Re: DISCUSSION: archiving of NOMCOM information

[John C Klensin <john+nomcom@jck.com>]

--On Friday, 29 March, 2002 11:47 -0800 Bill Woodcock
<woody@zocalo.net> wrote:

>     > Bill, what risks do you think the Nomcom members need to
> be     > insured against?
> 
> Principally against suits accusing unfairness.  This wasn't so
> much my point as one that came up a couple of times during the
> nomcom I served on, that I thought I'd throw back into the
> pot, as long as decisions were being made.

Hmm.  I have a lot of trouble believing in that as a risk.
First of all, if someone really, really, wants to be on the IAB
or IESG --as distinct from being willing to serve if that is in
the best interests of the IETF-- that should, arguably, exclude
them on the basis of insanity or at least stupidity, neither of
which would constitute "unfairness".  Even ignoring that,
getting such a position by suing would so damage someone's
credibility in the community as to lead, I would think, to an
almost-instant recall action, which wouldn't be "unfair" either.

Conversely, if a nomcom (or some of its members) were really
considering behaving in some unfair and inappropriate way, it
would not appear to me to be in  the interest of the community
to encourage that in any way, including by spreading an
insurance umbrella over the behavior.  

In any event, it seems to me that the real protection against
accusations of unfair behavior is to re-hone the confidentiality
rules to be sure that the process and procedures followed by the
nomcom are as open and public as possible consistent with
protection of candidates and privacy of comments to the nomcom
about candidates.  Especially to the extent that people are
worried about accusiations of unfair behavior, I would think
that we would want to make nomcom decisions about procedures
used to collect input, review and evaluate it, and then vote on
candidates, public (again, to the extent that can be done
without compromising candidate confidentiality).


>     > I am not aware of any
>     > plan to make the ISOC-funded policy go away.
> 
> Presumably the policy won't go away, but presumably the ISOC
> will, relatively soon, due to lack of funding.  At such point,
> the policy will need to be redone, with some other legal
> entity as the signatory.  Seems an apt time to reevaluate
> what's needed in the policy.

If ISOC collapses --something I would not predict, especially
"relatively soon", although I always believe that thinking
through contingencies is useful-- the details of insurance
policies are likely to turn out to be the least of the
consequent problems, even in the nomcom area.  E.g., if ISOC
were to abruptly disappear, we have no procedure for getting a
nomcom chair appointed, much less for approving an IAB slate.

      john