IETF News

IASA/IAOC Update

By: Ed Juskevicius, Lucy Lynch

Date: November 7, 2006

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lucy lynch

 

The Internet Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC) met for two days in January to review IETF Administrative Support Activity’s (IASA’s) progress during 2006, to establish goals for 2007, and to begin planning for the transition of IAOC members in March 2007. As much as half of the current IAOC membership may change after the next IETF meeting, scheduled for March 2007 in Prague. Steve Crocker and I will both be stepping down, Jonne Soininen’s two-year term as a NomCom appointee is up, Brian Carpenter will not be re-upping as IETF Chair, and Leslie Daigle’s position as Internet Architecture Board (IAB) chair is subject to change after new IAB members are seated in Prague.

With respect to 2006, some of the notable IASA accomplishments included:

  • Surviving the rains in Dallas, which christened the first IETF meeting organised via our new operating model, which has the IETF Administrative Director (IAD) working with Neustar Secretariat Service (NSS)
  • Repeating that success again in Montreal and San Diego.
  • Closing in on our goal of being at least 12 months ahead with respect to upcoming IETF meetings; Ray Pelletier has already announced the dates and locations for the first two IETF meetings of 2007
  • Getting community input and consensus on the dates of all future IETF meetings to the end of 2010
  • Establishing a good working relationship with the new Secretariat team, such as NSS. Among the accomplishments this year is the negotiation of a multiyear, multimeeting hotel contract with Hilton International. This contract is a significant improvement over past (one-time) hotel contracts, and by holding five of our next 15 meetings at Hilton locations, the IETF will see substantial cost saving.
  • Receiving quarterly transfers of IETF-related intellectual property rights (IPR) from the Internet society into the IETF Trust
  • Issuing a request for proposals (RFP) for RFC Editor services, accepting three bids, and executing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with one of those bidders.
  • Issuing a Network Services RFP to enable outsourcing the Network Operations Centre (NOC) for any future IETF meeting where the host does not want to provide the meeting network
  • Finalising revisions to the IPR boilerplate text to be put onto new I-Ds and RFCs; the IPR WG finished work on this during 2006, and all future contributions to the RFC series will be identified as contributions to the IETF Trust, per the language in RFC 4748
  • and much more (see IASA pages at http://iaoc.ietf.org)

Looking ahead, items for the IAOC “to do” in the first half of 2007
include:

  • Converting the MoU for RFC Editor Services into a formal contract (target is to complete this before March 2007)
  • Selecting a winning bidder from the responses to the Network Services RFP, and develop running code in Prague
  • Issuing a request for information (RFI) for IETF support services (target date is before Prague); based on the responses to that RFI, revise the statement of work (SoW) for secretariat and meeting services before going to RFP
  • Continuing development of support tools, such as extensions to the ID-tracker
  • Reviewing IASA progress, and revise the IAOC charter based on the requirements of the original IASA best current practices (BCP), such as RFC 4071
  • Welcoming new members to the IAOC (in Prague)

On a personal note, I have truly enjoyed my time with the IAOC. I think we have accomplished a lot and our internal relationships have been a constant reminder of all that is best about the IETF “way” of working. I wish the new IAOC much success in the future, and know that both returning members and the IETF community will support the new team as they take over the reins in Prague. My own time with the IAOC has been challenging, entertaining, occasionally exasperating, and ultimately very rewarding. I would encourage everyone in the IETF community to take their turn participating in these all important “housekeeping” issues.