The IAB website provides a description of the definition and scope for technical programs and administrative support groups. This wiki page further records the IAB agreed procedures to establish, maintain, and close programs or groups as well as participation rules and expectations.
Before a program or group is formally established by the IAB, the IAB member(s) proposing the program/group needs to provide a program description. For technical programs the IAB should then gauge community interest by requesting public feedback on the proposed scope. This can be done by requesting a new open mailing list or discussion on architecture-discuss@ietf.org.
The initial description should describe the scope of the work and, if appropriate goals the program or groups wants to achieve. Technical programs usually outline an issue or question relating to the Internet architecture. The program description can be refined anytime with approval by the IAB. The IAB liaison to the IESG is responsible to inform the IESG about new programs or groups under consideration and should feed back any comments from the IESG.
The IAB needs to agree to both – start a new technical program and to set up the required mailing list(s), but a formal vote is not required – agreement of those present at an IAB meeting and confirmed on the IAB mailing list without objection (e.g., in minutes) is sufficient.
If no active work is being undertaken in a program/group, it can be closed anytime by the IAB (usually in agreement with the community or members). In addition, program reviews serve as a check to determine if there is still work to do for the IAB and the IAB might decide to close a program (see below).
IAB programs and groups should have at least two IAB members participating (one being the lead or liaison). Current IAB members are free to join any program/group. IAB programs/groups support IAB activities and if there is no interest indicated by the current IAB in the specific topic that the program/group is addressing, that’s a strong indication that a program/group should be closed.
Programs or groups are led by two people. The leads are selected by the IAB. Often the IAB member proposing a new program will also be the initial lead of the program.
The objective of the leads is to facilitate activities within the program/group, provide oversight and ensure continuity. The lead doesn’t need to have specific expertise in the area, but must have a good general understanding of the issues from technical, business, and/or policy perspectives.
With approval of the IAB, one or both leads can also be non-IAB members. This makes sense to support continuity, e.g. when the current lead leaves the IAB but is still actively committed to the program/group, or if the scope of the program/group requires expertise that is currently not covered by the IAB.
If both leads are non-IAB members, the IAB in addition selects an IAB liaison providing a bridge for communication to and from the IAB as well as administrative support from the IAB if needed. Respectively, the IAB lead or liaison should report back to the IAB on a need basis by email or in the IAB business call.
The IAB lead or liaison is further expected to bring the IAB perspective to the work.
Membership of administrative support groups is usually determined by the IAB and periodically reviewed, usually at the March IETF meeting when the new IAB is seated. Often, membership of administrative support groups includes representatives or liaisons from other groups or organizations, such as the IESG, or e.g. IANA and ISOC. In this case the IAB approves the membership structure as part of the program description but the other groups or organizations may determine their portion of the membership themselves. Equally membership of administrative support groups that support the liaison coordination is usually managed by the program leads but may also be reviewed by the IAB (on a yearly basis).
All technical programs must have an open mailing list. As administrative support groups have closed membership, the mailing list is also closed.
Programs can also have additional mailing lists that are used for the coordination of specific tasks or a specific group of people. But most discussions should happen on the open list. As such it is not expected that programs will create many closed lists or if those lists are created they might only be used for a specific task or short-term activity.
Information shared on a non-open mailing list should not be shared publicly without explicit approval by the person who has provided this information. However, a high-level summary of a discussion is usually not seen as confidential, except explicitly stated.
Minutes for all meetings must also be provided publicly, e.g. by uploading them to the datatracker. Minutes for administrative support group meetings must be approved by the members before publication. Meetings are usually only announced to the public program/group list.
Meetings around IETF face-to-face meetings should not consume one of the “normal” IETF agenda slots, but rather should be arranged as a breakfast or evening meeting; lunch slots should be avoided as well for technical programs. Generally, as participation is expected to be focused, a side meeting room should be used, e.g. in U-shape conference setup. Session rooms and front-up presentation setups should be avoided. Meetings that are held as part of the IETF agenda must be registered as an IAB session in the IETF datatracker (to support scheduling but also raise awareness) and approved by the IAB.
Programs may target a workshop to generate broader input and have more time for discussion. This is especially valuable for new programs. A program could even potentially operate as a series of stand-alone workshops, perhaps co-locating with some other community events, if that were useful in order to encourage participation by an appropriate community.
To hold a workshop the program will propose a workshop to the IAB, and the IAB will decide and organize such workshops following the usual IAB process. For IAB workshops interested parties are usually required to provide some statement of interest to be invited to participate. This enables the workshop organisers to keep the discussion focused and prepare accordingly. However, everybody who has provided a statement that is in scope for the respective workshop usually should be invited. Similar as for all IAB workshops, a report will be published as RFC on the IAB stream as a public record of the discussion and activities at the workshop.
Technical programs are expected to report back to the community in the IAB Open Meeting or, alternatively, on the architecture-discuss mailing list. The frequency and level of detail of such reporting is to be defined by the IAB, but it is expected that each program will report back at least once per year.
The IAB will review each technical program once every year to decide if the program should be continued (in its current form) and potentially also adapt the scope of a program. Program reviews can happen during an IETF meeting, at the IAB retreat, in IAB business calls (or the reserved slot), or in dedicated calls if needed for any reason. The review will be open to observers based on the usual rules of the type of meeting where the review is done. No matter which meeting will be chosen, the minutes of the review should be published.
Since Administrative Support Groups act as extensions of the IAB, IAB members may share summaries of IAB discussions when these summaries are relevant and sharing will be helpful. These summaries should only contain an overview of the discussion and will not include information that the IAB considers private. IAB members should not share details of confidential IAB discussions with non-IAB members.
The members of an Administrative Support Groups should assume that any materials or discussions may be shared with the IAB, although the IAB may request that specific materials NOT be shared (for example, the IAB chose not to see the materials that the RFC Series Oversight Committee gathered during its search for an RFC Editor).
Any information provided, from any source, should be treated as if it were confidential to the IAB itself. This information should not be shared outside the members of the Administrative Support Groups and the IAB, unless the permission to share was explicitly received. This also applies to presentations and similar written materials.
When it is helpful to do so, the group may approve sharing information informally with non-group members, in order to benefit from experience and/or expertise held by non-group members. The program must make the decision to share this information explicitly, and must set expectations about confidentiality when sharing this information.