IETF                                                          J. Halpern
Internet-Draft                                                  Ericsson
Expires: June 25, 2010                                 December 22, 2009


                Nominating Committee Tools Requirements
                draft-halpern-nomcom-requirements-00.txt

Abstract

   With the change in the rules for disclosure of nominees, the tools
   that support the Nominating Committee need to change.  Also, given
   that some of these tools are critical to the Nominating Committee's
   work, and have critical constraints, it is important to have a clear
   description of the requirements.

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   carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect
   to this document.  Code Components extracted from this document must
   include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of
   the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as
   described in the BSD License.


Table of Contents

   1.  Introduction  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   2.  Event Sequence  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
   3.  Necessary Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
   4.  Highly Desired Tools  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
   5.  Useful Tools  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
   6.  References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     6.1.  Normative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
     6.2.  Informative References  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
   Author's Address  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

































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1.  Introduction

   With the change in the rules for disclosure of nominees, the tools
   that support the Nominating Committee (nomcom) need to change.  Also,
   given that some of these tools are critical to the nomcom's work, and
   have critical constraints, it is important to have a clear
   description of the requirements.

   The document begins with a brief description of the general flow of
   the processing by the nominating committee.  This is included to give
   context to the following discussions.  It is by no means a complete
   description of all the sequences of events which can occur.
   Following that, there are three sections describing tool support.
   The first of these describes the tool components that appear to be
   necessary for the nominating committee to complete its job in the
   current environment.  The second describes tools which while not
   strictly necessary, are highly desirable.  The third section captures
   some of the items that nominating committees would like to have
   available.

   It should be noted that there are existing tools, provided by highly
   effective and valued volunteer labor, which provide many of these
   needed functions.  While the tools need not provide exactly the
   current user interface, and may well operate differently under the
   covers, the existing tools are a useful model for understanding how
   some of these needs can be met.


2.  Event Sequence

   The sequence of events and actions, and the rules of operation of the
   IETF Nominating committee (nomcom) are defined in [RFC3777] and
   [RFC5680].  The following is a general description, to provide
   context for the tools descriptions below.

   The process starts with the naming of the Nominating Committee chair
   by the ISoc President.  The chair then lays out a time line, and
   issues a call for volunteers for the nominating committee.

   The chair collects volunteers, frequently issuing multiple
   solicitations, as the larger the pool of qualified and willing
   volunteers, the better.  Upon completion, the list of volunteers is
   published.  The community is given a chance to challenge entries on
   the list, and then a random selection of 10 volunteers is performed.
   The community is given a chance to object, and then the nomcom is
   constituted.

   The committee begins by working out procedures, getting the list of



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   openings, the job descriptions, the list of liaisons and adviser, and
   performing initial organizational work.

   Once the openings to be filled are known, the committee, via the
   chair, issues a call for nominations.  Anyone may nominate
   individuals for positions.  Nominations are for specific positions
   (although the entire IAB is considered one "position", for which
   multiple people will be selected.  There is a list of IESG slots to
   be filled, a number of IAB slots to be filled, and usually one IAOC
   slot to be filled.  The announcement usually includes the list of
   incumbents.  When nominations are received, the Nomcom chair is
   responsible for contacting the nominee and determining if they are
   willing to be considered for the position for which they have been
   nominated.  The list of nominees who have accepted nomination, and
   the post or posts for which they have accepted nomination, are public
   information.

   In current practice, in parallel with the call for nominations the
   nominating committee develops a questionnaire for the nominees.
   Currently, there are three questionnaires, one for IAB nominations,
   one for IAOC nominations, and one for an IESG nominations.  Future
   committees could create different questionnaires for each IESG slot,
   or could use one questionnaire for all slots.  Nominees are asked to
   fill out their questionnaire by a given date.  While committees will
   generally be forgiving if asked for a little extra time, failure to
   respond is usually considered grounds to disregard a nominee.  The
   questionnaire responses are confidential to the nominating committee.
   Portions of them may be shared with the confirming body, depending
   upon the procedures worked out between the Nomcom Chair and the
   confirming bodies.

   All email exchanged among or received by the committee needs to be
   archived for review under certain circumstances.  This archive, like
   the questionnaire response, feedback, and other information received
   by the committee must be handled with extreme care to ensure its
   confidentiality.  This is a personnel process.

   At some point, the Nominating committee calls for feedback on
   nominees.  The exact time when this is done, and where these messages
   are be sent, will need to be determined by the Nominating committee.
   Traditionally, this has not happened until after the nominations were
   closed, and was sent to a managed list of people in an effort to meet
   the confidentiality requirements that used to exist relative to the
   list of nominees.  With the procedure change, described in [RFC5680],
   it is probably practical to start collecting feedback as soon as the
   first set of nominee names are made public.

   The nominating committee will then undertake various processes



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   (interviews, email questions of more people, arm-twisting to get
   nominees, extensive discussion of substance and form among the
   volunteers and chair, ... to come to a selection of candidates.  It
   is very common, along the way, for the committee to craft short-lists
   for various positions.

   At various points in this process, the Nomcom Chair will need to
   confirm the willingness and availability to serve of nominees.
   Depending upon the stage of the process this may vary from "are you
   still interested and willing?" to "please confirm that you have
   management support for the time commitment you have stated for this
   job."  This is mentioned here in case someone sees a way for tools to
   be helpful to this part.

   Once the candidates are selected, the Nomcom Chair writes up the
   information about the selections, and sends the information to the
   confirming body.  There may be exchanges of email or other
   discussions.  There may be modifications of the list of candidates.
   Eventually, a set of candidates is confirmed by the confirming body.


3.  Necessary Tools

   There must be an email list for the nominating committee work.
   Anyone in the community must be able to send to this list.  There
   must be a confidential archive for this list.  In addition to the
   archive, the Chair, advisers, liaisons, and volunteer members of the
   committee must receive email from this list.

   Any feedback received by the nominating committee must be stored by
   the tool with the same confidentiality as the email list itself.

   There must be a tool for making the list of nominees who have
   accepted nomination, and the position(s) for which they are willing
   to be considered, visible to the IETF community.

   There must be provision for repairing errors.  Mistakes get made.
   Certain repairs may require administrative privileges, but there has
   to be some way to fix things.

   Any and all changes to the data should be logged.  Even repairs
   should be logged, so that in the event of dispute there are ways to
   determine exactly what happened.  This log itself needs to be
   confidential.







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4.  Highly Desired Tools

   It is extremely useful for the tools to provide explicit support
   allowing any community member to provide feedback on any listed
   nominee.  This information should be recorded by the system and tied
   to the person it is about, so as to make it easy for the nominating
   committee to review all of the feedback about a given person.

   If Feedback collection is provided by the tool, it needs to include
   provision for attributed feedback that identifies the feedback author
   (the normal case) and anonymous feedback.  It is unclear at this time
   whether the tool should itself anonymize the feedback, whether it
   should send the feedback to the Chair for handling, or whether it
   should be marked as anonymous, with provision for the chair to
   determine who provided the information.  In addition, the Chair and
   the Adviser must be able to enter feedback either with or without
   attribution to members of the community.

   If there is tool support for collecting feedback, committee members
   need to also be able to use that to create feedback (as well as, of
   course, being able to review the feedback that is received.)  In case
   other members are asked to enter anonymous feedback, it would be
   helpful if they could indicate that when entering feedback.

   It can be helpful if the tools can assist the Nomcom Chair with the
   processing of collecting nominees for positions.  This includes
   keeping track of who has been nominated, for what positions.  For
   each nominee/position pair, it should help send a confirmation, and
   should track whether a confirmation or turn down has been received.
   For those nominees who accept, if the committee chooses to use
   questionnaires it would be helpful if the tool can track whether a
   questionnaire response has been received.

   As a general rule, it would be extremely helpful if information only
   needed to be entered once.  For example, If feedback is received as
   email, and the system has recorded it as miscellany, it should be
   possible to tell the system who this feedback is about, and have it
   properly marked so that it is found when looking for feedback about
   that person.  Similarly, the list of nominees should be handled such
   that there is no need to reenter people when they accept nomination,
   and the committees view of nominees should be just a view into that
   list.  Similarly, if the tool assist with pruning lists during the
   selection processes, these prunings should be marked (in ways that
   affect what is seen by the nomcom but have no effect on what is seen
   by the general community) so as to indicate those choices.

   Having a suitably confidential Wiki has proven to be extremely
   helpful to the nominating committee.



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5.  Useful Tools

   A method to easily collect the volunteers for the nominating
   committee could be helpful to the Nomcom chair.  This could be the
   base for a simpler mechanism by which names are submitted to the
   Secretariat for verification, and the verification (or lack there of)
   is returned.  This needs to allow for several corner cases if it is
   done.  The Chair and Secretariat may determine that an initially
   invalid volunteer was actually valid.  Or the reverse.  Also, a
   volunteer may withdraw for other reasons.  If the system is to help
   with this phase, it needs to allow for flexible updating of the data.

   If the chair chooses to use [RFC3797], the tool could provide the
   programmatic support for that.  (Usage of such support should not be
   mandatory, as some chairs will want to have stricter verification of
   the random process.  If tools support is provided for the volunteer
   selection process, it must allow for the chair determining (either by
   himself, or because of a protest) that certain individuals are
   disqualified, for example if there are too many volunteers with the
   same affiliation.

   It would be helpful if the feedback collection tool allowed for and
   encouraged feedback on areas and bodies (the IAB, the IETF as a
   whole, ...) as well as on specific individuals.

   Given that nomcom members can no longer be expected to recognize
   every person in the community who gets nominated, it would be helpful
   if the tool had provisions for additional information about the
   person, such as a photograph, a web page link, or other such fields.
   This could also be used to provide easy links to the original
   nomination, the acceptance, and the questionnaire response provided
   by the nominee.

   If the tool is storing and presenting feedback to nomcom members, it
   is helpful if the tool can present the information in multiple ways.
   The current tool easily presents the feedback about each person, in
   time sorted order.  It could also be helpful to be able to look at
   the most recent set of feedback received, across all the nominees.
   (Currently, one has to open each and every nominee to find any new
   feedback.)

   During its deliberations, the nominating committee will frequently
   craft lists of people of interest (short-lists) for particular slots.
   It would be helpful if the tool could easily show the committee those
   lists.  Any such support would need to be confidential.


6.  References



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6.1.  Normative 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.

   [RFC5680]  Dawkins, S., "The Nominating Committee Process: Open
              Disclosure of Willing Nominees", BCP 10, RFC 5680,
              October 2009.

6.2.  Informative References

   [RFC3797]  Eastlake, D., "Publicly Verifiable Nominations Committee
              (NomCom) Random Selection", RFC 3797, June 2004.


Author's Address

   Joel M. Halpern
   Ericsson
   P. O. Box 6049
   Leesburg, VA  20178
   US

   Email: joel.halpern@ericsson.com


























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