Subject: [manet] Fwd: moving more responsibility to working groups

From: Ulrich Herberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 2013 11:16:50 +0200

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 11:07 AM
Subject: moving more responsibility to working groups
To: "[email-masked]" <[email-masked]>
Cc: "[email-masked] list" <[email-masked]>

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