Subject: Going forward - IETF work on internal process reform

From: Harald Alvestrand - IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2003 13:35:27 -0500

The IESG presented some proposals for concrete next steps in the work of 
 making the IETF work better in Minneapolis:

 - Aiming for more functional differentiation
     (iesg-overview.pdf)
 - Changing the roles of the WG Chairs
     (iesg-wgchairs.pdf)
 - Instituting more mechanisms for early cross-area review
     (iesg-review.pdf)

 (all presentations are available from 
 http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/nov2003-minneapolis/)

 After the IETF, the IESG will continue to encourage work on these ideas, 
 working with the community to achieve a better IETF.

 FEEDBACK FROM THE PLENARY

 We got a lot of feedback from the community at the plenaries - the overall 
 feedback was that people liked the ideas, had concerns with some aspects of 
 them, and were quite eager to discuss the ideas further before making 
 permanent changes to the way the IETF works.

 At the Thursday plenary, we did some straw polls of the room - my rough 
 estimates on the responses were that almost everyone who stated an opinion 
 favoured working on review mechanisms, and a large majority favoured 
 working on the WG chair role (approx 60% in favour, with 10% being 
 skeptical, and 30% not having an opinion). The approx. 27 people who spoke 
 at the mike raised a number of specific issues; we will attempt to address 
 these in the continued work on the proposals raised.

 Among the speakers at the mike, several were concerned with the speed of 
 change - whether the organization would be able to absorb the amount of 
 changes we proposed placing on it - and several concerned with the 
 possibility of unintended side effects of the changes we proposed.

 Moving quickly is less important than moving with community consensus.
 But move we must, recognizing that we have to make evolutionary changes in 
 the manner in which we work together to achieve useful outcomes for the 
 IETF, allowing for the community to provide overall direction to the 
 process.

 (Minutes of the plenary are on 
 http://www.alvestrand.no/ietf/nov2003-minneapolis/plenary-notes.txt)

 NEXT STEPS

 The IESG is making the following recommendations:

 - Open community discussion of the proposals is encouraged, and welcome. 
 The list [email-masked] ([email-masked] to 
 subscribe, Mailman conventions) will be used for the initial discussion; 
 soon, specific efforts will create their own mailing lists as needed.

 - The further work will involve community discussion, more detailed 
 proposals, and experiments (as far as the current rules permit).
 We will continue to pursue the WG-chair and Review proposals.

 - We will continue to make our plans in an open conversation with the 
 community.

 As always, we welcome other proposals from the community.