Re: [ietf-nomcom] Changing the candidate selection model

[John C Klensin <john-ietf at jck.com>]

--On Monday, June 22, 2009 10:29 -0400 Eric Rosen
<erosen at cisco.com> wrote:

> 
>> "incumbents first" would sometimes improve the quality of the
>> nominee pool

> I think this really ignores the political realities.  If the
> first thing the nomcom had to do was to have an up/down vote
> on each incumbent, no incumbent would  ever be  removed.  The
> procedures for  selecting the  nomcom  do not select  for
> people  with  the backbone  to  make hard  decisions like
> this. Especially  not when  there are  liaisons from  the
> powers  that be  who are offering help and keeping an eye on
> everything.

I assume you have actually read the draft, rather than taking
the comments that have been made about it out of context and
responding to them.  If you have not read the draft, I doubt
that the comments that follow will be very helpful.

The first thing the Nomcom has to do is to perform a careful and
thoughtful, area by area and slot by slot performance review
without the distractions of non-incumbent nominees.  The
intention is that those reviews be performed even on areas where
the incumbent is voluntarily stepping down.  Having performed
that evaluation, the Nomcom then decides which of the incumbents
that are willing to serve again it wants to return.  The
expectation is that the reviews will be very helpful in
considering nominees for slots to which incumbents are not
returned.

Of course, if a Nomcom is lazy or indifferent enough that it
simply skips the evaluation process and returns all of the
incumbents, then we are in big trouble.  Should a Nomcom decide
to behave that way, I believe that we can have exactly the same
failure case with the current setup so the proposal doesn't make
things any worse.  And, fwiw, while I've seen Nomcoms make
decisions that I consider wrong-headed, I've never seen any
symptoms of that level of irresponsibility -- my impression has
been that at least most members of most Nomcoms take their
responsibilities very seriously.

I've got similar reactions to your comment (I'm tempted to say
"innuendo") about the liaisons.   While I think they are
necessary, I've always been concerned about the risk of
unreasonable influences from the bodies to which people are
going to be appointed (e.g., enhancement of what Christian
referred to as the "old boyz club") and direct or indirect leaks
back to those bodies (e.g., candor in comments about nominees,
especially about incumbents, who are part of the same "club" as
the liaison can lead to resentments, even if no details are
disclosed outside the Nomcom).  But I don't have a better
solution.  Do you?

   john