PROCON

IETF 119 - Brisbane, Australia Session: PROCON Chairs: Leslie Daigle, Yari Arkko Note Taker: Pete Resnick

Summary

The PROCON working group met to discuss updates to the core IETF process documents and a new proposal regarding IETF Chair delegation. Significant progress was reported on draft-ietf-procon-2026bis and draft-ietf-procon-2418bis. The group also debated the merits of providing a formal mechanism for the IETF Chair to delegate responsibilities in both emergency and high-workload scenarios.

Key Discussion Points

1. 2026BIS Update

Presenter: Rich Salz Slides: 2026BIS update

Rich Salz summarized changes in recent revisions of draft-ietf-procon-2026bis, including:

Clarifying that decisions (not discussions) must be public.
Updating terminology for the IETF IPMC (formerly IETF Trust).
Aligning BCP definitions and the Internet Standards process wording.

Discussion on IAB Stream BCPs: A significant portion of the discussion centered on the request to the IESG to reclassify certain BCPs published on the IAB stream as IETF stream documents.

Roman Danyliw (IESG Chair) noted the IESG has this on their next telechat.
Eric Rescorla expressed concern that many IAB documents did not go through the formal IETF consensus process (IESG approval/IETF Last Call), even if they had a public comment period.
Barry Leiba and Paul Hoffman emphasized that only documents with demonstrable IETF consensus should be moved to the IETF stream.
Rich Salz clarified the request only targets a specific list of BCPs related to IETF operations.

2. 2418bis

Presenter: David Schinazi Slides: 2418bis

David Schinazi presented updates to draft-ietf-procon-2418bis, intended to reflect current operational realities.

Consensus Reference (RFC 7282): A proposal to reference RFC 7282 for the definition of consensus met resistance from Eric Rescorla, who argued the document contains principles the IETF does not strictly follow (e.g., the 1% dissenter rule). Colin Perkins and Mirja Kühlewind noted that while informational, RFC 7282 had IETF consensus for publication and is a useful reference. The issue was deferred to the GitHub tracker.
Working Group Adoption: The draft introduces text formally defining "adoption" and change control. Eric Rescorla suggested clarifying whether adoption is a consensus decision or a Chair's prerogative. Pete Resnick noted that formal consensus calls for adoption are not universal across all WGs.
Design Teams: Discussion focused on whether design team memberships must be public. Joel Halpern and Colin Perkins noted that while ideal, current practice varies. The chairs (Leslie Daigle) noted that mandating public records for design team internal discussions might be out of scope, but the output must be treated as an IETF contribution.
Chair Delegation and Named Roles: The draft consolidates roles like "Secretary" and "Facilitator." Barry Leiba noted that the definition of a Secretary's role should be "process management" rather than "editing documents."
Virtual BoFs: The draft proposes removing the requirement that BoFs occur at plenary meetings. Eric Rescorla objected, arguing that the cross-area review value of a BoF is lost if it is not part of the physical plenary agenda. Roman Danyliw noted that virtual BoFs have been rare and were mostly a COVID-era necessity.

3. IETF Chair Delegation

Presenter: Lars Eggert Slides: draft-eggert-procon-chair-delegate-01

Lars Eggert presented draft-eggert-procon-chair-delegate-01, which addresses the IETF Chair as a single point of failure and the heavy workload of the role.

Emergency Stand-in: The proposal for the Chair to name a "stand-in" AD was generally supported in principle, though the selection process (naming a specific AD vs. the IAB Chair vs. a pre-defined path) was debated.
Workload Delegation: Eric Rescorla argued against delegating core functions (like the Gen-AD role or IESG chairmanship) because the IETF Chair is specifically selected by the NomCom for those responsibilities.
Separation of Concerns: A sense of the room indicated that "emergency incapacity" and "workload management" are distinct problems that might require different solutions.

Decisions and Action Items

[draft-ietf-procon-2026bis]: Rich Salz will produce a new revision addressing minor nits and then the chairs will initiate a Working Group Last Call (WGLC).
[draft-ietf-procon-2418bis]: David Schinazi will revise the "Adoption" and "Design Team" sections to focus on outcomes and contributions rather than prescriptive internal processes.
[draft-eggert-procon-chair-delegate-01]: Lars Eggert will split the document into two separate drafts: one covering emergency stand-in procedures and another covering workload-based delegation.

Next Steps

The IESG will report back on the status of reclassifying IAB-stream BCPs.
The editors of 2418bis will continue to resolve open GitHub issues, specifically regarding the reference to RFC 7282 and the definition of "Public Fora" (to ensure it covers blessed IETF tools like GitHub and Zulip while maintaining record-keeping requirements).
The WG will review the split delegation drafts once published.

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