Subject: Growing concerns about PESCI

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Oct 2005 08:45:12 -0400

Hi.

I'm getting more and more troubled by the PESCI process, at
least the portions of it that I can observe by reading the
messages on the public list.   I've had some of these concerns
since the process was initiated.  I decided to remain silent,
at least in public, about them on the pragmatic theory that
nothing else was working so this was worth a try and I didn't
have a better proposal.

But, judging from the I-D and the list discussions, PESCI is
tending to wander off into some very familiar weeds.  Worse, as
I had feared, it seems to have preempted virtually all of
whatever energy was left in Newtrk (other than the
"cruft-killing" exercise) while circling around to many of the
same issues from a more restricted perspective.   I don't think
what is going on has yet crossed over into abusive behavior,
but it is probably time that the community examine this
carefully, perhaps at the BOF if not sooner.

Is PESCI characterizing the current process or inventing a new
one?  Is it about principles for the IETF or principles for
process change?  How much of the efforts of the Problem
Statement effort, Newtrk, Poisson, Poised, etc., etc., is it
replaying without any real mechanism for injecting new
insights?  Do we have a model for getting from whatever it
produces to real changes that are focused on IETF's critical
path that doesn't involve more elements of "the IETF Chair
decides"?  Is the "team" structured to be, and demonstrating
that it is more effective at, figuring out what that critical
path really is than a number of predecessor efforts have been?

If this were an ordinary design team effort, even one with
minutes and an open list, most of those questions would be
premature: we would wait for the results and then make
judgments on that basis.  But it isn't such a design team: it
is a more or less formal effort convened by the IETF Chair,
with members selected by the IETF Chair using criteria
determined by the IETF Chair, and so on (see Addendum).  If the
community thinks the process is working well despite those
complications, so be it.  I'm not convinced and I'm getting
concerned.

Brian, since PESCI is your show, could you reflect and comment
on at least some of this before we hold a BOF and plenary
presentation... a BOF that, were this an effort that was not
driven by the IETF Chair, might well not be considered
coherent enough to get meeting time, much less plenary time?

      john

-----------------------
Addendum: Examples of why this team needs to be considered as an
extraordinary procedure, created by extraordinary procedures
and without clear community consent, and cannot be considered
as an "ordinary design team"....

In no particular order...

(1) Design teams tend to self-constitute although they can be
selected.  When they are selected by a WG Chair or AD, the
membership criteria are usually clear and then followed.  In
this case, membership selection was filtered based, in part, on
the participants not being an activist and, specifically, not
having current drafts for reform.  Yet the organizer has a
reform draft, and is generating new versions of it, and is an
exception. (20050923)

(2) We try to avoid situations in the IETF in which the same
person occupies so many roles as to be, even potentially, the
sole determiner of what occurs.  We tend to use pejorative
terms like "acting as judge and jury" or "conflict of interest"
to describe such situations, although neither term is precisely
correct.  But, in the instance of PESCI, we have a single
person who:

	* Has a known and strong position on how the standards track
	should evolve

	* Organizes the group

	* Chairs and steers the group (the recent 2005.10.24
	13:23:22 note is a fairly strong example of "steering")

	* Takes a strong leadership and advocacy role in the
	discussions themselves.

	* Decides, as AD, that the group gets to use a
	semi-official IETF mailing list

	* In organizing this as a BOF (or whatever it is), ignores
	long-standing conventions that we don't just ignore an
	existing working group (NEWTRK) whose agenda and mission
	clearly overlaps the new effort.  Normally, when new
	efforts come along to organize a design team that falls
	within the scope of an open and putatively-active WG, the
	results of that team are referred to that WG, rather than
	being discussed and processed separately. 

	* Decides, as AD (albeit by finding two other ADs to serve
	as temporary proxy "Acting General Area ADs"), to allocate
	BOF time at IETF, while the relevant WG (also the
	responsibility of the same AD) does not meet.  Sam's
	comments (20051013, 20051019) are helpful in mitigating
	this, but stop well short of the "unless you get your act
	together, you aren't meeting at IETF" that is usual with
	similarly-wandering pre-BOF discussions.

	* Chairs the BOF

	* Indicates that, when IESG votes come up on the subject,
	he will recluse himself.  But we are developing a funny
	definition of "recluse" for a consensus-based, rather than
	voting-based, organization.  It now seems to mean that
	someone can abstain from voting, but can participate in
	discussions and try in every way possible to influence
	decisions before a vote is taken.  I think that definition
	is a problem; I note it is one that PESCI does not seem to
	be addressing.

(3) The "team" is expected to report at the Plenary, partially
on the basis of its BOF meeting, but the BOF ends only one
50-minute break before the plenary.  Not exactly time for the
team to meet, carefully consider the discussion at the BOF, and
prepare a report.  Indeed, while it is reasonable to hope for
something else, this would appear to be a setup for the "well,
we just got a lot of input and are thinking about it, stay
tuned" reports that characterized the admin restructuring
process.

(4) We still don't have any real idea how the results of PESCI
will be interpreted and processed.  Given the experience of
previous "process" efforts, clear community consensus is
unlikely to emerge from a 15 minute presentation and discussion
at a BOF, nor it is likely that one can be synthesized from
that discussion and discussed on the mailing list before it is
presented, possibly for action, at the plenary.  Will we see a
plenary presentation, followed by another IETF Chair
announcement?  I hope not, but fear that may be the direction
in which things are trending.

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