RE: isoc's skills
On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 21:11:32 -0500, Pete Resnick wrote: Let me repeat: ISOC is not the contractor. ISOC, in scenario O, will hire the contractors to support the IETF (according to IETF specifications). The structures we desire in ISOC to do the hiring and (more importantly) facilitate communication of those specifications between the IETF and ISOC are laid out in scenario O. Glad to see the term crystalized some perspective. However... The IETF is choosing ISOC to do a job. The IETF is specifying the job. If the IETF does not like the job that ISOC is doing, the IETF will get someone else to do it. And you think that isn't called contractor? What label would you use? And how does it describe something different from contracting? And, by the way, yes those other folks that will be hired are also contractors, though they contract for different work. And while it well might be that some other label works better, the fact reasonable, diligent people might think that the label contractor is nonsense is a good indication of just how poorly specified the basics are. But all this does lead to the thought that a basic (inter-) organizational chart would be helpful, showing who reports to whom in terms of giving direction and making hire/fire decisions. On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 22:25:56 -0400, Margaret Wasserman wrote: In Scenario O, ISOC would do exactly the same job for the IETF administrative process that it currently does for the IAB, the RFC Editor, etc. ISOC would provide an organizational home and some accounting and fiscal support, but ISOC is not expected to determine the IETF's administrative needs and/or choose contractors or partners to meet those needs. Those tasks would be performed by a largely IETF-selected body called the IAOC and a new employee called the IAD. The way I think about this is that the IETF would choose a group (the IAOC) to do the work that you are saying that we need to do -- ISOC won't be making any operational decisions? They will not control the purse strings? They will not make any hire/fire decisions? The IAOC will live inside ISOC, but ISOC will not have any actual power over the activities? Is that how everyone else is understanding this? d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking +1.408.246.8253 dcrocker a t ... www.brandenburg.com ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: isoc's skills
Dave, Dave Crocker wrote: Brian, ... I believe that policy concerns are best addressed by ISOC. Because ISOC's role in the standards process is at one remove, it can work to educate legislatures and administrations without appearing to favor one participant over the other. That sounds wonderful, except that ISOC has no significant experience in that work and that work requires skill and experience. ISOC, like IETF, is largely a volunteer organization as far as this sort of work is concerned. If the community wants ISOC to take such a role, the community will also have to provide the volunteers. I do not understand your point. We are going to hand over all administrative responsibilities for the IETF to a volunteer effort? No. Of course, as I said in my message, the ISOC has ten years' experience of administering itself with professional, paid staff on two continents, and experience of subcontracting activities. That is where the IETF administration fits in. But for activities such as advising national legislatures, ISOC has always relied on high level volunteers (people like Vint Cerf for example). Brian My guess is that the difference in our views is the difference between theory and practice. I am making an assertion about ISOC's actual skills, based on its history of performance. You appear to be making assessment based on the theory of its framework, or potential, or somesuch. ISOC can work to do all sorts of things. The question is what has it demonstrated skills in? If the IETF is going to increase its dependence on ISOC, then the IETF needs assurances that ISOC can perform the tasks that the IETF needs. When we step away from theory and rhetoric, I believe we find that ISOC has literally none of the necessary skills. To the extent that it has attempted relevant activities, I believe its track record is poor, at best. In general what I have noted about the discussion of organizational structure/home for the IETF is that it pretty complete lacks clear, precise, stable specification of the job we want done. So when I talk with individual about it, the details of their response float all over the map. My experience with this sort of variability in responses is that there is some sort of mystical hope that making some sort of change will have major benefit. However no one is able to state any of this concretely. And the outcome of such a process is pretty much certain to be disappointing, at best. We want to delegate all sorts of responsibilities to ISOC; or maybe we want ISOC to delegate them to 'experts'. We want ISOC to handle the IETF budget, but we do not believe we are handing ISOC any additional power over the IETF. And so on. I have tried to list specific problems with the IETF and note that none of them will be improved by the current structural work. Most will not be affected at all. What I have noted is the lack of specificity in any responses about this. It is significant that this line of enquiry is not pursued further. As nearly as I can tell, the IETF leadership's current concern is that CNRI/Foretec have too much power and too little accountability. What is being proposed is, frankly, hand over exactly that same role to ISOC. CNRI would be replaced by ISOC. Now the obvious and vigorous responses to this assessment is that there will be vastly greater accountability, that there will be an MOU, that ISOC are good people with good intentions, and so on. All of that might well be true, but it ignores that organizational behavior reality that different organizations always have different goals, at some point. A relationship needs to be developed with very precise and appropriate specification of the details to that relationship. To that end, I suspect the single most important piece of work is the MOU. Rather than discussing high-level structural abstractions, we should be discussing the precise contents of a specification for the job we want done. When we have agreed on those details, we can present them to all sorts of people and organizations, including ISOC (and, by the way, CNRI). What should ensue, then, is a negotiation for performance of those tasks. Where is the public discussion and refinement of that work? As has been commented to me repeatedly in recent months, when someone in government wants to obtain advice about the Internet and about Internet policy, they do not regularly consult ISOC. ISOC does not regularly testify in Congress. ISOC is international and is currently active in WSIS, the international debate including Internet policy issues. If you want ISOC to take part in national policy-setting in your country, it's in your hands. That's one of the things ISOC chapters can do. The reference to the US Congress was an exemplar. And participation in WSIS could mean lots of things. I have gone to some ITU meetings, but that does not place me in the role of providing policy leadership
Re: isoc's skills
Dave Crocker wrote: The IETF is choosing ISOC to do a job. The IETF is specifying the job. If the IETF does not like the job that ISOC is doing, the IETF will get someone else to do it. And you think that isn't called contractor? See below. What label would you use? And how does it describe something different from contracting? How about parent organization? But all this does lead to the thought that a basic (inter-) organizational chart would be helpful, showing who reports to whom in terms of giving direction and making hire/fire decisions. Indeed. Eliot ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: isoc's skills
What label would you use? And how does it describe something different from contracting? How about parent organization? I prefer the term organizational home, because it doesn't raise the issue of who conceived whom. But, close enough. As far as the organizational chart goes, I'll take that request as feedback for the Scenario O derived BCP or other follow-on documents. The original Scenario O proposal tried (but apparently failed) to make the following structure clear: [Please note that I am simply attempting to summarize Scenario O, not to make an pronouncements about how things must be. This is all subject to community review and consensus.] The IETF Administrative Directory (IAD) is a full-time employee of ISOC selected and reviewed by a subset of the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC), including at a minimum the ISOC President/CEO and IETF Chair. The IAD reports to the full IAOC, although it is likely that the IAOC will delegate week-to-week or month-to-month management of the IAD (as appropriate) to a subset of the full IAOC (their decision). Members of the IAOC are largely volunteers selected by the IETF. Three are selected by the IETF NomCom (including the IETF Chair Ex Officio), one is selected by the IESG, one by the IAB, and two by the ISOC Board (including the ISOC President/CEO ex officio). In this role, the IAOC members are accountable to, and report to, the IETF community. None of these details are nailed down, though, so please make suggestions if you think that this group should be comprised differently. It is a responsibility of the IAD to develop an IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) budget that is approved by both the IAOC and the ISOC Board. Other than budget approval and whatever financial controls, budget tracking or financial reporting the ISOC Board deems appropriate, the ISOC Board has no direct management responsibilities for IASA or the IAD. If you still consider that to be unclear, perhaps you could provide an organizational chart for some portion of the current IETF leadership, and I could use that as a guide for constructing one for the IASA? For those of you who may be interested, there is an issue tracker queue for specific issues with the Scenario 0 proposal. It is available at https://rt.psg.com (user: ietf, passwd: ietf), and the queue is named scenario-o. We're tracking these issues for resolution in a Scenario O-based BCP or other follow-on documents. Please let me know if we have missed any specific issues that have been reported regarding the Scenario O proposal. Thanks, Margaret ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: isoc's skills
I think complete nonsense is a little extreme. Typically when you build something you hire a general contractor who is reponsible for the project THEY hire the individual contractors to do the tile and roof etc. I think all that's being put forth is an analogy. In this case it's either ISOC or an independent corporation who will represent the client (IETF) and hire the individual contractors to get the jobs done (RFC-Editior/Foretec functions etc). Really it's just a difference of opinion in labeling layers of abstraction on the functionality of the system. Granted now I think what the consensus people feel is that we need to appoint a body or hire a person to do the job of defining our needs, and the IETF obviously needs to approve their decisions before they are implented. To continue the analogy I've fount this contractor to install this tile for this muchdo you approve? Perhaps that is all that is trying to be said? Tom -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Pete Resnick Sent: Tuesday, October 12, 2004 7:12 PM To: Dave Crocker Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: isoc's skills On 10/12/04 at 6:37 PM -0700, Dave Crocker wrote: Before we make strategic choices it is our responsibility. And that means before we even go out for 'bids'. If we only worry about the details after we have chosen the contractor, we will probably choose the wrong contractor and we certainly will not have any negotiating leverage. You keep making a fundamental error in these discussions. If it's intentional, it's a strawman. If it's unintentional, it's a basic misunderstanding of the documents that have been put out: Neither ISOC in scenario O nor the administrative corporation in scenario C is the contractor. Let me repeat: ISOC is not the contractor. ISOC, in scenario O, will hire the contractors to support the IETF (according to IETF specifications). The structures we desire in ISOC to do the hiring and (more importantly) facilitate communication of those specifications between the IETF and ISOC are laid out in scenario O. The admin corporation, in scenario C, will hire the contractors to support the IETF (according to IETF specifications). The structures we desire in the admin corporation to do the hiring and (more importantly) facilitate communication of those specifications between the IETF and the admin corporation are laid out in scenario C. Perhaps you think that we need the specifications about the job *the contractors* will need to do before we decide *who it is that is going to hire the contractors*. If that's true, I have found nothing in your posts justifying that position. (Perhaps you think that we can't figure out who is qualified to administer the contracts with such contractors before we know what kinds of tasks are going to be in the contracts, but I haven't seen you say that directly, and it's not directly deducible from what you've said.) But to continue to refer to ISOC (in the case of scenario O) as the contractor is complete nonsense. pr -- Pete Resnick http://www.qualcomm.com/~presnick/ QUALCOMM Incorporated - Direct phone: (858)651-4478, Fax: (858)651-1102 ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: isoc's skills
Dave, ... ISOC won't be making any operational decisions? They will not control the purse strings? They will not make any hire/fire decisions? The IAOC will live inside ISOC, but ISOC will not have any actual power over the activities? Is that how everyone else is understanding this? I really don't understand the difficulty you're having here. Whatever incorporated entity holds the contracts for the various functions will have to have answers to these questions. Call it IETF Inc., ISOC, or Alverstrand.com, you will have to answer them. That's why there needs to be an MoU between the IETF (the unincorporated association that we all mill around in, with its Chair, IESG and IAB providing leadership) and that incorporated entity. Since we live under the rule of law, clearly from a legal POV the incorporated entity will take certain decisions, but it will do so as a vehicle for the IETF's will. I think the reason people responded overwhelmingly for scenario O is that it's the *simplest* way to reach the above state. Brian ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: isoc's skills
--On Tuesday, 12 October, 2004 18:37 -0700 Dave Crocker [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... My focus is on knowing what the details of the jobs are that we want done. Referring to the interface(s) is a convenient technique for trying to surface those details. Currently we do not have the details. What we are doing is like buying a building or a vehicle before we really understand what uses they are going to be put to. This leads to thinking that those details are trivial. They aren't. ... Dave, While I am somewhat sympathetic to what I think you are arguing, I need to clarify --and probably disagree with-- two points you have raised specifically. The analogies and metaphors you use can be very helpful if they are accurate matches to the situation. If they are not, they just add to the general confusion. Let's start with the one above. You have been around the IETF for a long time -- longer than I have and much longer than any of the current members of the IESG or IAB. You also have a long history of paying careful attention to process issues. I suggest that, even with that background, you had little real input into how we got the administrative support mechanisms we have today and may not even have had visibility into it. To use your analogy above, the way we bought the current vehicle was to have someone drive it up and say you just bought this and you are going to pay for it at rates we will determine without asking you. Not even close to really understand the uses, much less being able to make effective judgments on them. While I'm very concerned about visibility of decision-making to the community, and a set of activities and answers that I, too, consider handwaving (or worse), I also don't aspire to perfection as the result of this process. I'd be happy with significant improvement -- in responsiveness, in financial transparency, and in efficiency with which it is possible for us to execute on standards-process activities for which administrative support are on the critical path. And, because I don't share the optimism of some members of the IESG and IAB about their ability to determine and manage the details of an administrative process, especially while doing the jobs to which the community has appointed them, I'm far more interested in getting to an administrative process model that can develop the highly specific details for which I think you are asking. I also think that, if we try to get all of those details specified at this time, we will almost certainly get some of them wrong. Asking that we wait on them until we are sure is an almost guaranteed recipe for doing nothing for an extended period, and I am convinced that course of action would just lead us further downhill. What I want to buy is a structure and set of decision-making mechanisms, not a specific end result at the who gets hired to do what level, if only because, no matter how specific we get, the structure and mechanisms had best be there to fix it. Second, you keep repeating variations on... ... justification for handing the task to ISOC -- or anyone else who is inexperienced or has done the job badly. Others have tried to explain what is going on here, at least from their perspective. Let me try an explanation from mine, noting that I agree with many of the others too. ISOC had a bad time a few years ago. Their finances were a mess and their organizational structure was perhaps worse. If they were still in that state, trusting them for anything -- even the small expansion and rationalization of what they are doing for us already that I, and others, think this is -- would be pretty close to insane. But they aren't in that state. They learned from it, reorganized creatively and appropriately, changed management and, as far as anyone I have been able to identify who has looked at the current situation can tell, are completely stable. My taste is such that I'd rather trust an organization that has been through hard times and learned how to restructure and survive to greater stability than they ever had before, rather than an organization that is a figment of the collective imagination of several people and that therefore has no experience doing anything at all. If ISOC's past mistakes and difficulties are to be held against them forever, then it is almost impossible for any real organization or person to claim qualification for doing anything. Certainly you and I have made our share of mistakes and that fact doesn't seem to disqualify us from criticizing aspects of the current plan (or lots of other things). At least as important, as others have pointed out, no one is planning on having ISOC actually operate, e.g., an IETF Secretariat, in the same way that CNRI/Foretec has been doing. If they were, it would be legitimate to criticize that choice on the grounds that ISOC doesn't have that experience. But, if we carry that logic very far, only CNRI and Foretec does. If we consider them on
RE: isoc's skills
Tony, Thanks for the followup. You are correct we need a detailed documentation of the interface before we deal with any corporate entity. As I see it the differences between your opinion and others has more to do with your focus on the interface than the organizational structure others are commenting on. My focus is on knowing what the details of the jobs are that we want done. Referring to the interface(s) is a convenient technique for trying to surface those details. Currently we do not have the details. What we are doing is like buying a building or a vehicle before we really understand what uses they are going to be put to. This leads to thinking that those details are trivial. They aren't. Privately I have been accused of carrying some sort of grudge against ISOC. That reaction is unfortunately typical for these discussions. One cannot ask basic, entirely pro forma questions about needs and competence without being discounted as carrying a grudge. In a very basic way, I think the question of ISOC is irrelevant. It cannot become relevant until a) we have a substantial specification of the work to be done and b) a precise statement of how a candidate (ISOC) will do it. So far, anytime someone asks about either, they get no answer or they get a handwave. If they press further, the answer changes. Really. The lack of substance is astonishing. I am trying to imagine any of us making even the most simple purchase of a service with this little comprehension of what we were buying. reaction to your concern about ISOCs track record was that the IETF itself has even less of a track record, and a poor That hardly seems like justification for handing the task to ISOC -- or anyone else who is inexperienced or has done the job badly. In fact I thought the whole idea was to have this change get things done better and more easily. How can we believe that is going to happen? one at that. Despite the legal difference between the Administrative office being a separate corporation vs. incorporating the IETF itself, the backers of both of those choices appear to assume the IETF will directly deal with the financial issues because their arguments against outsourcing The key word is 'assume'. The problem is there is a) no substance to the assumptions, and b) each person seems to be making different assumptions about what the substance will turn out to be. Try imagine writing a protocol spec with that little shared understanding of what job it is to do. all say 'they have a different focus'. As several people have stated, the IETF participants have a technical skill set and no demonstrable skills at financial administration. Why then are people so quick to point out that outside organizations have a different focus when our internal skill sets don't match the need? Because it is our organization. Ultimately it is our responsibility to make it work. And, by the way, some of the IETF leadership pretty much explicitly expect the contractor to do all the financial work. Or at least that is what I have heard some of them say. Yes before we go off and sign agreements we need to know what the details of those agreements will be. Sorry, no. Before we make strategic choices it is our responsibility. And that means before we even go out for 'bids'. If we only worry about the details after we have chosen the contractor, we will probably choose the wrong contractor and we certainly will not have any negotiating leverage. Others may add to the list, but taken collectively it should be clear that scenario C is fundamentally the end of the IETF Whereas I guess I would say that the end of the IETF is working on the the list of scenarios, because that list is based on ignorance of the work to be done. When we know what the work is, we can consider how to get it done. d/ -- Dave Crocker Brandenburg InternetWorking +1.408.246.8253 dcrocker a t ... www.brandenburg.com ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: isoc's skills
Hi Dave, I appreciate your feedback on the AdminRest process and documents, and I have no doubt that your comments are motivated by a desire to help the IETF make the best decisions possible. I think that is true of everyone involved in this process, even when we are strongly disagreeming about what the best decisions would be. I'm not sure, though, how your comments relate to proposal we are discussing, Scenario O. In Scenario O, ISOC would do exactly the same job for the IETF administrative process that it currently does for the IAB, the RFC Editor, etc. ISOC would provide an organizational home and some accounting and fiscal support, but ISOC is not expected to determine the IETF's administrative needs and/or choose contractors or partners to meet those needs. Those tasks would be performed by a largely IETF-selected body called the IAOC and a new employee called the IAD. The way I think about this is that the IETF would choose a group (the IAOC) to do the work that you are saying that we need to do -- determine the details of what needs to be done, and _then_ try to find people to do it (including a well-qualified IAD and contractors, as needed). Having the existing leadership go through the process of defining the IETF's administrative needs would, IMO, just be silly -- we don't have the time or expertise to do this well, especially while trying to do our other (and arguably more important) job of running the IETF standards process. CNRI/Foretec has made a commitment to continue providing secretariat services throughout this transition (for which I am _very_ grateful and think that the rest of the IETF should be, too), so there is no reason, IMO, to treat this as an emergency situation. IMO, we should pick the best qualified people to work on this effort, put them on the IAOC and let them do the work in a careful and considered way. The primary goal of this effort, at least in my personal opinion, is not necessarily to change service providers, but to manage our relationships with our providers so that the finances are transparent and so that the priorities and success criteria are set by a group that is accountable to the IETF community. In the end, it may turn out that some or all of the current tasks performed by Foretec will continue to be performed by Foretec -- IMO, that can only be determined after the IAOC decides how the work should be structured and what mechanism we should use to identify the contractors to do this work. If you don't think that this is the best way for the IETF to proceed, what would you suggest that we do instead? Margaret ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: isoc's skills
Dave == Dave Crocker [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Dave My focus is on knowing what the details of the jobs are that Dave we want done. Referring to the interface(s) is a convenient Dave technique for trying to surface those details. Dave Currently we do not have the details. What we are doing is Dave like buying a building or a vehicle before we really Dave understand what uses they are going to be put to. This Dave leads to thinking that those details are trivial. They Dave aren't. I think many of us agree with you that we do not know the details. I believe we also agree that we will eventually need to know the details. I don't seem to require the details you are asking for to feel like I'm making an informed decision between the two scenarios. I think thas' because I cannot imagine how the sorts of details you are talking about could influence my decision at this level. Could you perhaps come up with two possible parts of the answer for what we're trying to accomplish here that influence the decision between the two scenarios? If you could show one possible job we might want done that favors a corporation and another that favors working within the ISOC struture, you would go a long way to showing people that we need to discuss the kind of details you are asking for now instead of later. --Sam ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
RE: isoc's skills
Dear Margaret and Pete, I understand your position. It would be OK if status quo was the target. Who hires the contractors would then be neutral. But the situation calls for improvements. The first improvement is financial stability. This means to make the IETF deliverable pay better and to create new deliverables which will pay in addition/replacement. With these new deliverables will come additional contractors and _possibly_ new requirement for the IAOC. Also, I tend to think that what maintains the IETF together is recognition for authoring its deliverables. This recognition is dwindling, so the new deliverables should be conceived for a better recognition of its Members. The IETF is an author being his own publisher. No author ever made money in publishing his own books. Just as an example: let consider we decide that a new deliverable is an IETF related magazine to keep the world informed, get feed backs, document the key IETF Members, etc. This would certainly affect the kind of structure we would like to team with. If the publisher is an English or a Multilingual publisher would also affect the whole future of IETF and of the contibutions to the Internet standard process. The kind of publication (and the value of the subscription and distribution) would affect the level of recognition and therefore the motivation of the Members. They would certainly want to discuss it before. Just an example; Another problem is a possible IAOC failure. If IETF was not involved in its detailed thinking process and supporting its choices, the impact of the resulting dispute might be devastating. jfc ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: isoc's skills
Dave, Dave Crocker wrote: ... I believe that policy concerns are best addressed by ISOC. Because ISOC's role in the standards process is at one remove, it can work to educate legislatures and administrations without appearing to favor one participant over the other. That sounds wonderful, except that ISOC has no significant experience in that work and that work requires skill and experience. ISOC, like IETF, is largely a volunteer organization as far as this sort of work is concerned. If the community wants ISOC to take such a role, the community will also have to provide the volunteers. As has been commented to me repeatedly in recent months, when someone in government wants to obtain advice about the Internet and about Internet policy, they do not regularly consult ISOC. ISOC does not regularly testify in Congress. ISOC is international and is currently active in WSIS, the international debate including Internet policy issues. If you want ISOC to take part in national policy-setting in your country, it's in your hands. That's one of the things ISOC chapters can do. And so on. More generally, as folks postulate spiffy functions for ISOC, it might be worth asking where ISOC's expertise for that function has been demonstrated. That includes minor items like operational administration of a standards body. Well, nobody has demonstrated that skill as far as the IETF is concerned, because we've never put *all* the administration into one place. (Disclaimer: this isn't intended as a comment on the separate administrations of the secretariat, IANA, and RFC Editor.) But ISOC has administered itself for the last ten years, through good times and bad. Brian ___ Ietf mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
Re: isoc's skills
Brian, ... I believe that policy concerns are best addressed by ISOC. Because ISOC's role in the standards process is at one remove, it can work to educate legislatures and administrations without appearing to favor one participant over the other. That sounds wonderful, except that ISOC has no significant experience in that work and that work requires skill and experience. ISOC, like IETF, is largely a volunteer organization as far as this sort of work is concerned. If the community wants ISOC to take such a role, the community will also have to provide the volunteers. I do not understand your point. We are going to hand over all administrative responsibilities for the IETF to a volunteer effort? My guess is that the difference in our views is the difference between theory and practice. I am making an assertion about ISOC's actual skills, based on its history of performance. You appear to be making assessment based on the theory of its framework, or potential, or somesuch. ISOC can work to do all sorts of things. The question is what has it demonstrated skills in? If the IETF is going to increase its dependence on ISOC, then the IETF needs assurances that ISOC can perform the tasks that the IETF needs. When we step away from theory and rhetoric, I believe we find that ISOC has literally none of the necessary skills. To the extent that it has attempted relevant activities, I believe its track record is poor, at best. In general what I have noted about the discussion of organizational structure/home for the IETF is that it pretty complete lacks clear, precise, stable specification of the job we want done. So when I talk with individual about it, the details of their response float all over the map. My experience with this sort of variability in responses is that there is some sort of mystical hope that making some sort of change will have major benefit. However no one is able to state any of this concretely. And the outcome of such a process is pretty much certain to be disappointing, at best. We want to delegate all sorts of responsibilities to ISOC; or maybe we want ISOC to delegate them to 'experts'. We want ISOC to handle the IETF budget, but we do not believe we are handing ISOC any additional power over the IETF. And so on. I have tried to list specific problems with the IETF and note that none of them will be improved by the current structural work. Most will not be affected at all. What I have noted is the lack of specificity in any responses about this. It is significant that this line of enquiry is not pursued further. As nearly as I can tell, the IETF leadership's current concern is that CNRI/Foretec have too much power and too little accountability. What is being proposed is, frankly, hand over exactly that same role to ISOC. CNRI would be replaced by ISOC. Now the obvious and vigorous responses to this assessment is that there will be vastly greater accountability, that there will be an MOU, that ISOC are good people with good intentions, and so on. All of that might well be true, but it ignores that organizational behavior reality that different organizations always have different goals, at some point. A relationship needs to be developed with very precise and appropriate specification of the details to that relationship. To that end, I suspect the single most important piece of work is the MOU. Rather than discussing high-level structural abstractions, we should be discussing the precise contents of a specification for the job we want done. When we have agreed on those details, we can present them to all sorts of people and organizations, including ISOC (and, by the way, CNRI). What should ensue, then, is a negotiation for performance of those tasks. Where is the public discussion and refinement of that work? As has been commented to me repeatedly in recent months, when someone in government wants to obtain advice about the Internet and about Internet policy, they do not regularly consult ISOC. ISOC does not regularly testify in Congress. ISOC is international and is currently active in WSIS, the international debate including Internet policy issues. If you want ISOC to take part in national policy-setting in your country, it's in your hands. That's one of the things ISOC chapters can do. The reference to the US Congress was an exemplar. And participation in WSIS could mean lots of things. I have gone to some ITU meetings, but that does not place me in the role of providing policy leadership to the ITU. If someone is going to claim that ISOC is in a leadership position for Internet policy-setting groups, then it would be helpful to see description of its activities in the regard that show actual leadership. Going to meetings is not enough. Running a workship is not enough. Policy-setting is an ongoing political dialogue. Where are
