Subject: Re: Functional differentiation

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Sep 2004 07:09:19 -0400

--On Monday, 13 September, 2004 16:50 -0700 April Marine
<[email-masked]> wrote:

> The person "we" hire will report to their boss at whatever
> company they work for. The company and "the ietf" will have
> some agreement regarding duties and what constitutes
> acceptable performance.  I'm sure "the ietf" will have some
> input about who is hired.  However, if some influential IETF
> person or group (e.g. IETF Chair, IAB Chair or some vocal part
> of the IESG) got it into their head that they didn't like the
> Admin type person, could they fire them? What sort of process
> would that involve? Would, say, the ISOC *have* to fire them
> if "the ietf" wanted them to? Who would face employment
> liability, etc., in such a case? Probably not "the ietf" as we
> currently understand it.
> 
> This is the point I was trying to make at the plenary. No
> matter how great a person we hire, that person is reporting to
> their boss in whatever corporate entity that boss works for.
> And no matter how great that entity is or is currently, what
> protection will be in place structurally/ contracturally if
> the current people change (as they will)?

April,

You may have meant to say this, but the situation is symmetric.
I can find no authority in any of the existing procedural
documents for "some influential IETF person or group" to fire
anyone, whether that person is working for ISOC, for CNRI, for
The IETF Foundation, or for the government of Lower Slobbovia.
And, given that we do not now select any of the members of the
IESG or IAB for experience in line personnel management, nor for
training and experience in whatever personnel/employment laws
might apply in whatever jurisdictions might be relevant, it is
not really clear to me that the community _wants_ those people
to be able to "got it into their head(s) that they didn't like
the Admin type person" and act on that without some serious
review by someone. 

So, while it seems obvious to me that said "influential IETF
person or group" must have a mechanism for expressing extreme
unhappiness should the occasion arise -- either with the
continued retention of the Administrator or any of the
associated staff or contractors or with a decision to remove
those people--  the decision to actually do something must, of
necessity, lie elsewhere.   And we are just going to have to
find, and trust, the "elsewhere" to work successfully with us
and in a shared vision of the IETF's priorities and best
interests.  Organizational fantasies aside, there is no really
solid reason to believe that we are any more likely to need to
"fire", or "blow the bolts on" ISOC than on some independent
entity (or vice versa), even if that independent entity is made
up of people chosen by, or somehow [more] responsible to, "the
IETF"... at least unless we can guarantee that those IETF
choices, or the people who oversee them, will be blessed with a
a perfect sense of what the IETF community wants and needs,
perfect responsiveness to community desires, and so on.  

If we cannot choose an arrangement for which an appropriate
level of _shared_ trust based on a mutual understanding of the
IETF's purpose and goals is possible, then no structural
arrangements or rituals are going to do us much good.

      john

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