Filter by topic and date
RFCs to Guide IETF Administration
- Alissa Cooper IETF Chair
- Jay Daley IETF Executive Director
5 Mar 2020
The IETF community has completed an important body of work to guide how the IETF administration operates.
With shared beginnings in 2016, both the IETF Administrative Support Activity 2 (IASA2) and Meeting Venue (MTGVENUE) working groups aimed to establish community consensus to guide the IETF’s administration and meeting venue selection processes.
IASA2 was chartered to update IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) arrangements in light of considerable changes to the size and scope of the IETF’s administrative work, the world around the IETF, and the IETF community's own expectations since the original IASA arrangements were made over a decade ago. After nearly two years of community discussions, a new limited liability company (LLC) was established as the corporate home of the IETF in August 2018. Since then, the IASA2 working group has worked diligently to specify the details of the new IASA structure. The suite of IASA2 RFCs recently published describe the LLC’s governance and update numerous IETF processes and procedures, such as those undertaken by the IETF Nominating Committee, to account for the creation of the LLC.
MTGVENUE was chartered as a forum where the IETF community could come together to discuss criteria and policies related to the selection of IETF meeting venues, which have been common topics of conversation in the IETF. With the publication of RFC 8718 and RFC 8719, the community has set out consensus criteria to guide the selection of meeting venues and a high-level policy that specifies objectives for distributing IETF meetings geographically. These documents provide the LLC with clear signposts as the meeting venue team explores potential future venues around the world while also serving as reference points for the community when discussions arise about meeting venues.
Together, the IASA2 and MTGVENUE working groups have produced 10 RFCs. As with technically-oriented work, the open discussion inherent in IETF processes has resulted in a set of clear specifications that aim to improve how things work. Now that they are published as RFCs, we are both looking forward to putting the results of IASA2 and MTGVENUE into practice in the years ahead.