Additional Criteria for Nominating Committee EligibilityThe University of AucklandSchool of Computer SciencePB 92019Auckland1142New Zealandbrian.e.carpenter@gmail.comTrinity College DublinCollege GreenDublinIrelandstephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie
General
Network Working GroupInternet-DraftThis document defines a process experiment under RFC 3933 that
temporarily updates the criteria for qualifying volunteers
to participate in the IETF Nominating Committee. It therefore
also updates the criteria for qualifying signatories to a
community recall petition. The purpose is to make the criteria
more flexible in view of increasing remote participation in the
IETF and a reduction in face-to-face meetings. This
document temporarily varies the rules in RFC 8713.IntroductionAccording to , the IETF Nominating Committee is populated
from a pool of volunteers with a specified record of attendance at
IETF plenary face-to-face meetings. In view of the unexpected cancellation
of the IETF 107 and IETF 108 face-to-face meetings, the risk of future cancellations, the probability
of less frequent meetings in future in support of sustainability, and
a general increase in remote participation, this document defines a
process experiment of fixed duration to use modified
and additional criteria to qualify
volunteers.Also according to , the qualification for signing a community
petition for the recall of certain IETF office-holders is that same as
for the Nominating Committee. This document does not change that, but
see .The source for this is at https://github.com/sftcd/elig/ and PRs are welcome
there. Discussion on the eligibility-discuss@ietf.org list
is also welcome.Term and Evaluation of the ExperimentThe cancellation of the in-person IETF 107 and 108 meetings
means that the current criteria are in any case
seriously perturbed for the next two years. The experiment therefore
needs to start as soon as possible. However, the experiment did not apply
to the selection of the 2020-2021 Nominating Committee,
which was performed according to .The experiment will initially cover the IETF Nominating Committee cycle starting
in 2021. As soon as the 2021-2022 Nominating Committee is seated,
the IESG must consult the current and previous Nominating Committee chairs and publish a
report on the results of the experiment. Points to be considered are whether
the experiment has produced a sufficiently large and diverse pool of
individuals, and whether enough of those individuals have volunteered to
produce a representative Nominating Committee with good knowledge
of the IETF.The IESG must then also begin a community discussion of whether to amend
in time for the 2022 Nominating
Committee cycle, to prolong the current experiment for a second year, or to
do neither. The IESG will determine and announce the consensus of this discussion
in good time for the 2022 Nominating Committee cycle to commence.GoalsThe goals of the modified and additional criteria are as follows:
Mitigate the issue of active remote (or rarely in-person) participants being disenfranchised in the NomCom and recall processes.
Prepare for an era in which face-to-face plenary meetings are less frequent (thus extending the issue to many, perhaps a majority, of participants).
Ensure that those eligible are true "participants" with enough current understanding of IETF practices and people to make informed decisions.
The criteria must be algorithmic so that the Secretariat can check them mechanically against
available data.
CriteriaThere will be several alternative paths to qualification, replacing the single criterion in section 4.14 of . Any one of the paths is sufficient, unless the person is otherwise disqualified under section 4.15 of :
Path 1: As per , the person has attended 3 out of the last 5 IETF meetings.
For meetings held entirely online, online registration and attendance counts as attendance. For the 2021-2022
Nominating Committee, the meetings concerned will be IETF 106, 107, 108, 109, and 110.
This criterion has been retained for backward compatibility and expanded.
Path 2: Has been a WG Chair or Secretary within the last 3 years.
Path 3: Has served in the IESG or IAB within the last 5 years.
Path 4: Has been a listed author of at least 2 IETF stream RFCs within the last 5 years.
An Internet-Draft that has been approved by the IESG and is in the RFC Editor queue counts.
Omitted CriteriaCertain criteria were rejected as not truly indicating effective IETF participation,
or as being unlikely to significantly expand the volunteer pool.
These included authorship of individual or WG-adopted Internet-Drafts, sending email to IETF lists,
reviewing drafts, acting as a BOF Chair, and acting in an external role for the IETF (liaisons etc.).
Since the criteria must be measurable by the Secretariat, no
qualitative evaluation of an individual's contributions is considered.Possible Future Work
Should we consider how many nomcom voting members qualify via which paths?
For example, would it be acceptable if all 10 nomcom voting members qualified via
path 3 in one year?
Combined paths (e.g., a person who partly satisfies Path 2 and Path 5);
otherwise known as a "points system". That seems to involve work/complexity either
for the secretariat or for the volunteer.
Tweaking the "time decay" in each of the path definitions that ensures
recent participation is more highly valued.
Separating the NomCom volunteer criteria from the recall petitioner criteria.
IANA ConsiderationsThis document makes no request of IANA.Security ConsiderationsThis document should not affect the security of the Internet.AcknowledgementsUseful comments were received from Alissa Cooper, John Klensin, Warren Kumari, Michael Richardson, Martin Thomson, (to be completed)The data analysis was mainly done by Robert Sparks.Normative ReferencesAvailable data
An analysis of how some of the above criteria would affect the number of
NomCom-qualified participants if applied in August 2020 has been performed.
The results are presented below in Venn diagrams as
to .
Note that the numbers shown differ slightly from manual counts
due to database mismatches, and the results were not derived at the normal
time of the year for NomCom formation. The remote attendee lists for IETF
107 and 108 were used, although not yet available on the IETF web site.A specific difficulty is that the databases involved inevitably contain a few
inconsistencies such as duplicate entries, differing versions of a person's name,
and impersonal authors. (For example, "IAB" qualifies under Path 4, and one actual
volunteer artificially appears not to qualify.)
This underlines that automatically generated
lists of eligible people will always require manual checking.The first two diagrams illustrate how the new paths (2, 3, 4) affect
eligibility numbers compared to the meeting participation path (1).
gives the raw numbers, and
removes
those disqualified according to RFC 8713. The actual
2020 volunteer pool is shown too. and
illustrate how the new paths (2, 3, 4)
interact with each other, also before and after disqualifications.Change LogDraft-03 to -04
Adjusted criteria according to comments received
Shortened period to one year (initially)
Renumbered paths
Updated diagrams
Editorial improvements
Draft-02 to -03
Adjusted criteria according to comments received
Added data
Draft-01 to -02
Made this an RFC 3933 process experiment
Eliminated path based on directorate reviews, used to be: "Has submitted at
least 6 reviews as a member of an official IETF review team within the last 3
years."
Other comments from IETF107 virtual gendispatch meeting handled