Subject: moving more responsibility to working groups

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 11:07:09 +0200

I would like to report an experiment that the IESG is starting. (There's also an associated blog article about this at http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/07/the-role-of-working-groups/)

Internet Drafts sent for approval as RFCs are reviewed by individuals during the IETF Last Call, the Area Directors, IANA, as well as a number of volunteers from various directorates and review teams. The reviews from these teams has gained a significant role in ensuring that the IETF produces high-quality, understandable and implementable RFCs.

Yet, as discussed in http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/05/balancing-the-process/ we have a general problem that quite a lot of the work around IETF documents happens at the end of the process. In particular, a number of the reviews during IETF last call point out issues that end up being raised by the IESG as comments. It is of course good that issues are caught, but raising them earlier would be better. And it would be better if the working groups - the intended focus point of work on a topic - would get to handle them, as opposed to raising these issues with the IESG. The has IESG discussed these issues and decided to experiment with three actions designed to move more work to the responsibility of the working groups:

(1) Perform some reviews that are now happening at IETF Last Call a bit earlier. This will put the working group in a bigger role in resolving cross-area and general issues.

(2) Invite document shepherds on IESG telechats when there's a document that is likely to require discussion. This will make it possible for the document shepherd to be directly involved in the discussions. 

(3) When a document up for approval has a number of issues, hand over the process back to the working group, as opposed to the IESG tracking the issues. Among other things, this will ensure that changes are discussed in an open working group list and agreed through consensus.

We are at the beginning of the experiment. We've done (2) and (3) a few times and plan to use it more from now on. We are discussing with the review teams to plan how (1) comes into effect. Building quality and cross-area review to the process earlier is of course a big effort. We are making a small change to current directorate review procedures. If successful, this will enable working groups to deal with issues before IETF Last Call and IESG review and empower the working groups to be in charge of the documents throughout their life cycle. We are also hoping that document quality will improve and number of issues discussed in the IESG will be lower.

From the point of view of the document authors and WG participants, all the above works through your working group chairs. They will be talking to you when documents come back to the working group. They or the document shepherds will be even more part of the IESG discussions and will keep the working groups updated on the progress of the documents. They will work with review teams to request earlier review. You will be seeing some reviews in the working group mailing lists. The current plan is to do these reviews after WGLC has completed, in parallel with ongoing reviews from your responsible ADs and chairs preparing the write-ups for the document to be submitted to the IETF Last Call.

While the number of reviews as such is not changed, some additional effort and care will however be required from the reviewers, directorate coordinators/secretaries, the working group chairs, and other participants. The experiment will show us whether this effort is reasonable and if there are any unexpected effects. The experiment is performed on a voluntary basis by each directorate, for a limited number of drafts at the beginning.

We will be collecting experiences so that in six months we can evaluate the experience. I would also like to thank the document shepherds, chairs, and review teams for participation in this effort!

Jari