Proposed IESG structure change

IETF Chair <chair@ietf.org> Tue, 07 October 2014 22:24 UTC

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Subject: Proposed IESG structure change
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From: IETF Chair <chair@ietf.org>
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:24:00 -0700
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Dear Community:

The IESG is considering a change in structure, with the intent to increase
flexibility as IETF work evolves, to ensure that all IETF work is covered by
an AD, and to balance and reduce the workload across the ADs. A significant
amount of the work that is going on in the APP area pertains to the web
protocols, but that has a good deal of crossover with work in RAI. There is
also some crossover work between the APP and TSV areas. While the specific
amount of work in any IETF area fluctuates over time, we have noticed that
the number of WGs in the APP area, particularly on the non-web protocols, is
currently shrinking. So we are starting to think about reorganizing the areas
a bit, possibly merging parts (or all) of the APP and RAI areas into a single
area, possibly redistributing work in other ways between all of the areas,
but in any event changing the load balance among the areas and the ADs,
while continuing the work that the WGs are currently doing. It is explicitly
not our intention to bar any existing or new work from the IETF with these
changes.  We are committing to coming up with a proposal to the community
for that by May 2015. We believe the end result of that could be to reduce the
number of areas by one.

In the short term, however, we would like to advise the NomCom to *not* fill
the APP AD vacancy in this NomCom cycle. We believe the current load can be
handled by the one remaining APP AD, and the RAI and TSV ADs are committed
to helping out if need be. We believe that it is unreasonable to have the
NomCom find a new AD and ask them to commit to two years only to discover
later that we may want to eliminate or significantly change the responsibilities
for that position within a year. Whether the end result is that we end up with a
combined larger RAI/APP area that requires three ADs, or recombining in some
other way, we think reducing down to 14 ADs in this NomCom cycle is the right
thing to do.

We want and need community consultation on this topic. We believe this is the
correct path, but we need to hear if there are any concerns from the rest of
the community before we tell the NomCom to do this. Please send your
comments toietf@ietf.org, or alternatively to iesg@ietf.org if you prefer, by 13
October 2014.  We need to let the NomCom know ASAP if we decide to move
forward with this.

Jari Arkko for the IESG

Proposed IESG structure change IETF Chair