Subject: USV Area Summary Report

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 23 Feb 1998 10:30:51 -0800

The User Services Area of the Internet Engineering Task Force
  	            Summary Report Covering the Period 
			December 1990 - April 1998
                            Joyce K. Reynolds

Joyce K. Reynolds was User Services Area Director of the Internet
Engineering Task Force from December 1990 - April 1998.  Under her
direction, the following was accomplished.

The User Services Area (USV) of the Internet Engineering Task Force
(IETF) has grown to take its place with other Internet Engineering
Steering Group (IESG) areas as the importance of the user has
increased globally.  This area provides an international forum for
people interested in all levels of user services, to identify and
initiate projects designed to improve the quality of the information
available to users of the Internet.

The area's strengths stems from the IETF community who recognize that
it is very important to pay attention to the user.  USV is a catalysis
for generating working groups and documentation in tandem with
protocol specifications being developed in the IETF forum.  This is
primarily accomplished by liaising with other IETF areas (e.g.,
Applications, Operations and Management, Security, etc.).

User Services Area Council

The USV Area of the IESG established a User Services Area Council
(USAC) to promote and encourage creative exchange of international
user service needs and concepts.  Constructive input from various
national and international user services organizations for the purpose
of not duplicating each organization's efforts was also encouraged.
USAC is responsible for researching and defining short term and long
term user services needs and coordinating developments in finding
solutions.

The primary responsibilities of USAC members are to actively provide
input for the current and future developments of user services
concerns.  During this period, this forum conducted meetings in
conjunction with the IETF plenaries.  Primary interaction among
members took place via electronic mail.  The User Services Area
Director of the IESG chairs the USAC.  Membership includes
representation from the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe,
Israel and Japan.  The area also liaises heavily with other
international organizations (e.g., RIPE and TERENA) and their task
forces and working groups.

Documentation and Publications

This area actively publishes new and updated FYI (For Your
Information) RFCs (Request for Comments) documents.  FYI RFCs are
introductory and overview documents for network users.  Their purpose
is to make available general information, rather than the protocol
specifications or standards that is typical of other RFCs.  FYIs are
allied to the RFC series of notes, but provides information about who
does what on the Internet.  Thirty-three (33) FYI RFCs were published
during this period.

Chartered Working Groups

The actual projects of the User Services Area are handled by the
creation of Working Groups.  A total of twenty-two (22) IETF Working
Groups were created in the User Services Area during this period:

	 Directory Information Services Infrastructure (DISI)
	 Guide for Internet Standards Writer (STDGuide)
	 Humanities and Arts (HARTS)
	 Integrated Directory Services (IDS)
	 Integration of Internet Information Resources (IIIR)
	 Internet Anonymous FTP Archives (IAFA)
	 Internet School Networking (ISN)
	 Networked Information Retrieval (NIR)
	 Network Information Services Infrastructure (NISI)
	 Network Training Materials (TRAINMAT)
	 NOC-Tool Catalogue (Noctools)
	 NOC-Tool Catalogue Revisions (Noctool2)
	 Responsible Use of the Net (RUN)
	 Site Security Handbook (SSH)
	 Site Security Policy Handbook (SSPHWG)
	 User Documentation (User-Doc) 
	 User Documentation 2 (User-Doc2) 
	 User Glossary (UserGlos)
	 User Glossary 2 (UserGloss2)
	 Universal Resource Identifiers (URI)
	 User Services Working Group (USWG)
	 WHOIS and Network Information Lookup Service (WNILS)

Summary

User Services met or exceeded its goals as an area that provided and
promoted exchange of international user service needs and concepts,
and constructive input and coordination from various national and
international organizations.  Its FYI RFC publications provided high
quality documentation for global Internet users, which have been
translated into other languages such a Japanese, Czech, and Norwegian.

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From: Brian E Carpenter <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 1998 09:51:26 +0000

Thank you Joyce, for everything.

  Brian