IETF WAS Re: [governance] Enhanced Cooperation (was Re: reality check on economics)

[Avri Doria]

On 24 May 2012, at 17:42, Ian Peter wrote:

> When looking at IETF its probably also worth looking at some of its more eccentric processes and structures and determining whether these have ongoing value and/or scaleability. These would include
> 
> 	• Lack of any formal membership structure (anyone can participate). This also leads to accountability issues – wheras governments are accountable to their citizens, and companies to their shareholders, it’s not clear who IETF is accountable to seeing it has no formal membership structure. Tnis lack of accountability also leads to no formal review or performance evaluation processes – which in turn can lead to other problems.

People do not need to be members of something to participate.
The leadership is accountable to the participants

I have been a participant since the late 80's, sometime just via email and sometimes with the ability to attend the meetings.  I have always felt that the requirement of stewardship for the Internet was the most serious thing the IETF did.  And they are most definitely accountable to the world for the fact that the Internet continues to grow and thrive, despite all the barriers that need to be routed around.


> 	• The unusual Irish lottery Nomcom selection process (copied to IGF from IETF). This egalitarian process allows the Irish lottery to choose those who choose our representatives. In the IGF experience, it has thrown up a Jeffrey Williams to a Nomcom and more than one Nomcom where the majority of members selected by the lottery did not participate meaningfully. I don’t’ know whether IETF has had any similar issues but this is another aspect I would deal with with caution in any other organisation. I hope my country never adopts it for selecting high court judges....

I hope the reference to the Irish Lottery was a joke. 

The random number generator, used in the IETF process, which the IGC has adopted, uses  a set of numbers to seed the random number function.  These can be anything.  And there should be more than one.  The useful thing about lotteries is you predict a month ahead of time that there will be a lottery number on a specific day, so it easy to announce in advance what the seeds will be, without any suspicion that you could possibly know them in advance.  The process is defined in  <http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3797> 

I do not know that Jeff Williams was ever qualified for the IETF nomcom since you have to actually attend IETF meetings to be qualified for their Nomcom, and I do not know that this happens.

As for the IGC, which is indeed modeled on the IETF process, we require that people be members.  I am not going to accuse any of our members, especially those who pay enough attention to volunteer when asked, of not participating in a meaningful way.


> 	• The RFC (Request for Comments) process. This to my knowledge is an IETF invention, and my preliminary evaluation is that it is a good one and perhaps scaleable to other organisations and structures. It provides a semi formal process for evaluation of ideas and determining which are worth pursuing.  Everyone can throw up ideas for consideration. Probably a bit better than the suggestion box and probably useful in quite a few organisational settings. Worth looking at anyway.

RFCs are Steve Crocker's invention.

I think the part that really gives anyone the ability to make their point is the Internet Draft system, anyone can contribute any idea they wish.  The document is live for 6 months, and if it is not renewed, it thens goes into one of various archives.  The RFC system is indeed open, but it takes quite a bit of peer and community review to get one of those published.  

Note: the Internet Draft and RFC system are constantly evolving.


> 
> I am sure there are other operational aspects worth looking at and I am sure we can learn from some of them. I am equally sure that there are others which are past their use-by date. 

I expect that is the case.  And fortunately they are constantly reviewing and  revising their procedures.  An organization that is not always reviewing and refining is bound to get old and stale after a while.

BTW one of the things they have that I think every organization could use is the most amazing tool team I have ever seen for creating various online tools that allow many diverse participants in diverse times zones and locations to work together in a rather coordinated fashion.

I also think well of the weekend program of educational lectures that not only teaches newcomers about the IETF processes, but which also teaches people about the nitty gritty of various subject areas.  That is another thing I think more organizations should do.

avri

> 


-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t