Re: What I was trying to say in the plenary last week

[Theodore Tso <tytso@mit.edu>]

On Tue, Apr 02, 2002 at 04:58:26PM +0200, Brian E Carpenter wrote:
> Jim,
> 
> I would be in favour of adjusting the rules such that the confirming body can
> feel able to reject a candidate without fear of it causing a constitutional
> crisis. 
> 
> John Klensin has hinted at some of the complexities. However, it's clear that
> in practice, the IAB can run with one or two seats vacant - so it isn't a
> disaster if IAB confirmation is delayed for one or two people. Unfortunately
> that really isn't true of the IESG - empty IESG seats would be a real
> problem, so we might just have to add more time in the process to allow
> for an extra candidate approval cycle.

How about this as a radical suggestion?  Appoint the nomcom chair and
have the voting nomcom members selected before the start of the
July/August IETF meeting.  This allows IAB/IESG interviews to happen a
full four months earlier, and it also allows finalist interviews to
take place at the December IETF meeting.  Then require that the
confirming bodies have the names in hand by early or mid-January.
That way, if there is an issue, there's sufficient time for the
nominating committee to make a second run at things.

It also gives the nomcom more time, which could either be a good thing
or a bad thing.  It's a good thing in that removes a lot of the
time-stress which currently exists in the process.  It may be a bad
thing in that it will either require more total time of nomcom
members, or the extra time may cause the nomcom members to "slack off"
a bit, since they think they have all of this extra time.  More time
can also mean more time for campaigning and other attempts to game the
system.  On the whole, though, I think giving nomcom a bit more time
to operate is a good thing, and something which we should seriously
consider.

						- Ted

P.S.  If we do this, I'd probably also make the rules very clear about
who is responsible for selecting vacancyies during the second-half of
the year.  I'd suggest explicitly saying that the nomcom selects
vacancies through the end of the calendar year, and that during the
overlap period, allow the two nomcoms to communicate with each other.
This way, if we have a situation where there is a vacancy which
developers while the new nomcom is coming up to speed, the old nomcom
can handle filling the appointment while the new nomcom is getting
itself organized.  Confusion about how to handle this very situation
came up as a result of Abha's passing, so getting the specifics of how
to handle this case written down would be a good thing.