Foundation that has
   organizations where there is a board and a structure but there are also
   orgs that don't have a legal status, so there are ways to do this, but we
   really need to specify what is really needed to achieve those targets in
   terms of what legal structure needs to be there.

   - We might come to the conclusion that we want to do a legal separation
   anyway.

   - Brian: what you say echoes what at least three other people have said
   on the mailing list. Should we focus on problems and goals first before
   what structure might fit it?

   - Jonnie: the legal structure of the IETF may not be the solution, but
   may be a part of a solution. E.g., role clarity between IETF/ISOC doesn't
   require a change in legal structure. It can be, but doesn't have to.

   - EKR: Ted, as you said, very early stages. Certainly agree that
   structural change is not enough.

   - What I'd like to hear from people about is that having a board may
   require people to be on that board who don't have a lot of experience with
   IETF but do running boards.

   - and Bob mentioned that he's not comfortable with Staff making so much
   of the decisions, but EKR is willing to trade off executive control for
   faster delivery.

   - my red line is not having any of their involvement in the development
   of standards.

   - John Klensin: "ollowing up on several recent comments, I think the
   most frequent difficulty with IASA/IAOC so far has lack of transparency to
   the community and the appearance of making strategic decisions _for_ the
   community, rather than focusing on determining and reflecting community
   consensus.  Perhaps others don't care but, if "we" do, we should be
   concentrating on changes that would fix (or improve on) that problem and
   then evaluate proposed solutions on the basis of how they would improve or
   pessimize things.  Some of that reinforces Jonnie's comment, of course."

   - Randy Bush: my first reaction, "Change, oh no!" I think up-leveling is
   that we're at an intersection of our culture and the shibboleths we
   worship: transparency, technical correctnes, [a few other properties], but
   not running a small business.

   - I have an instinct against having more staff that we pay to do this
   because that changes the game.

   - The legs of the stools, IAOC, ISOC, etc. The one that has the largest
   clue in terms of administration is the Secretariat. I don't have to think
   about those things, they get done. In terms of how to go forward, we're
   clearly not good at it and ISOC doesn't get the culture.

   - Tobias G: regarding the legal structure, been on a few, and there is
   very big independence between culture and execution. Legal structure has
   very tiny influence in my experience.

   - question about staff, IAOC, community: if we want to hand more staff
   to the decisions, today there is a concern that the IAOC is already taking
   too much decisions. Not sure how this will play out if we delegate more to
   the staff. Community will need to recognize that.

   - Brian Rosen: in a hallway convo, I lean to "don't break what isn't
   broken". We can't fire the IAD, he doesn't work for us. There is a process,
   but we can't fire him. It isn't a problem, but it could be in the future.

   - I think the marketing problem and generating more income is
   unfortunately a job that needs the right person more than it needs the
   right organization. Have been in a similar state before where we thought if
   we could change the org, we could find the money. and it turned out we just
   needed the right guy.

   - Jon P: do you think that we as the IETF possess that kind of
   competence? Brian R: no. and we can't necessarily identify the right person.

   - Jari Arkko: speaking as an indiv., not as DT. Culture comments being
   disjoint from legal structure is spot on.

   - Need to realistically look at the current system and ask if we are
   acting on an operational basis, do we have the time/capacity that we need?
   I don't think we do, it's not necessarily working well right now. Confusion
   and lack of time.

   - Gonzalo A: channeling Kathy, she's actually surprised that she's
   legally responsible, has to sign stuff, and has no control over them.

   - *DT should talk to Kathy Brown.*

   - She thought that it's just a bit weird to have this responsibility.

   - Ray P.: Three things: BCP 101 provides that the IAOC can fire/hire IAD.

   - important that whatever the oversight body is, that it have a cultural
   clue. They have to provide guidelines that ensure that the IAD knows what
   is going on and has the information they need to execute from the community.

   - IAD should hire the marketing people. That's the person who should
   have responsibility for stuff that the IAOC does now.

   - Brian: would you state that that involvement is contingent on having
   enough time?

   - Ray: IAOC should meet quarterly, not once a month. Let the IAD or
   whomever that is run the business. Without that, it takes away from that
   person the feeling that they own that and can run that.

   - Jason Livingood: we definitely need the right guy/girl to do
   fundraising.

   - Definitely need to cost out these various options. Based on current
   income, the IETF is not financially sustainable. Receives an annual top-up
   from ISOC.

   - *Jon: has the DT identified a good set of options?*

   - Ted: whole bunch of options we could have considered that would have
   really been bad. E.g., merging with some other SDO? This is the kind of
   thing that is not considered, I'm fine with that.

   - There are ranges within these options that are substantially
   different. Each of these is a class of options... that's fine for DT, but
   we'll need to narrow it at some point. Want us to be careful to recognize
   where this well get us... this will be the start of a journey.

   - Jonnie S: agree with what Ted said.

   - Yes, I think these are the possible viable ways forward in terms of
   legal entity. But don't think these are solutions to the problems
   identified in the document (the targets).

   - Jon: nope, some of these structures might utterly transform the [org
   chart]

   - Jonnie: the legal entity solution will not solve any of those
   problems, but you need to do that to see what options you have.

   - *Jon: if we just made the IAOC more consultive and transparent, that
   alone will fix things. Is there anyone that agrees with that?* No.

   - Leslie: get the point, structure doesn't answer the targets.

   - A more useful approach may be "here are the problems we've identified,
   and here are options that might solve them"

   - Lucy Lynch: I actually think that there is prep work before one of
   these structures is cleared.

   - given income streams and Kathy's current understanding... work there
   that is clarifying work that allows us to understand if there are even
   options there that we can run with.

-- 
Joseph Lorenzo Hall
Chief Technologist, Center for Democracy & Technology [https://www.cdt.org]
1401 K ST NW STE 200, Washington DC 20005-3497
e: [email-masked], p: 202.407.8825, pgp: https://josephhall.org/gpg-key
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