Subject: Call for Review: <draft-sparks-genarea-manualpost-tracking-00.txt> (Tracking Manual I-D Post Requests)

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2015 13:03:47 +0100

This is a request for a review of a Statement of Work from the IAOC
Tools Committee. Please take a look at the document and provide the
committee feedback.

Jari Arkko

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The IAOC Tools Committee has developed a Statement of Work (SoW) for
an enhancement to the IETF Datatracker to assist in requests for
manual Internet-Draft posting.  We are asking for review by the
IETF community before seeking a vendor to write the software to
implement the new Datatracker features described in the document.

The transparency of the I-D submission process needs to be improved,
particularly for those submissions that are handled directly by the
IETF Secretariat.  These are referred to as "manual" and "forced"
I-D submissions.

When an author uses the IETF Datatracker I-D submission tool, some
information is captures about the event, including when the I-D was
submitted, when it was approved, and who made the submission.
Currently, the document history shows only that a new version is
available.

The I-D submission tool presents an option for authors to request the
IETF Secretariat finish the submission process.  When this option is
exercised, the Datatracker captures the candidate document and then
sends email to the Secretariat.  Often the request is made because the
I-D submission tool was unable to extract correct meta-data from the
document.  In this case, the Secretariat populates the meta-data, and
then forces the post.  Currently, normal submission event information
is not collected when the Secretariat forces the post; this effort
will allow it to be collected.

The Secretariat also receives email requests to post an I-D, bypassing
the I-D submission tool altogether.  Currently, the Secretariat receives
about 10 such requests each meeting cycle.  When this happens, the
Secretariat operates the I-D submission tool on behalf of the author,
and as a result, the submission event information does not reflect that
a manual I-D submission request was processed ob behalf of the author.
This effort will allow accurate submission event information to be
collected for manual I-D submission.

The Secretariat currently relies on a combination of RT and personal
email archives to keep track of the outstanding manual I-D submission
requests.  This effort will provide proper workflow tracking of these
requests.

The file can be obtained via
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-sparks-genarea-manualpost-tracking-00.txt/

No IPR declarations have been submitted directly on this I-D.

The IAOC plans to solicit bids for the development of these new features
in the next few weeks, and solicits comments on this SoW. Please send
comments to the [email-masked] mailing lists by November 10, 2015.
Exceptionally, comments may be sent to [email-masked] instead.  In either
case, please retain the beginning of the Subject line to allow automated
sorting.

Thank you,
 Russ Housley
 Chair of the IAOC Tools Committee