Subject: Re: area directors at risk

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 17:52:40 -0500

In message <[email-masked]>, Richard Sho
ckey writes:
>At 05:29 PM 11/19/2001 -0500, Awduche, Daniel wrote:
>>It might be worthwhile to admit additional hierarchy in
>>the administrative structure to scale the organization
>>and reduce the work-load on area directors.
>>
>>One possibility is to introduce the concept of assistant
>>(or deputy) Area Directors, reporting directly to Area
>>Directors and responsible for a subset of working groups
>>within an area.
>>
>>This may also turn out to be an excellent way to cultivate
>>future leaders for the IETF.
>
>As a long time IETF participant and co-chair I have to agree with a great 
>deal of the sentiment here .. there is a lot of thankless work in being an 
>AD .. but any organization needs to understand its fundamental 
>responsibility to groom and advance the next generation of its leadership.
>
>I'm not sure that some AAD is the right method for that but it is worth 
>consideration.
>
>

To what extent do you think that the various directorates can or do 
fill such roles?

		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb
		Full text of "Firewalls" book now at http://www.wilyhacker.com

---

From: Richard Shockey <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 21:37:19 -0500

>To what extent do you think that the various directorates can or do

This is a thoughtful question that deserves a thoughtful answer. The simple 
fact is that the IETF is  volunteer professional organization charged as we 
are with maintaining the standards and integrity of Internet protocols. In 
most cases our work is stopping bad protocols from happening as developing 
good protocols. It is a difficult job...often thankless but vastly 
rewarding for those of us who actively participate.

My point was that any professional organization needs to constantly 
reevaluate its management structure based on current events and needs and 
make sure there is a sufficient back bench capable of stepping in to pinch 
hit or go to bat if necessary.

The IETF is not the Am Bar Assn or the British Medical Assn .. we are not a 
professional association in that sense but we do bring thousands of 
engineers into our process in the hope that we can impart a sense of what 
is and is not appropriate for the network and as part of the process hope 
that they take back to their various organizations once a specific piece of 
work is done a sense of our collective values are. That sounds really fuzzy 
and maybe too PC but its what we do.

We have a sort of 2 layer structure .. the IESG and the IAB who's roles can 
be flexible depending on the circumstances.  The Area Directorates have 
been time tested method of channeling work into roughly useful groups for 
the purposes of asserting some form of management of the process, granted 
it looks like cat herding from time to time but that is the nature of the 
beast.

AD's who by definition are the IESG  have no means of "talent spotting" up 
and comers and tasking them with direct responsibilities.

Being a AD is lot of work .. and I have no doubt from time to time various 
AD's wish they could turn to others to help them with a particularly 
onerous work load or drafts that are outside their specific knowledge base.

Now one theory would be that the AD's could appoint, at their personal 
discretion, a number of AAD for what ever task the AD's so chose. We call 
these people interns in the Washington DC area in Roman times they were 
referred to as slaves. :-) The theory is that they could help lighten the 
load on themselves while at the same time, giving them a bit of management 
training in cat herding, and recognizing achievement or talent in the making.

Its just a thought.

This thread is pretty time honored in the IETF. At least once a year we 
debate the ongoing issue of should ID be ASCII only or something else. I'm 
a firm believer in the adage of "if it ain't broke don't fix it" and that 
surely applies here as well.

Richard Shockey, Senior Manager, Strategic Technology Initiatives
NeuStar Inc.
45980 Center Oak Plaza   Bldg 8     Sterling, VA  20166
1120 Vermont Ave NW Suite 400 Washington DC 20005
Voice 571.434.5651 Cell : 314.503.0640,  Fax: 815.333.1237
<mailto: [email-masked]> or
<mailto: [email-masked]>
<http://www.neustar.biz>
<http://www.enum.org>
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

---

From: Allison Mankin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 00:54:52 -0500

Rich,

> and comers and tasking them with direct responsibilities.

Actually, we do:  BOF and WG chairships, editorships (we often
work closely with chairs on choosing the person and watching
their performance), interactions with authors during the
IESG review of documents, suggesting people to other ADs who
need certain expertise...talent development is an important job
for the IESG, and a fair amount of it does happen.

Allison

---

From: "Kastenholz, Frank" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 09:04:34 -0500

Some random observations from a retired IESG-er
(most all based on things when I was on the IESG
from 95 to 97 or so)

- The IESG has a congenital inablity to say "no"
  to someone who has a stupid idea. They can't
  offend anyone, they can't do things that are
  perceived as against the community's wishes.
  The IESG, really, are leaders with little 
  formal power or authority.

- There are some people who make a career of being on the
  IESG or IAB. Having lots of working groups and grand
  titles and having to say that they have to run to this
  meeting or quickly jump on a plane to go to that place
  feeds their ego - or something. They remind me of a Dilbert;
  some gas-bag was pontificating on how Dilbert and Wally should
  write some piece of software, Dilbert whips out a piece of
  paper and says "Look, Real Code!!!!" and the gasbag whithers
  and dies -- just like the wicked witch in Wizard of Oz...

  Associated with this phenomenon is the phenomenon of large
  official Corporate Standardizers. There are companies with
  whole departments of 10's of people (or 100's... - yes, even
  in these hard economic times) whose sole job is to go to meetings
  and write drafts and 'see and be seen' ("raising the company's 
  profile" in corporate-doubletalk-speak). These groups tend to
  add to the load but do not cause any significant increase in
  _useful_ output.

- There are huge piles of working groups that are engaged in
  what I consider stupid activities. They should be deleted.
  I'm sure that what they are doing is important; it's just not
  important to us. I would not be surprised if we could shoot
  25% of the working groups in the IETF with no loss of useful
  output.

- The IETF has become "The sexy place to hang out". So we attract
  people who want to standardize SONET over IP. Back in the good
  old days, I quipped that the ISO was essential to the succes of
  IP and the IETF -- it was a place for the people with bell-shaped
  heads to hang out and pretend to be useful, producing models
  and frameworks and statements of direction and grand-n-glorious-
  architectures. The IETF and Internet Community in the meantime went
  ahead and built a working useful network...

- There are AD's who have been overly concerned about things like
  the titles of RFCs and going into long discussions about who
  should chair which working groups -- all in the interest of
  maintaining the IETF's image or something like that. Some of
  these ADs then become bottlenecks in The Process -- "We can't
  let them say _that_ -- it makes it look like the IETF... I'll
  work with them and fix it up" and the task gets added to an 
  ever-increasing list of Things To Do for that AD...

  My personal view is that if we concentrated on the substance of
  things, our image would take care of itself, but worrying about
  image has little effect on substance.

- There are working group chairs who see their working groups as
  places for people to make presentations. This vastly increases
  the number of internet drafts that go by -- but very few of them
  actually result in any useful work. But it all must be monitored
  and so on by the relevant ADs

- The IESG tends to be a collegial body. Individual ADs may be 
  responsible for their areas, but they take decisions as a body,
  which means that the "foo" AD can make comments about and
  cause work to be done with respect to the  "bar" properties of
  something or other. For example, the Internet AD could say
  that something in the security area is not secure and the
  security-AD's protestations to the contrary mean bupkus...

  This also means that all ADs are expected to have a level of
  familiarity with all the proposals before the IESG -- everyone
  has to read everything... 

  This means that adding more ADs or levels of hierarchy in some
  sense would not work. 

Frank Kastenholz
Internet AD (ret.)

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 10:26:04 -0500

>   has to read everything... 

IMHO, this is the key factor limiting the growth and scaleability
of the current IESG/IAB organization.  For the IETF to remain
effective as it grows, this will have to change.

I know that some people would prefer that the IETF not produce 
more work than they, personally, can read.  Perhaps these people don't 
understand the impact that this bottleneck is having on the IETF's work 
output.

Unfortunately, the policy of having every AD review every piece
of IETF work does not, in itself, stop the growth of the IETF.  Nor
does it cause the IETF to produce higher quality work.  It 
just causes the IETF to move more and more slowly as it grows.

The IETF has two choices:

         - Limit the growth of the IETF -- probably by limiting
                 the scope of IETF work, or

         - Continue to grow the IETF (in size and influence) and
                 build an organization that can scale with
                 that growth.

The current organization only leads to a very slow and frustrating
process that selects for the least offensive, lowest impact solution
to every problem.

Margaret

---

From: Patrik Fältström <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 16:36:22 +0100

> just causes the IETF to move more and more slowly as it grows.

Bingo!

My view is that during the three+somemore years I have been on the IESG, I
have found that:

(a) The documents received from wg's very often have trivial errors which
could have been cought by the editor himself. Examples are no security
consideration section or no definition of MUST, SHOULD etc.

(b) Very few comments come in during last call on a document.

Because many documents are wrong, I need to check every document that come
to my table for "trivial things", and if I last call a document, and
doesn't get a single comment (not even positive) about it, I feel I have to
_really_ read the document in great detail, check all references etc etc.

That takes time.

Now, this is _NOT_ a complaint on wg chairs or editors, but an explanation
why I feel myself that the review process is extremely tiresome, and it
could be much easier.

Yes, I as AD still have the responsibility to check a document, but, if I
for for example an LDAP document get a note from for example Kurt or Roland
during last call that they have reviewed the document, and it is ok, I
don't need to check the details. It make things move _much_ faster.

In Applications Area, Ned and myself have been talking about dividing the
wg's in "subareas" so it ends up being more fun for you to participate in
the IETF. Directory people can talk about issues together, without being
bored by web-people (and the other way around). If people are not bored,
maybe they find more energy (again) to read documents during last call
which they actually have clue about.

Note that it is _YOU_ wg chairs which have the detailed knowledge about the
protocols, so I also think you do a MUCH better review than what I do. I
can do a review on how this fit with things in other areas, and in the big
picture, but I can definitly not check an ASN.1 spec....

Do you think it would be more fun and therefore more likely that people
with specific knowledge read and comment (also in a positive way) during
last call on documents?

Would smaller sub-areas help?

We _MUST_ make it easier during the review process. Both regarding tools
and regarding fast, quick and professional review.

     paf

---

From: Harald Alvestrand <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2001 22:18:17 +0100

> effective as it grows, this will have to change.

there is a deeper reason for the "all ADs review" policy.
Quite often, I find that work produced in other areas have glaring errors 
in areas that *I* know about, but where the group does not have the 
expertise in that particular area - they may not have realized what a mess 
they were getting into.
(My favourite :-( topic is character sets and languages.....others do 
security)

If we could have reassurance before getting documents to the IESG that it 
had been reviewed by *someone* with a clue about:
- terminology
- grammar
- security
- management
- congestion control
- internationalization
- registry operations
even just reassurance that someone was willing to put his name to a 
statement that this question was irrelevant to this document - then I would 
be happier with spending less time in reviewing. (Today, I spend much less 
time on reviewing than I think the documents deserve....)

Consider this statement, which I found in a random draft
(not identified - it is irrelevant, and will be pursued by others):

>    The Latin1String includes characters used in Western
>    European countries which are not part of the TeletexString charcter
>    set.  Implementations that process TeletexString SHOULD be prepared
>    to handle the entire ISO 8859-1 character set.[ISO 8859-1]

*I* know where to look up the 333 characters of the Teletex basic character 
set, as well as the 190 characters of the ISO 8859-1 character set.
I also know that all the 190 are part of the 333 - the authors did not; 
character sets are not their area of expertise.

It is a glaring error, but only glaring if you know that particular corner 
of technology.

ramble:
Perhaps we should introduce "document godfathers" in the IETF process?
Just "I have read this document, and think it should go forward"? No 
document passed with less than 10 people who are willing to stand up and be 
named as having read it?

It might improve quality....

---

From: "Dr. Carsten Bormann" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 14:38:05 +0100

> Perhaps we should introduce "document godfathers" in the IETF process?

Past ADs would make pretty good godfathers.

Unfortunately, there is a limited shelf life on this capability.

Being in the IESG *forces* you to be aware of what's going on, we would need
to identify other ways of ensuring this as a qualification for maintaining
the godfathership ordination.

Gruesse, Carsten

---

From: Margaret Wasserman <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 15:46:01 -0500

At 04:18 PM 11/22/01 , Harald Alvestrand wrote:

>Quite often, I find that work produced in other areas have glaring errors in areas that *I* know about, but where the group does not have the expertise in that particular area - they may not have realized what a mess they were getting into.
>(My favourite :-( topic is character sets and languages.....others do security)

This is a solid argument for why all IETF documents should be 
reviewed by a group with several areas of expertise represented, not 
for why every member of the IESG should review every document.

I am not, nor have I ever been, an IESG member.  So, perhaps I
don't understand how many people are required to do an adequate
review...  There are currently 14 IESG slots -- is this a "magic"
number to get a good review?  Or is there something magical about
having all IESG members (no matter how many there are) review
every document?

I can see pretty clearly, from the outside, why this policy is
causing a bottleneck.  And, from here, it isn't clear why the
results are better than having a smaller group of diverse experts
(perhaps one AD from each area) review each document.  

Later in his message, Harald wrote:
>(Today, I spend much less time on reviewing than I think the documents deserve....)

This is probably true of all IESG members.  Is it possible that
documents could actually be reviewed more thoroughly if IESG were
only required to review half of the documents produced?  This
could be accomplished by assigning 7 IESG members to review each
document.

Or maybe different types of documents (standards track vs. BCP
vs. informational) could receive different levels of review?

>Just "I have read this document, and think it should go forward"? No document passed with less than 10 people who are willing to stand up and be named as having read it?
>

Have you considered a official sponsorship approach?  In order 
for a document to be submitted to the IESG, you could require 
sponsorship by two ADs.  Those ADs would be responsible for 
determining that the criteria that you've listed above have been 
met before bringing a document to the full IESG for review.

Other types of sponsorship might work as well...

Margaret