From time to time NomCom may decide to appoint two ADs in the same area even when they have the same affiliation (i.e., corporate sponsor). NomCom? would never do this without careful consideration, and it is likely that the IAB as confirming body will double-check with NomCom? that they have considered the implications.
Similarly, it is possible that a serving AD will change affiliation mid term resulting in both ADs in one area having the same affiliation.
Neither of these situations has been shown to be common, but they are both likely to cause the community to prick up its ears and to be nervous of decisions made by the ADs.
In March 2014, NomCom appointed Alia Atlas to serve as Routing AD. The continuing Routing AD at that time was Adrian Farrel. Both were sponsored by Juniper Networks.
Here is the email that the two ADs sent to the community setting out how they planned to handle any issues that arose. This email may serve as guidelines for the IESG if similar circumstances arise in future.
As similar situation occurred when Magnus Westerlund was selected by the NomCom to start a term as TSV AD in March 2019 and Mirja Kühlewind, the other seated TSV AD for another year, switched jobs and started at Ericsson that same month. Mirja communicated this affiliation change to the IESG as well as NomCom and IAB as confirming body as soon as possible in January 2019, which was after the NomCom made a selection decision but before the selection was announced. Further, beginning of March this situation was announced and discussed by e-mail. Reaction about this proactive approach to announce the situation as soon as possible to the community were very positive.
Email by Reference
See this email in the archives: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/H-_4fo37bnqqzu9KAle2zKmQZNk%3D/
Also: https://mailarchive.ietf.org/arch/msg/ietf/bEezJ45CjLxcaYsnjmok03107Ks
All,
It is relatively unusual for two ADs in the same area to have the same company affiliation. Although, of course, ADs discard their affiliations in consideration of all elements of their AD role, we are aware that this situation may cause some concern and unease. Therefore we have decided to err on the side of caution, remind everyone of the normal practices that take into account affiliations, and put in place some operating guidelines that we will endeavour to follow while this situation exists.
We should note that this situation will not last for more than the next year: Adrian absolutely will not be seeking reselection as an AD at the end of this year (March 2015).
First, whenever anyone has a concern of actual or potential bias by us as ADs, we will encourage such a concern to be reported to us and to the IETF chair. In such circumstances, we will supply the chair with as much information as we have and will abide by the chair's decision as to what action we should take.
We would like to remind you of the following standard practices:
As has become the normal practice in the Routing Area, the ADs will depend heavily on the diverse Routing Area Directorate to provide public, non-biased and critical reviews of all Routing Area documents. We will be conscious of the affiliation of the reviewers when requesting reviews.
Different affiliations between the working group chairs of any single working group is always considered desirable.
Here are our additional operating guidelines for the following rare cases:
When a document has authors with only one affiliation and that is ours, even though there is a mitigating effect of WG chairs and document shepherds, we will ask another AD to act as responsible AD. This may have the effect of slowing the progress of such documents.
Whenever there are contentious IPR issues related to a document in the Routing Area we will seek public guidance from another AD. Whenever the contentious IPR is owned by Juniper we will ask another AD to act as responsible AD.
Whenever there is significant disagreement within a working group in which there is a strong view held by participants affiliated with Juniper, and where the AD is called upon to guide or instruct the chairs, we will always seek public input from another AD.
In the event of any complaints made against WG chairs in the Routing Area where those chairs are affiliated to Juniper we will always seek input from other another AD with as much public visibility as the complaint.
Please be aware that for Adrian this represents a change in normal automatic processing that he has developed over 5 years. For Alia the challenge is that she will be on the steep learning curve that all new ADs go through. Please excuse any fumbles, draw them to our attention and allow us to rectify them.
May we both take this opportunity to thanks Stewart for his excellent service as an AD over the last four years.
Alia and Adrian
The content of this page was last updated on 2019-04-08. It was migrated from the old Trac wiki on 2023-02-17.