Subject: IETF Administrative Reorganization: What was that problem anyway?

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:12:29 -0400

In trying to parse both Carl's document and the general
situation in the last few weeks, I've found myself getting
increasingly dissatisfied with the document and the discussion,
mostly with regard to ways in which the document has
constrained the discussion and was, itself, constrained by RFC
3716 (the "AdminRest" report) and what it is believed to say.
As a member of the committee that put 3716 together (but
speaking only for myself), I think it is subject to the same
sort of rules that apply to the relationship between our
"model" or "requirements" documents and subsequent actual
protocol work: if we discover in protocol development that the
models are inappropriate or unimplementable, we change the
models rather than considering ourselves locked to them.  In
fairness to Carl, this is an option he didn't have: the
contract held him fairly closely to RFC 3716.

Disclaimer: the comments below, and in my next note, draw,
without attribution, on a lot of virtual and physical
in-the-hall conversations.  I'll let the contributors identify
themselves if they like, but I probably could not do so
accurately and don't think it would be particularly helpful at
this point.   I have been working on these notes for a week or
so, and, while related pieces have shown up in on-list comments,
I've changed my mind several times about whether to send it.  A
few comments in the last 72 hours have convinced me it is time.

While I think the complexities of Carl's "simple" solution
calls for reconsidering some of the conclusions of 3716 (or at
least a more intensive community review of those conclusions),
that document hints at the issue here in its section 4.1:

   o  nevertheless, it remains a non-goal to create an
      organizational entity that exists simply for the purpose
	  of continuing to exist. This should be executed with the
	  minimum formality needed in order to address the
	  identified requirements. 

Stripped of a good deal of speculation about organizational 
structures and arrangements, the key to 3716 and the concerns
that surrounded it seems to me, again in retrospect, to be
exactly two problems:

	(1) For a number of policy and budgetary reasons, having two
	revenue sources that have to be kept isolated from each
	other lies on a scale between "suboptimal" and "nuts".  One
	of those streams is the meeting registration fees and their
	allocation to secretariat support as well as meeting costs.
	The other involves donations and other funds collected by
	ISOC and dedicated to non-Secretariat IETF support.

	(2) The IESG perceives that they are not getting adequate
	support for their work, and the standards process more
	generally, from the Secretariat and that, despite
	considerable effort, there has been little progress on
	solving that problem.  The efforts to do so go back many
	years, including six to eight years or more of unsuccessful
	attempts to work out a statement of relationships and
	authority, in the form of an MOU, with CNRI and then with
	Foretec.    As I have mentioned in another note, the key
	difficulties in that process seem to hinge on fundamental
	philosophical disagreements about the nature of the
	relationship.  Independent of the causes, details, and how
	we got here, some fraction of the IESG and IAB now believe
	that the relationship with the secretariat has become
	sufficiently poisoned that a significantly better
	relationship is not possible with the existing Secretariat
	and its management.  

    It is worth noting that, from the Secretariat's viewpoint,
	it is likely that uncertainties about the administrative
	reorganization process and their future have made it
	impossible to do the job well and, in particular, to do any
	long-term planning.  From that perspective, part of the
	problem is that the IETF has put them in a position of
	making it impossible to do long-term planning, and then
	complained that they are not doing long-term planning.  But
	the problems that are impeding the IESG's work and the
	standards process were significant long before the
	reorganization process began.

Those two issues, especially the second, have a fairly clear
negative impact on our ability to produce good-quality
standards efficiently.  Aspects of it intrude on IESG
efficiency and throughput, on the frequency with which things
get lost or fall through the cracks, on interactions with
meeting sponsors, on liaison relationships with other
organizations and with problems in document handling as well as
with comparatively trivial issues such as inability to keep
restrictions on posting to mailing lists in place.  Nothing
else of an administrative support nature seems to be on that
particular critical path.  In particular, questions about,
e.g., "what to incorporate" seem seriously peripheral to the
real question: how do the proposals of Carl's document help us
get better standards or get them more efficiently?

It also seems to me that the "need for the IETF to control its
own destiny" is not a problem or goal.  It is a nice slogan and
a source of confusion, maybe bordering on FUD.  But there is an
interesting element of every standards body (as distinct from
consortium) I've been able to remember or discover.  Either they
are part of governments or they are closely linked to a
"sponsor" organization.  The sponsor organization model protects
the standards body from being directly involved in fund-raising
and other activities that would give the appearance (or worse)
of having the standards process contaminated by the interests of
donors/ contributors.  If the standards body manages the
sponsor, that advantage is lost, and all sorts of complications
-- legal and of appearances-- immediately appear. But some of
the proposals of Carl's document, especially Scenario C (and now
D) and some of the "Mechanisms" of Scenario B, would put us
precisely into a situation in which the standards body
completely controls the "administrative" sponsor.

So I think we should back up a bit and concentrate on the
critical path, rather than on constructing the edifices and
monuments of complex structures that might actually weaken the
IETF.  Once we understand that critical path, and how to solve
the critical path problems, it may be sensible for us to return
and look at other issues, ornamentation, etc.

While different of us have different definitions when we get to
the fine details, I suggest that another way to identify the
critical path is to ask ourselves, for each idea and proposal,
"does this represent the solution to a problem that, if solved,
will improve the IETF's ability to efficiently produce
good-quality standards... and improve it enough to make the
investment in, and risks of, the change worthwhile?".   If the
answer is "no" then, IMO, we should get the issues for which the
answer is "yes" dealt with first and return to the "no" cases
later, if ever.   Put yet differently, if something is going to
be expensive, disruptive, or risky to fix, then it had better be
seriously enough broken to justify the work.  The two
critical-path issues described above appear to meet that test.
Nothing else that is now on the table as "administrative
restructuring" seems to meet it.

Compared to other standards bodies, the IETF has some important
distinguishing features.  For this discussion, the key ones are

  -- Little permanent bureaucracy, and
  -- Minimal focus on process for its own sake

In addition,
  -- We don't expect our senior volunteer leadership to
     directly manage budgets or staff

While this is as key a feature as the other two, no other
voluntary standards body has this expectation either.  The
comments above about "sponsors" reflect the reasons what that is
the case.

The scenarios Carl outlines, especially the more "independent"
ones, appear to compromise all three.  3716 suggests one
employee.  While it may not be obvious on casual reading,
Carl's document recognizes the fact that, especially in an
"independent" operation, the Administrator would need to be
augmented by additional staff.  Whether that staff become
employees of the IETF Administrative Entity, or are
contractors, or are "leased" as part of some other arrangement,
or are outsourced entirely, may impact appearances or budget
pools -- and some options are more expensive than others-- but
they still need to be managed and given direction.
Exceptionally satisfactory performance needs to be rewarded and
exceptionally unsatisfactory performance needs to be corrected
or punished.  If that level of direction and management is not
in place, then we reinvent critical-path problem (2) above,
with an unfamiliar organizational structure, and that would be
negative progress, IMO.

It is much more subjective, but these discussions seem to lead
to much more process too, and all of the options in Carl's
report seem to put the IETF Leadership, especially the IETF and
IAB Chairs, squarely in the middle of it.  As I have pointed out
elsewhere, we aren't selecting those people for business
administration and budget skills, don't have a good model for
doing so if we wanted to, and should not want to (Carl's -01
draft makes this point as well, at least as I read it).  And, as
discussed in some of my other notes and more briefly above, no
other voluntary standards body puts its finances under the
control of the volunteer standards leadership.  That separation
is maintained for important substantive reasons, the most
important of which is to avoid entangling the standards process
in apparent conflicts of interest.

Of course this does not imply that the standards body and its
leadership should be kept in ignorance of the administrative
and financial arrangements, nor that they should be "protected"
from having effective input into them.  Reporting and openness
and discussions, whether about budget status or about bagels at
meeting breaks, should obviously be permitted and, in general,
encouraged.  But we should not confuse openness and reporting
with decision-making authority.  Responsiveness should include
consideration of fiscal and strategic administrative issues.
And the guarantee of responsiveness, in _any_ organizational
structure in which administrative/financial management are
separated from standards management, lies in mutual trust and
mutual understanding of goals and objectives, not in
discussions of, e.g., who can blow whose bolts.  

The administrative structure needs, as an absolute requirement,
to pay careful and high-priority attention to input from the
standards structure because it is the only way the IETF can
succeed.  The standards structure needs, as an absolute
requirement, to pay careful and high-priority attention to
input from the administrative structure because it is the only
way the IETF can succeed.  If either body does not understand
that, it is in need of radical restructuring or replacement.
But building complex structures to prevent or react to events
that are not only unlikely but also impossible to precisely map
in
advance is bad engineering and bad administrative planning.

Whether it has been fully appreciated by the community and its
leadership or not, the above describes, not only a possible new
regime, but how things have always been done in the IETF, at
least when things were working well.  The standards leadership
explained needs to the administrative/financial organization;
that organization responded by either complying with those
needs or engaging in a dialogue about what was feasible and
what the alternatives were.  The problems we have seen more
recently were not in the model, but that the "complying...
engaging" part appears to have gotten lost somewhere along the
line.  And while, IMO, there were particular factors that made
that breakdown likely in the current case that would not apply
to any of the plausible alternatives, there is some risk of
getting into that state with _any_ separate administrative
structure.  We need to understand that and accept it, accepting
in particular that even a Nomcom-selected body that is subject
to the recall rules can become unresponsive to the community.
And, again, erecting idols of the bolt-blowing deity won't make
it painless if is occurs, no matter how impressive the statues
or how polished the mechanisms.

The question, then, is whether we can devise a scenario that
addresses the critical path questions without inventing any
more administrative structure than needed, without depending on
unreasonable expectations of the skills of the IETF _technical_
leadership, and without compromising the apparent and actual
independence and ability of the IETF to develop good technical
standards without undue influence from funding sources.

Assuming that scenario is an appropriate goal and the one we
want to address in this effort, I've reprised key criteria
below. Obviously, there is a separate question of whether a
Grand IETF Restructuring is a more appropriate goal and useful
in and of itself.  My own view is that it is quite unlikely to
be worth the risks and costs.  But, should the community really
wish to go down that path, I urge that we consider it in terms
of what problems are being solved and how important it is to
solve them.

To reprise, the criteria for that alternative administrative
organizational structure should include:

	(i) The IETF volunteer (standards process) leadership and,
	for that matter, anyone with responsibility for steering
	the standards process, is at arms-length from financial
	dealings with particular donors who might be assumed to be
	influencing the IETF's standards process.

	(ii) Nomcom appointments to IETF volunteer technical/
	standards process leadership positions are not expected to
	require that candidates have significant administrative
	or financial skills, nor are candidates expected to acquire
	those skills on appointment.

	(iii) We put as much IETF energy into organization-creation
	as is actually needed to solve identifiable and real
	problems, and no more.  In particular, we don't try to
	create elaborate structures to handle hypothesized problems
	that have not occurred and probably will never occur, nor
	do we try to use IETF Administration as a way to develop
	and carry out unnecessary social experiments.

     john

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From: Aaron Falk <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 17:42:30 -0700

John-

Thanks for your note.  A good reset of the discussion, IMO.  Some 
chiming in and a question below...

On Sep 14, 2004, at 2:12 PM, John C Klensin wrote:

We have
> 	other lies on a scale between "suboptimal" and "nuts".
>
> 	solving that problem.

Yes, my understanding as well.

> discussions of, e.g., who can blow whose bolts.

strongly agree.

> standards without undue influence from funding sources.

Agreed.

> 	and carry out unnecessary social experiments.

So, from this I guess you don't like scenarios C & D?  :)  Does this 
mean you do like scenarios A & B?  Or are you suggesting that some 
other as-yet-unspecified solution will meet criteria (i) - (iii) above 
and solve problems (1) & (2)?

--aaron

---

From: Carl Malamud <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 06:59:19 -0700 (PDT)

John -

Would it be fair to summarize your note by saying it is a
lightweight scenario A?  E.g., simply take one action: hire
an administrative director for the IETF and have that person
live at ISOC.  RFPs, budgets, etc... will all flow out of that 
initital action and there is no need for a grand restructuring.

Let me know if you think that is a fair assessment.  I think
that is an important option that people should keep in mind
and wanted to make sure that I don't oversimplify your
analysis.

Regards,

Carl

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 13:27:17 -0400

> and wanted to make sure that I don't oversimplify your

Actually, no, for two reasons.  The important one is that the
main point of my note is to describe some real concerns about
what we are doing here and why, what the priorities are, whether
we have lot sight of the real issues, and so on.  Characterizing
it in terms of any particular solution or scenario misses the
whole point.    

Actually, while I'm sure you didn't intend it that way, your
summary is reminiscent of the notorious debating tactic of
ignoring all of the main points of an argument, seizing on a
minor detail that can easily be misinterpreted (if necessary)
and then attacked, and thereby distracting the audience from
those main points.

In terms of actual proposals, I quite deliberately did not
include one, not because I wanted to start people guessing, but
because I think a review and discussion of problems, goals, and
principles here would be much more useful than plunging deeper
into "scenarios", if only to give us a stronger basis for
evaluating whether a given proposed solution would solve an
identifiable problem at acceptable cost and risk.

If "the community" can have that discussion in a serious way,
then I'll post that other proposal.   If we can't, then the only
way I see any of this moving forward is by an assertion of
imperial authority and, to be very blunt, I don't need to spend
my time on an IETF that has to make decisions by imperial
authority or that permits it to be done.  And IETF like that is,
IMO, already dead, regardless of what mechanisms or monuments it
erects administratively.

However, fwiw, I think the sort of "lightweight scenario A" you
describe and somehow inferred from my note would be a mistake.
It brings to mind an old cartoon that I assume you and many
members of the community have seen in some variation: complex
equations at the top, complex equations at the bottom, in
between is the phrase "and then a miracle happens".  The dots
really do need to be connected, and hiring someone, with more or
less the right skills, under a more or less adequate job
description and with no definition of how that person is
supervised, given direction, etc., and then expecting "RFPs,
budgets, etc... will all flow out..." requires a miracle for the
intervening steps.

If one were to believes in miracles, they should probably be
saved for more important and intractable problems.

   john

---

From: Carl Malamud <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 12:04:05 -0700 (PDT)

John -

Let me try again.  I wasn't trying for debating points.

It seems to me that you said that my report covered a lot
of ground that doesn't need to be covered.  And, that the
overall focus of the administrative restructuring is
misconceived, trying to solve a set of problems that don't
necessarily exist and perhaps trying to solve those
problems in a non-optimal way.  In other words, the
exercise is misguided.  Not trying to put words in your
mouth.

I then jumpted on the one action that it seemed you might
endorse (which is hire an administrative director).  
Again, the point you're making is, imho, an important one,
and I'm trying to translate that into terms that I
can understand, which is what specific actions might be
taken.

Regards,

Carl

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Sep 2004 17:28:54 -0400

> exercise is misguided.  Not trying to put words in your

No, actually, I think much, or most, of what you covered needed
covering.  To the extent to which I would debate the importance
of some of those points, it is only in retrospect, which made
your raising them useful.  I remember that I participated in
writing 3716 and, at least at a 10K foot level, I agreed with
everything in it at the time.  I also think the extrapolations
you have made from 3716 are extremely helpful, and would be
extremely helpful even if all they accomplished was to cause us
to take a fresh, and more skeptical, look at some of the
statements in 3716.

However, when it comes to recommendations of actions, I would
like to see a tight coupling of "critical path problem" and
"solution".  I see the "let's leave the current 'clerk' portion
of the secretariat in place while dealing with issues that are
more tractable but lots less important" suggestion as both a
problem in itself and a symptom of, to rephrase your words
above, a badly suboptimal approach.  Based on discussions
starting before the San Diego meeting and trying to understand
the Secretariat breakdown, I would also quibble with your
description and boundaries of that role, but don't consider that
critical-path.

I think the need for that coupling is where your report breaks
down, perhaps because it dived in too much detail and perhaps
only because of its somewhat intimidating length.  The latter
induces some people to want to capture sound bites and respond
to them, or to respond to what they think is the substance of
comments on the list, without actually studying and responding
to the report.  That frightens me and should frighten us all--
probably you especially.

I also believe that, while the creation of categories into which
to group possible strategies can be extremely helpful, it can
also be damaging.  When those categories have fuzzy boundaries
or can be identified with phrases that cause emotional
reactions, they can be used to dismiss useful possibilities by
means of those labels or "guilt by association" with other
possible members of the category.   I think the report, and
interpretations of it, have fallen seriously into that trap of
poor categorization and sound-bite labeling while merely
intending to provide a useful intellectual aid.

> can understand, which is what specific actions might be

I understand and appreciate that.  But, as I've tried to say in
other notes, I think hiring an administrative director without
an appropriate framework (job description, reporting structure,
etc.) would be the worst sort of "getting the cart before the
horse".  I also believe that making any major (e.g.,
substantially irreversible) action to "reorganize the IETF"
without clear community consensus behind those actions or a
_really_ clear delegation of authority would be an extremely
dangerous step, especially given what I perceive as the "you bet
the IETF" character of the stakes involved.  

In addition, if there is any hint of using some of the language
in 3716 to justify a "we need to ask for input, but don't need
to pay attention to it because the community has empowered us to
decide" position, then I think the IETF has problems serious
enough to push even the secretariat problems behind them on the
critical path.  Fear of that interpretation, although I'm sure
he didn't intend it in his note, is why I decided it was
important to pick Harald's statement about "what is obvious"
apart.  We just can't go there and survive.

So, at this moment, the actions I would support/endorse would be:

	* Some really serious discussion about critical-path
	problems.  Have you identified them correctly and
	clearly in the report and, if not, can we fix that?
	
	* Some really serious discussion about linkages between
	potential solutions and those critical-path problems.
	Can one differentiate among your scenarios (or any
	better differentiated set of scenarios) on the basis of
	their impact on the critical-path problems?  If not,
	what good do the scenarios do us and are there other
	scenarios that would permit better differentiation?
	
	* Some analysis of what problems really need solving
	based on past experience or reasonable projections.  Is
	your report (or thinking elsewhere) too heavily
	influenced by fantasies about unlikely
	problems?  And, if it is, or those fantasies are not as
	paranoid as they might appear, can they really be used
	to differentiate among the scenarios you have outlined
	(or any better differentiated set of scenarios).

A few people in the community have seen some notes on what I
would actually propose if I were proposing something right now.
The details are irrelevant, since I've changed my mind several
times in the last half-year.  But one or two of the responses
have been, essentially, "that is just a special case of scenario
X, and I've decided I don't like scenario X, so I don't need to
read or understand it any further".   I see that as a very
dangerous trend and response, and I want to see if we can all
get our thinking out of those boxes and focused, once again, on
underlying critical path problems and what might solve them.

      john

p.s. I'm about to go offline until at least late tomorrow night
and possibly longer, so the lack of further responses on this
thread should not be construed as lack of interest.

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 16 Sep 2004 11:33:59 -0400

> 	those skills on appointment.

I want to take exception to this criteria.

I think I may have more faith in the ability of the nomcom process to 
chose leaders with the required skills for supervising the 
administrative and financial function.

It is probably true that the Nomcom has not included the significant 
administrative or financial oversight skills in the requirements it 
used for selecting the leadership.  But, that is largely because it has 
not been asked to.

In my experience with various Nomcom groups, when an issue was made of 
the ability of IESG candidates to function as second level managers, 
i.e. to manage the WG chairs without needing manage the working groups 
themselves, the Nomcom did include deliberation of these abilities in 
its decision making. Reasonable people can certainly disagree on how 
successful they have been, but that is the case in any search or 
employment committee process.

The rules for Nomcom include the requirement that the IAB and IESG 
supply the Nomcom with a list of capabilities that they expected in 
each role being discussed.  It is certainly reasonable that this list 
of capabilities for the IESG chair include the ability to oversee the 
administrative and financial functions.  And while the Nomcom does not 
pick the IAB chair, it has, in my experience, discussed the 
requirements for an IAB chair and has made sure that one, or more, 
candidates had the expected qualities - though of course they could not 
guarantee the selection of that person by the IAB.

Another point has been made that this is an engineering group and that 
we don't have these skills within the community.  I think that looking 
at the outside world education and experience of people in the IETF 
community should dispel that notion.  Among the technical contributors, 
using HA's broad definitions of technical contributor, are people 
trained as lawyers, accountants as well as MBAs (not to mentions the 
economists, ethicists, sociologists, psychologists and ...).  Among the 
community of contributors one also finds those whose resumes include 
jobs such senior manager (including CEO), administrators, and analysts 
(financial as well as technical).  And finally, in other organizations 
I have been involved with one does find engineers appointed to jobs 
like President, Secretary and Treasurer who acquired the necessary 
skills upon appointment and who did an admirable job in their 
positions.

A final point on the ability of nomcom to consider the necessary 
qualities for administrative and financial oversight has to do with the 
role of the liaisons to the Nomcom.  While these folks, in my 
interpretation, are not supposed to influence the selection itself, 
they are certainly able to help in understanding requirements.  The 
addition of the ISOC liaison will help widen the requirements that are 
understood.  And it does not take too much of a stretch to imagine the 
Nomcom inviting a liaison from the Administrative entity for further 
broadening its understanding of requirements when selecting people 
capable of administrative and financial oversight.

To respond to a related comment made by Brian Carpenter:

> Secondly, I would add three other people with both IETF experience
> and some degree of management and business experience. I'm worried
> about loading the RFC 3777 NomCom with this since they already have
> a big, and rather different, job. So I'd be inclined to give
> this selection job to the IAB, but using a Nomcom-like procedure.

While I agree that the Nomcom job is big and this would make it bigger, 
I don't believe it is beyond their ability, my experience with Nomcom 
convinces me of that.  One should also note that while the Nomcom works 
hard for about 3 months, it does very little the rest of its term. If 
the assignments were staggered so that the timing for selecting members 
of the BoD was offset by 6 months, they would have the time.  One could 
ask whether this would discourage volunteers, but I suspect it would 
not.

As for it being a different job, I don't agree.  The requirements and 
qualifications may be different, but I believe the job of making a 
selection is similar and I believe the Nomcom is up to the task.  And 
given that the Nomcom is the community's vehicle for participation in 
the selection of its leadership, I believe it should be used for this 
segment of the leadership as well.

Of course I do agree in one respect that RFC3777 would need an annex (I 
would recommend a separate RFC that amended/added as opposed to 
reopening RFC3777 at this point) to cover this process and a method by 
which the BoD selections would be approved.  In this case, my first 
thought is that approval should rest in the hands of a joint IAB+IESG 
where all participants in the joint group, including some/all non 
voting members such as the IRTF chair, have a voice and vote.

a.