IETF M. Barnes
Internet-Draft March 1, 2010
Intended status: Informational
Expires: September 2, 2010
NomCom Chair's Report: 2009-2010
draft-barnes-nomcom-report-2009-00
Abstract
This document reports on the activities of the 2009-10 IETF
Nominating Committee (NomCom). This document summarizes the overall
process used by the committee. Some specific issues and concerns
that arose during the process are also discussed, some of which
require consideration by the community and others that could be
helpful to future NomComs.
Status of this Memo
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.1. Voting Member Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
2.2. Liaisons and Confirming Bodies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
2.3. Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
3. Organizing, Scheduling and Planning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.1. Job Descriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2. Questionnaires . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
4. Nominations and Feedback Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.1. Nominations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
4.2. Feedback Collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
5. Candidate Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
6. Process Considerations: Recommendations and Concerns . . . . . 13
6.1. Schedule Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
6.2. Community Involvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6.3. Potential Impacts of Open List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.1. Diversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.2. Affiliations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
7.3. Expertise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
7.4. Lobbying and Leaks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
8. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
9. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
10. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
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1. Introduction
[RFC3777] defines how the NomCom is selected, and the processes it
follows as it selects candidates for the IAB and IESG positions.
[I-D.galvin-rfc3777bis] adds the selection of the candidate for the
IAOC position to [RFC3777]. [RFC5078] updates the non-normative
scheduling aspects of the NomCom process, allowing for additional
time between various decision points and public announcements.
This document summarizes the operations of the 2009-2010 Nomcom.
This document highlights some process considerations, identifies
issues encountered for consideration by the community and future
NomComs.
This document reflects the views of the NomCom chair and while it
describes the process used the NomCom and incorporates feedback from
the NomCom, it does not necessarily reflect consensus views of the
NomCom as a whole.
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2. Getting Started
The 2009-2010 IETF Nominating committee, like all nominating
committees for this community constituted since June 2004, was
appointed and operated according to the rules defined in [RFC3777].
Lynn St. Amour (ISOC President and CEO) announced the appointment of
the NomCom chair on May 19th, 2009.
The first task of the chair was to determine the timeline for
ensuring the selection of the voting members before the 2nd IETF
meeting starting on July 26th, 2009. At the same time, the
secretariat also setup permissions for the NomCom chair to post to
the IETF-Announce list. The list of open positions and liaisons were
requested from the IESG, the IAB and the IAOC. The overall timeline
for the 2009-2010 NomCom was announced on June 27th, 2009 and
developed during the call for volunteers.
2.1. Voting Member Selection
The NomCom chair sent sent out the first call for volunteers to serve
on the nominating committee on May 28th, 2009. The call for
volunteers included a summary of the requirements to serve on NomCom
and the list of positions to be filled. Several additional calls for
volunteers were made with a final call made on June 27th, 2009. The
deadline for volunteering was set for 5:00 pm CDT on July 3rd, 2009.
The secretariat verified the eligibility of all the volunteers in a
timely manner and helped to deal with exceptions, such as IETF
participants registering with different email addresses, etc.
An announcement was sent on June 27th, 2009, including the random
seeds to be used in conjunction with the procedure described in
[RFC3797] for selecting the 10 voting members of the NomCom. The
seeds were similar to those used by the NomCom Chair the previous
year, specifying the dates such that the numbers to be used as seeds
were not available until after the deadline for challenging the list
of volunteers, but as soon as possible after the numbers were
available (i.e., within 24 hours). The seeds included specific
digits from the U.S. National Debt, the UK Lotto and all 6 numbers of
the Megamillions Lottery results.
The list of volunteers, sorted alphabetically by last name and
numbered in ascending order, was announced on July 8th, 2009, with a
deadline for any challenges set for July 15th, 2009. An update to
the list was published on July 13th, 2009. The algorithm for
randomly selecting the numbers identifying the volunteers that were
selected was run twice using the software developed by Donald
Eastlake, based on [RFC3797]. In order to allow for the cases
whereby a volunteer was not able to accept the position, 15 numbers
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were output. The volunteers matching the first ten numbers were able
to accept the position. This list was published on July 16th, 2009.
The final list of voting members to serve on the 2009-2010 NomCom, as
summarized below, was published on July 24th, 2009:
Scott Brim, Cisco
David H. Crocker, Brandenburg InternetWorking
Roque Gagliano, LACNIC
Randall Gellens, QUALCOMM, Inc.
Dorothy Gellert, No Affiliation
Wassim Haddad, Ericsson
Stephen Kent, BBN Technologies
Dimitri Papadimitriou, Alcatel-Lucent Bell
Simo Veikkolainen, Nokia
Lucy Yong, Huawei
The 2009-2010 NomCom, including liaisons as identified in
Section 2.2, officially held their first meeting on July 26th, 2009
at the start of IETF-75. Meeting for the first time face to face was
an excellent way to start the process. Details for the organization,
scheduling and planning are described in Section 3.
2.2. Liaisons and Confirming Bodies
The following served as liasions and other non-voting members for the
2009-2010 NomCom:
Mary Barnes - Nomcom chair
Joel Halpern - Past Year chair
Jon Peterson - IAB liaison
Tim Polk - IESG liaison
Henk Uijterwaal - IAOC liaison
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Bert Wijnen - ISOC BoT liaison
The role of the liaisons is defined in [RFC3777] and
[I-D.galvin-rfc3777bis] for the IAOC liaison. The IAB, IESG and IAOC
provided emails describing the role of the relevant liaisons which
the NomCom chair agreed was reasonable. The NomCom chair also had
discussions with the liaisons to agree the level of participation and
involvement of the liaisons. In general the liaisons participated in
the majority of conference calls and had visibility to all the
information available to the voting members. The liaisons were made
aware of all office hours and interview slots and had access to
summaries and feedback from the office hours and interviews, but in
general were not directly involved in those activities.
The IAB provided a detailed format for the candidate write-ups.
The 2009-2010 NomCom followed the model used by the 2008-2009 NomCom
in agreeing upfront to share the majority of the nominee
questionnaires, as discussed in Section 3.2, with the confirming
bodies. The questionnaires were formatted such that the nominees
were aware of which information would be shared with the confirming
bodies when they filled out the questionnaires.
2.3. Tools
One of the most important aspects in practice for the NomCom and the
NomCom chair are the tools. Henrik Levkowetz built and maintains an
extremely useful tool suite for the nominating committee. Henrik
does not participate in the nominating committee activities and does
not have access to the private data. However, nominating committee
chairs may wish to ask him to officially serve as an advisor to the
committee. This allows him to see information needed to diagnose
problems with the tools.
The tools need to be configured properly each year. The first piece
of configuration required is a public/private key pair created by the
NomCom chair with the assistance of Henrik. The public key is used
to access the data on the private webpage. The chair must arrange to
deliver the private key to the NomCom members. Thus, configuring the
key at the start of the 2nd IETF meeting would faciliate the
distribution on a flash drive. An alternative is to store the key in
an encrypted file on a server and provide the password verbally or
via secure email.
The usual practice for the email list has been, and is recommended to
be, the use of a two part list. The public list is maintained by the
secretariat, without an archive. It copies all received email to all
members of the NomCom, and to a private list on the tools site. The
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private list is indexed and archived, and stored encrypted with the
public key. NomCom members can access the full indexed and processed
email information on the private webpage through the use of a tool on
the private webpage which requires the private key provided by the
NomCom chair.
The tools assist in keeping track of nominations, acceptances (or
declines), questionnaires, and feedback. They are extremely useful,
but the data does require frequent monitoring and manual annotation
of the data cached for each nominee based on email addresses.
Multiple email addresses also require special handling to ensure
there is a single set of data maintained for each nominee. The 2009-
2010 NomCom chair found it very useful to keep a separate spreadsheet
to track all the nominations. The spreadsheet including links into
the data on the tools page. The data was maintained in an encrypted
file on a server, however, the wiki on the private webpage was found
to be a very convenient place for storing these sorts of files.
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3. Organizing, Scheduling and Planning
The 2009-2010 NomCom began self-organizing on July 27th, 2009 with
the initial focus on gathering information during the week of the
IETF-75 meeting. The group brainstormed a set of questions to gather
information from the community, potential nominees and the current
IAB, IESG and IAOC members during the office hours scheduled in the
second half of the week. The group also spent time on the nominee
questionnaires described in Section 3.2.
The self-organization period overlapped with the nominations period
which started on August 10th, 2009 and is described in Section 4.
In general, there was overlap amongst all the steps of the process.
Overall, the 2009-2010 did an exceptional job meeting the deadlines
with a 3 day delay in announcing the IAB appointments and a 4 day
delay in the announcement of the IESG appointments. This was just
over a week prior to the requisite deadline of one month prior to the
1st IETF meeting of 2010. In general, while this NomCom started
earlier (i.e., before the 2nd IETF meeting of 2009) the schedule is
really bound by the timing for the 3rd IETF meeting which is crucial
in gathering the final set of feedback from the community and
nominees to allow the NomCom to complete their final deliberations.
Starting earlier, however, did allow the 2009-2010 NomCom to spend
more time earlier in the process fine tuning the questionnaires as
described in Section 3.2, as well as receiving the completed
questionnaires in time to do a very conscientious job of reviewing
and evaluating the nominees along with community feedback as
described in Section 4.2, such that the office hours held during the
3rd IETF were quite effective.
3.1. Job Descriptions
The NomCom received job descriptions from the IAB, IAOC and IESG.
The NomCom reviewed the job descriptions and made them available on
the public NomCom wiki. The job descriptions were included as a link
in the call for nominations.
The job descriptions were useful to the NomCom in formulating the
questionnaires as described in Section 3.2. The NomCom also gathered
input from the community augmenting the job descriptions. The
community input was extremely useful in helping the NomCom understand
in particular the IAB and IAOC positions since many NomCom members do
not have as much visibility into those positions.
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3.2. Questionnaires
The NomCom started with the questionnaires from the 2008-2009 NomCom
and made an initial pass through those during the week of the 2nd
IETF meeting (IETF-75). The questionnaires were thoroughly reviewed
- the NomCom then analyzed and augmented the questions with more
targeted questions and requests for example situations, etc.
The targeted questions were extremely useful for ensuring that the
NomCom got specific input rather than more general responses from the
nominees. Feedback from the nominees indicated that they found the
questionnaires more time consuming to complete, however, they felt
they were comprehensive.
As was done for the 2008-2009 NomCom, the questionnaires were clearly
labeled as to which information would and would not be provided to
the confirming bodies. The specific section that was not shared was
more open-ended to allow the nominees to provide any additional
information that they wanted considered. Overall, this approach
worked quite well.
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4. Nominations and Feedback Collection
The nominations and feedback collection phases of the NomCom process
require significant community involvement. This stage of the process
provided the baseline set of nominees for consideration by the NomCom
and gives the NomCom insight into the community's views of and work
experiences with the nominees.
4.1. Nominations
The nominations period started on August 10th, 2009. Nominations
were input by the community using the tool on the NomCom public
webpage or via email. The NomCom chair entered all the nominees
received via email using the tool. A list of all nominees was also
maintained in a spreadsheet as described in Section 2.3. The tool
automatically generates an email notifying the nominee and requesting
the nominee accept or decline the nomination. However, often times
nominees need a reminder and the spreadsheet allowed the NomCom chair
to have direct access to the nominee email address, as well as
annotations with regards to dates of responses, reminders, receipt of
questionnaires, etc. In addition, some nominees that declined
indicated they were willing to serve as ringers, so this information
was also maintained in the spreadsheet. Note, however, that the need
for ringers is eliminated due to the approval of public announcement
of the list of nominees per [RFC5680].
The nominations period officially ended on Sept 18th, 2009, however,
a few additional nominations were accepted after that date. In
addition, a second call for nominations for the Transport area was
initiated on October 28th, 2009.
4.2. Feedback Collection
Prior to the start of feedback collection, there are a lot of
administrative details to be addressed. The nominee data must
accurately reflect all the acceptances and declines for NomCom's use
and any ringers annotated. The list of nominees for which the NomCom
is soliciting feedback (at that point in time), including any
ringers, must be configured so that the information is visible on the
public webpage. While [RFC5680] allows for public visibility into
the list of nominees that have accepted, this does not necessarily
imply that the tools for future NomComs will be configured to gather
feedback on all the nominees - the nominees for whom feedback is
gathered is up to the NomCom.
The collection of feedback on the nominees started around October
14th, 2009. In keeping with the confidentiality rules in place for
this NomCom, the requests for feedback were sent to a subset (a
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rather large subset) of the community. The tool adds the email
addresses of the individuals to whom the requests are sent to the
Access Control List for providing feedback for a specific position.
One important note is that individuals that have been nominated will
not see their name on the list of nominees for that position even if
their name is visible to others. The tool also requires that you
have a tools password. In some cases, individuals were using email
addresses different from their tools password - the easiest way to
fix that was to resend the request for feedback to the email address
for which the individual had a tools password. However, this issue
should not apply for subsequent NomComs with [RFC5680] in place.
The 2009-2010 NomCom also announced local office hours such that
individuals could contact one of the NomCom members in their
geographic location or who might speak a language other than English
to facilitate the collection of feedback. The NomCom chair
summarized the availability, locations and languages spoken in an
announcement to the community. In the end, only a few members of the
community took advantage of the local office hours, however, this
NomCom recommends that future NomComs provide the community the
information described above and be pro-active in the solicitation of
feedback. Several of the NomCom members also took advantage of other
face to face conferences to gather feedback from members of the IETF
community.
The collection of feedback was intended to be completed by November
9th, 2009. However, feedback at IETF-76 indicated that many
individuals had not yet had time to provide input on the nominees and
since the nominations were re-opened for the Transport AD position,
the NomCom chose to take advantage of the renewed attention from the
community to accept additional feedback on the current lists of
nominees (again noting that the lists can be dynamic) until November
27th, 2009. Feedback was requested to be input using the tool,
however, the NomCom also accepted feedback via email. Email feedback
was input by NomCom chair using the tool. NomCom members also
entered feedback gathered during interviews with nominees and the
community using the tool. Thus, all the feedback was visible for the
nominees in one place.
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5. Candidate Selection
The NomCom conscientiously reviewed all the candidate questionnaires
and community feedback in evaluating the nominees. The NomCom
considered the requirements for the job based on the job descriptions
and community input.
The overall selection process is for the most part confidential. The
deliberations took place using WebEx conferences and via email and
were based on a thorough review of the community feedback, analysis
of job requirements and NomCom member assessments of the nominees
from the questionnaires and any interviews. Voting mechanisms were
used and in cases where there was not a clear majority, secondary
votes were taken. All votes were confirmed by the NomCom chair and
the previous NomCom chair.
Once the candidates were all selected, the write-ups for the
confirming bodies were completed and reviewed by the NomCom. The
write-ups were sent to the confirming bodies and clarifications and
additional information was provided as requested. The NomCom chair
re-confirmed the availability of the nominees to serve in the
positions should they be approved and notified them once their
appointment was approved prior to the public announcement.
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6. Process Considerations: Recommendations and Concerns
This sections highlights some scheduling considerations for use by
future NomComs. In addition, concerns with regards to community
involvement and potential issues with the application of the open
list of nominees for future NomComs are discussed.
6.1. Schedule Considerations
The 2009-2010 started reasonably early in the process - approximately
2 months after the first IETF meeting of the year. However, even
with starting that early, the timeline for the process remained
aggressive. The NomCom chair took about 10 days to get organized
prior to starting the call for volunteers. The sooner the call for
volunteers is started the better. It is essential that the timing is
such that the NomCom has been formed prior to the second IETF meeting
- the face to face meeting time is invaluable for the team cohesion,
as well as gathering community input.
The second IETF meeting should focus on gathering an understanding of
all the positions to be filled and start development of the
questionnaires for the nominees. The 2009-2010 NomCom spent the
Sunday-Tuesday getting organized and then held office hours, as well
as NomCom member meetings, based on the availability of the NomCom
members during the remainder of the week.
While the 2009-2010 NomCom did start fairly early, the completion of
the task is still fairly tightly bound to the third IETF meeting,
which this NomCom found essential for scheduling face-to-face
interviews with selected nominees, garnering additional feedback from
the community on requirements and considerations for the positions
being filled as well as feedback on specific nominees.
The 2009-2010 NomCom worked aggressively after the third IETF meeting
to ensure that for the most part the final deliberations were
complete and thus the candidate write-ups could be completed during
the first week of the new year. Overall, the schedule had about two
weeks padding, which is essential to allow time for handling
additional questions from and clarifications for the comfirming
bodies.
While most NomComs would like more time to make their decisions, it's
likely not realistic to start any earlier as it can be difficult with
the current timing for nominees to obtain firm commitment to serve in
the positions. However, either way, the NomCom does need to plan for
the possibility that a candidate cannot accept the position at the
point in time the decision is made. The availability of the nominees
to serve, should they be selected, needs to be ascertained at several
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points during the process: 1) Initial nomination 2) During final
deliberations prior to sending candidate slates to the confirming
bodies 3) Prior to any public announcement of the approved
candidates.
6.2. Community Involvement
Overall, more community involvement is desired in the process. Only
about 5% of the community provided nominations. Fortunately, the
number of people that provided feedback was higher, however, it was
still not a significant percentage of IETF participants. Without
community involvement in this stage, the process becomes a matter of
a small group of people making decisions as to who will serve as
future leaders for the community.
This problem may be less of an issue for future NomComs given that
the list of nominees will no longer be confidential in future NomComs
per [RFC5680], collecting additional nominees might be easier since
individuals will be able to see who has and hasn't been nominated and
not assume that their preferred individual is already in the pool
under consideration.
Given that [RFC5680] will be in place for future NomComs, there may
no longer be a need to selectively request feedback from the
community via individual emails (generated by the tool). However,
the burden moves to the community to respond to open requests for
feedback as opposed to the individual emails.
6.3. Potential Impacts of Open List
As mentioned in Section 6.2 the introduction of [RFC5680] into the
NomCom process makes some aspects easier:
1. There is no longer a need to decide whether or not to include
ringers.
2. There is no longer a need for a tool to generate emails targeted
at a subset of the population to gather feedback on the nominees.
3. There is no longer a concern with sharing of information as to
who is under consideration.
There are some potential issues that might be encountered by future
NomComs with open list, some of which were discussed at length during
the development of [RFC5680]:
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1. Some individuals may be reluctant to accept the nomination since
having been nominated, but not appointed, is visible outside the
IETF. Many individuals are okay with the IETF community being
aware of this, however, there are concerns that individuals that
do not understand IETF process will consider this to be a
negative reflection on the individual.
2. Related to the previous point, many individuals are willing to
have their names under consideration even though they know they
are less likely to get appointed just so that the NomCom can
perform due diligence in evaluating the nominees. This is
particularly true in the case of incumbents. However,
individuals might be far more reluctant to do this in the case
that the list is publicly available.
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7. Issues
The 2009-2010 encountered several issues which are of importance to
the community. These include diversity in selecting candidates,
affiliations of the candidates and ensuring the right level and types
of management and technical expertise of the candidates. In
addition, there have been concerns with regards to pressure on NomCom
members to support a specific nominee.
7.1. Diversity
The IETF is an international organization with open participation.
It is important that the IETF leadership be a reflection of the
diversity of its participants.
The 2009-2010 NomCom was faced with a very non-diverse set of
nominees in terms of geographic region, ethnicity and gender at the
time nominations were closed. Encouraging the community to consider
this factor in the nominations is important and given the
applicability of [RFC5680] to future NomComs, the community should
have more visibility into this problem earlier in the process.
However, diversity should also be considered in the context of the
broader concern about the scarcity of folks that are able to serve in
IETF leadership positions as discussed in Section 7.2 and
Section 7.3.
7.2. Affiliations
As noted in Section 7.1 the IETF is an open organization as such one
would expect that no single company or funder of participants would
dominate the leadership positions. The 2009-2010 NomCom did find
that several companies and funders had a larger number of nominees.
While there is no rule with regards to the number of leadership
positions held by a specific company, past NomComs had limited the
number of IESG positions to two for a single company or funding
source and did not allow the two ADs for a specific area to have the
same funding source.
Another concern with regards to affiliations was the apparent
dominance of vendors in leadership positions as opposed to network
operators/service providers and academics. individuals in the latter
two categories most often declined the nominations due to lack of
funding and/or lack of time. Thus, the Nomcom was left with a
dominance of vendors to consider for the majority of the leadership
positions.
The approach used by the 2009-2010 was to evaluate the nominees
independent of the funding source and is consistent with the general
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credo in IETF that participants act as individuals and opinions do
not necessarily reflect those of their funder. The 2009-2010 NomCom
did receive clear responses from nominees in the questionnaires with
regards to their willingness to make decisions independent of any
affiliations and confirmed this with specific nominees during
interviews, thus the NomCom was confident that the candidates
selected were very willing to perform their roles independent of
funding source or any other affiliation.
Following this approach resulted in the selection of two candidates
from the same company, bringing the total to three area directors
from a specific a company for the IESG. In addition, this also
resulted in both ADs in the security area doing work associated with
the U.S. Government - one is employed by NIST and the other is an
independent consultant who has contracts with the DoD. It was also
noted that the IETF chair is also an independent contractor who also
has the U.S. Government as a customer. This is of concern due to the
potential effects on the actions of other governments and SDOs,
especially given the importance of politically charged security
topics such as RPKI, DNSSEC, etc. A secondary issue is the potential
effects of the affiliations on the current IETF appeals process in
the event a security-related appeal arises. The NomCom requests that
the IESG will adopt an explicit process for handling appeals in the
related area that removes any potential perception of a conflict of
interest.
The affiliation issue was far less of a problem for the IAB
selection, although concerns were raised about how few network
operators/ service providers were under consideration.
Overall, there is a very general problem of determining the source of
funding and/or affiliations for nominees, and contractors/consultants
in particular. The funding/affiliations can change over time - even
during tenures in IETF leadership position. Thus, it is extremely
difficult and not particularly effective for the NomCom to make
decisions based on affiliations or funding sources. However, the
NomCom needs to consider and document any potential concerns in this
regard in the write-ups to the confirming body and the community
should be made aware of such.
7.3. Expertise
Selection of the IESG candidates requires the NomCom to consider the
technical expertise of the co-AD as well as to ensure that the
candidate has the appropriate management and technical experience.
In the case of the IAB candidates, the NomCom is required to consider
the technical and management expertise of the IAB as a whole.
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Several individuals in the community emphasized the importance of
having a researcher in the Transport AD position, given that the
primary focus of current efforts is research based. However, none of
the individuals with that specific background or focus were able to
accept the nomination. The NomCom carefully evaluated community
feedback and discussed at length the accepted pool of nominees,
considering the depth and breadth of technical knowledge as well as
management experience and strengths. While the candidate selected by
the NomCom for the TSV AD position does not have a depth of technical
expertise in the transport area, he does have depth and breadth of
technical knowledge in other areas and some very desirable management
skills and experience and he provides a good balance for his co-AD.
The decision of this NomCom for the Transport area, however, brings
into question the future of the TSV area, in particular for the next
NomCom which may have to replace the sitting AD. In the past the TSV
area had also included the SIP and multimedia related WGs, however,
the latter were split out to create the RAI area. The RAI area has
continued to grow, whereas, the TSV has remained one of the smaller
areas. During collection of community feedback, it was suggested
that a single AD could manage the area. However, this NomCom could
not make that decision and did not believe they could leave the
position unfilled in the final IESG slate. Thus, the advantages and
disadvantages were not evaluated in detail, but it is something that
might be considered by the IESG. Another important aspect
highlighted by the selection process is the need for a leadership
development plan for the Transport area. NomCom recommends that the
IESG and community consider the current state and role of the
Transport area and determine whether actions such as steps to improve
leadership development and/or restructuring the area are appropriate.
7.4. Lobbying and Leaks
The 2009-2010 NomCom encountered an issue with regards to individuals
lobbying for specific nominees. In addition, there were attempts to
exert undue influence on the process by suggesting that NomCom
members should support a specific nominee due to business
relationships between the NomCom member's sponsor and the
organization exerting the pressure.
These attempts did not compromise the outcome of the 2009-2010
NomCom. However, the situation made it difficult for NomCom members
to feel that information within the group was being kept
confidential. If this type of problem continues or becomes worse, it
could be very damaging to the NomCom process. Some individuals will
be reluctant to volunteer to serve on NomCom to avoid this situation.
In addition, depending upon the makeup of the NomCom, the outcome
could possibly be influenced.
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To avoid or minimize problems at the outset, the NomCom chair should
ensure that each NomCom member is fully aware of his/her
responsibility to not share any information that is not publicly
available outside the NomCom and that each NomCom member has
communicated such to their sponsor. In addition, while NomCom may
choose to follow processes that appear to minimize visibility as to
who is supporting which nominee (e.g., secret ballots), the mailing
list and conference call discussions leading up to any balloting
generally make individual positions quite clear. Thus, it is all the
more important that the confidentiality aspects of NomCom are taken
seriously by all NomCom members (voting and non-voting) to ensure
that due diligence is applied to the process.
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8. Security Considerations
The 2009-10 NomCom followed the practices of the last several years
in order to ensure the confidentiality of the information associated
with the Nomcom activity. The archives of the comments,
questionnaires from nominees, and other email to the committee are
stored encrypted on a server managed by Henrik, with the encryption
key known only to the committee members. Distribution of the key was
done manually at the 2nd IETF meeting in Stockholm and was also made
available using a password protected file on a website, with the
password to the file verbally distributed to committee members.
Other information was also made available using a password protected
file on a website. However, the NomCom protected webpage also has a
wiki where such information can be securely made available.
While Henrik Levkowetz did have access to the NomCom private webpage,
he did not have the key that was used to access community feedback,
nominee questionnaires, etc. Thus, per [RFC3777], the
confidentiality of community feedback was maintained and only the
voting NomCom members, liaisons and current/past Nomcom chairs had
access to the community feedback and nominee questionnaires.
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9. IANA Considerations
This document has no IANA considerations.
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10. Informative References
[RFC3777] Galvin, J., "IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and
Recall Process: Operation of the Nominating and Recall
Committees", BCP 10, RFC 3777, June 2004.
[RFC3797] Eastlake, D., "Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee
(NomCom) Random Selection", RFC 3797, June 2004.
[RFC5078] Dawkins, S., "IAB and IESG Selection, Confirmation, and
Recall Process: Revision of the Nominating and Recall
Committees Timeline", RFC 5078, October 2007.
[RFC5680] Dawkins, S., "The Nominating Committee Process: Open
Disclosure of Willing Nominees", BCP 10, RFC 5680,
October 2009.
[I-D.galvin-rfc3777bis]
Galvin, J., "Operation of the Nominating and Recall
Committees", draft-galvin-rfc3777bis-00 (work in
progress), March 2009.
[I-D.dawkins-nomcom-3777-issues]
Dawkins, S. and D. McPherson, "Nominating Committee
Process: Issues since RFC 3777",
draft-dawkins-nomcom-3777-issues-00 (work in progress),
July 2008.
[I-D.halpern-nomcom-requirements]
Halpern, J., "Nominating Committee Tools Requirements",
draft-halpern-nomcom-requirements-00 (work in progress),
December 2009.
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Author's Address
Mary Barnes
Email: mary.ietf.barnes@gmail.com
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