Leadership Council F2F - 2009-09-14

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Kantara Leadership Council Teleconference

Date and Time

  • Date: Wednesday, September 14, 2009
  • Time: 9am-5pm PDT
  • Location: Las Vegas at Kantara meetings/Digital ID World

Attendees

  • Voting: 9 of 14
    • Consumer ID WG -
    • ID Assurance WG -
    • IdP Selection WG - Philippe
    • ID-WSF Evo WG - Paul M.
    • Japan WG - Kenji, Toshihiro
    • P3 WG -
    • UP-VPI Tech WG - Iain
    • UMA WG - Eve
    • Clients WG - Conor
    • ULX - Paul T.
    • Healthcare Assurance WG -
    • eGov WG - Colin
    • BoT liaisons - Ken
  • Nonvoting:
    • Concordia DG - Paul M.
    • Japan DG - Kenji
    • ICU DG - Trent
    • Staff: Joni, Dervla
    • Guests: Tatsuki Sakushima, NRI; Ingo Friese, Deustche Telekom

Agenda

9:00 - 10:30am

  1. 2010 Budget Preparation Committee (BPC) Report
  2. Operating Procedures Review

10:30 - 10:45am Break

10:45 - 12:30pm

  1. Operating Procedures Review (continued)
  2. IPR Review
  3. Standards Setting Organizations (SSO) List

12:30 - 1:30pm Lunch

1:30 - 2:30pm BoT & LC Sync-Up

  1. From BoT to LC:
    1. Quarterly reporting requirements of WG/DG's
    2. How to improve community participation in:
      1. WG/DG activities
      2. Communications
      3. --> will feed later LC agenda items.
  2. From LC to BoT:
    1. General update on WG/DG progress
    2. Present 2010 Budget Request
    3. Present requested changes to the OP
    4. Present requested changes to the IPR Options
    5. Present suggested SSO list
    6. Overview of Remaining LC Agenda Topics:
      1. State of the WG & DGs
      2. WG/DG Resource Discussions
      3. KI Communications
      4. Inter-group participation
      5. Process for All-Member Ballots

3:30 - 3:15pm

  1. State of the Work Groups and Discussion Groups
  2. WG/DG Resource Discussions

3:15 - 4:00pm
1. KI Communications
2. Inter-group participation

4:00 - 5:00pm

  1. Determine Process for All-Member Ballots
  2. AOB
  3. Closing Remarks

Minutes

Operating Procedures Review

Initial vetting of issues

Following was our triage of the Operating Procedures Review wiki page items.

#1 LC voting clarity: This was decided and documented in the 22 July 2009 meeting, and this interpretation was used since. Voting and quorum are determined by the number of WGs, not by the number of people.

#2 Cap on co-chairs: Take no action.

#3 and #4 Single-nomination voting and secrecy in group leadership team voting: These can both be solved by making secrecy optional in the OPs. The likeliest scenario when groups are launched is that Chairs (at least) will be the original convener and there will only be one nomination. Any one person can ask that the ballot be secret.

#5 Alternate LC reps (e.g. vice-chairs) as LC officers: It's hard enough to get people to serve as LC officers that we should allow this. The OPs don't seem to prohibit it. Agreed that we'll allow it.

#6 Cross-WG commenting: Defer till later today (which means we can't put a recommendation in front of the BoT for their approval today; any action will have to wait till later).

#7 Generically named IPR option: Defer till later today. All IPR discussion will have widening implications.

#8 Doc publication process: This has been clarified in email during the last two weeks. DGs and WGs are differentially constrained in what they can create. DGs are forbidden from putting out Draft Technical Specs that go for All-Member Ballot; DG Reports are not eligible for All-Member Ballots. WGs can generate both Reports and Draft Technical Specs that may lead to Recommendations.

#9 Unfilled group leadership team positions: We want to say that at least the Chair position must be filled for a group to be properly constituted. The OPs seem to say that Vice-Chair is also required. Can we loosen this? We should also account for the co-chair situation in our work.

#10 30-day clock on charter approval votes: The current Secretary has been operating under the assumption that the 30-day clock only starts on acceptance. However, changing the text in the proposed way doesn't account for unacceptable delays imposed by the Secretary.

#11 Voting privileges and ballot timing: The participant should have voting status before the ballot starts. Let's roll this into the new item 18.

#12 Holding multiple leadership positions: We think it's fine to do this, except in the chair/vice-chair case, which we don't believe anyone will try. We'll consider this closed.

#13 Minutes approval by non-attendees: This is fine according to RROR. We'll consider this closed.

#14 Draft Rec modification in response to review period comments: Can we require that material changes have to go back through another review, and editorial changes don't have to? OASIS has a definition for errata that might be helpful here.

#15 Group quorum by voting vs. all members: This is the Bylaws definition of quorum that applies to all Kantara groups. Yes, we need to fix this. Only participants who are eligible to vote should count. We need to discuss this more.

#16 Report vs. draft spec language: Since Kantara does not put out "Technical Specifications" but rather "Draft Technical Specifications" (that could turn into Recommendations). This seems like a bug, but a minor one. Let's roll this back into 8.

#17 LC quorum management: We think we agree on the conceptual model that's being proposed. At least one properly constituted representative (chair or vice-chair) of a WG that's a voting member of the LC needs to attend regularly to retain voting privileges. Let's broaden this issue to include LC and WG quorum management, and deciding the proper role of "non-voting participation".

#18 WG electronic voting rules: We need to make these explicit! Currently the only written rules are for electronic votes on Controlling Documents. (But see below for a retraction.)

Work list

For the future:

  • #5 Alternate LC reps: we need to document our conclusion on this issue. This ultimately needs to turn into an AI.

For today:

  • #3/#4 Single-nomination and Optional secrecy
  • #8/#16 Doc publication process Report vs. draft spec language
  • #9 Unfilled group leadership positions
  • #10 30-day clock on charter approval votes
  • #14 Draft Rec modification in response to review period comments
  • #15 Group quorum by voting vs. all members
  • #17 Quorum management and non-voting participation
  • #18 WG electronic voting rules
Discussion of #15: group quorum definition

RATIONALE/PRE-DISCUSSION: Our goal is to allow group business to occur in the face of habitual non-attenders who are otherwise members/participants (depending on whether you're talking about the BoT, the LC, or WGs/DGs). We note that all three types of groups already have voting/non-voting distinctions.

MOTION: To recommend to the BoT to insert "voting" before "Members" into Bylaws Section 1.14 and insert a new definition in that section of "voting member", as "a member of a group that has met the voting eligibility criteria for that group".

DISCUSSION: Do we need the extra "voting member" definition? Maybe, maybe not, but the BoT can separate the two parts of the recommendation if they like. We note that phrases like "voting member" and "non-voting member" already appear in the Bylaws.

Motion APPROVED by unanimous consent.

Discussion of #17: quorum management and non-voting participation

RATIONALE/PRE-DISCUSSION: We are re-narrowing this issue down to just LC quorum management, because the non-voting participation rules have been demonstrated to be working well (other than in electronic voting) for WG. Our goal is to allow LC business to occur in the face of habitual non-attendance by WG representatives, while remaining a truly representative LC body for Kantara purposes. Since non-attenders only lose voting privileges and can reinstate them instantly (following the WG model), this seems not to be a concern.

MOTION: To recommend to the BoT to adopt a new OP subsection of Section 2, based on existing Section 3.7 for WG quorum, that reads as follows:

"For the purpose of maintaining a reasonable ability to achieve Quorum, any Voting Member of the LC who fails to attend two consecutive meetings of the LC may, at the discretion of the Chair, be re-classified as a non-voting member. Voting member status may be reacquired by attending a meeting of the LC. In the case of an electronic vote of the LC, if the electronic vote occurs while the Member is in non-voting status, the Member may not vote in that electronic vote."

DISCUSSION: We considered whether to add the ability to request reacquisition of voting status, but then we'd need to (a) figure out how not to get into a nasty cycle of voting/non-voting, and (b) decide whether/why not to apply this to WGs as well. LC members have more opportunity to attend LC meetings (since you can have a chair and/or vice-chair attend) than do individual group participants. We believe the BoT will push back on our recommendation because of a concern that the LC will get progressively less representative over time. However, it may become a problem of scale if many more Kantara groups get formed (and maybe the LC won't need to meet so often after the bootstrapping phase), and in any case no LC member is prevented from taking part in discussions and votes at will.

Motion APPROVED by unanimous consent.

Discussion of new #18: WG electronic voting rules

It turns out Eve's reading of OP Section 6.2, Electronic Ballots, was wrong. This section does apply to electronic ballots of all WG and LC business. So, nevermind.

Discussion of #3 and #4: single-nomination positions and leadership team voting secrecy:

OP Section 3.3 says: "All WG Chair and Vice-chair and Editor elections shall be conducted by secret ballot."

RATIONALE/PRE-DISCUSSION: Our goal is to make the likely case more efficient (single-nomination, election-by-acclamation, especially for chairs but also for other positions). The only reason we mandate electronic ballots for leadership positions (minimum 7 days) is that it's the only way we could manage to have some semblance of secrecy (and in fact, Kantara staff still knows who is voting for whom; we're comfortable with this because participants still retain secrecy among their peers on the group). And in most cases no one is clamoring for secrecy. The requirement for secrecy is thus overly burdensome in both bureaucracy and time, though we want to preserve anyone's right to demand it.

MOTION: To recommend to the BoT to add to the wording in Section 3.3 as follows (new portion in brackets) "All WG Chair and Vice-chair and Editor elections shall be conducted by secret ballot [if any voting participant requests it]."

DISCUSSION: Should we also add something saying that no vote is necessary if there's only a single nominee? It seems there is insufficient appetite to make this be a special case in the rules. Also, what was the rationale for imposing the secrecy requirement on WGs but not on DGs?

AMENDMENT: To recommend to the BoT to add to the wording in Section 3.3 as follows (new portion in brackets) "All WG Chair and Vice-chair and Editor elections shall be conducted by secret ballot [unless the WG passes a motion by unanimous consent to hold a non-secret ballot]." Amendment APPROVED by unanimous consent.

DISCUSSION: We want to protect, as strongly as possible, the rights of those who might wish to keep their leadership opinions secret. Thus we want to require non-secret ballots to have a positive agreement by all voting participants in attendance.

Motion as amended APPROVED by unanimous consent.

Capture of new #19: multi-nominee leadership balloting

There is a complex bug in the OPs resulting from the fact that leadership positions require a majority vote (3.3), and electronic voting (6.2), which is required to be used in the case of secret ballots, require YES/NO/ABSTAIN ballot wording. At a minimum, the YES/NO/ABSTAIN formulation requires a complex workaround to ensure people don't vote YES for multiple people for the same position. But further, should we allow the person with a plurality of the votes to win, or should we have some sort of runoff voting, or what? Finally, in OP 3.3, should we change "A WG shall, at a minimum, have a Chair and Vice-chair elected from the WG membership by a majority vote of the WG Participants." to say voting Participants?

2010 Budget Preparation Committee (BPC) Report

Trent distributed a spreadsheet containing the BPC's recommendations. The BPC tried to identify what could be done by volunteer contributions vs. what absolutely has to be paid for with Kantara funds. The recommended funding did target a particular (rough) number, and at this point we should consider any changes to be constrained by a (roughly) zero-sum approach – if we add to one area, we should try to subtract it from elsewhere. The BPC's purpose is to make recommendations to the LC, which has to modify them as desired and further recommend them to the BoT. If we can do all this before lunch, we'll have a chance to defend our recommendation in front of the BoT later today.

The general categories are:

  • Recommend to fund
  • Recommend to fund partially
  • Recommend not to fund

The total amount requested ($196K) is not accurate; it's low because not all the requests were expressed as a dollar amount. Where applicable, staff time needed for various purposes has been earmarked. "SME" stands for "subject matter expert".

MOTION: To accept the BPC recommendations for remanding to the BoT. (Note that this does not include the BPC funding recommendation principles document.)

DISCUSSION: Spreadsheet line item 8, "ISO liaison from IAWG", is problematic. We may be going down a slippery slope in offering to pay for anyone's travel, ever. Sending staff to an external meeting or conference is perhaps a different case, but that's not what is being asked for here.

AMENDMENT: Change line 8, "ISO liaison from IAWG", to red (recommend not to fund) with a rationale that Kantara should have a bright line about never funding the travel of volunteers. DISCUSSION: Some believe that it should be funded as a low priority. Amendment APPROVED 4-2.

DISCUSSION: In line items 21-23, associated with the Japan WG, it was noted that monetary matching funds are very difficult to do, but in-kind contributions are much easier, and that line 21, "Japan PR retainer", simply can't be achieved with less than $30K of Kantara funding. Should we treat 21-23 as a single request to be allocated as a block, or should we parse the line items separately? If we do the former, then the WG can prioritize as it sees fit. An argument can be made that Japan WG work is, in a sense, Kantara-wide (in that it makes visible Kantara work visible in Japan), and funding is necessary to give Kantara a presence in Japan. Regular PR funding for Kantara comes out of a different bucket.

AMENDMENT: "Move" the $8K that we now do not recommend on line item 8 to the total of recommended funding on lines 21-23, and also recommend that the BoT consider additional infrastructure funding for the Japan WG given the WG's infrastructural nature. DISCUSSION: What sort of precedent does this set? Geographical groups do seem to play this sort of special role. AMENDMENT to the AMENDMENT: Change the recommendation on lines 21-23 to keep the $30K for PR and cut in half the other two line items, for a total of $61K. Rolled-up amendment APPROVED by unanimous consent.

DISCUSSION: Line items 12-15, on eGovernment SMEs, require a lot of SME time for editing. This group hasn't been successful at soliciting volunteer time. It was noted that this group is composed of users and deployers of technology, not primarily technologists. It might be thought that existing U.S. government work on a profile in a particular area could suffice for the rest of the world, but we're finding that this is not the case. So that, e.g., even though a US. government profile of OpenID has recently been done, it's anticipated that a global effort could still be significant. Could OIDF help fund such an effort?

The 20 hours requested for the ID-WSF profile are just "getting from 10% complete to 15% complete". The higher hour figures for the others account for the fact that there's a government mandate for the result.

How many volunteer hours on top of these requests are being assumed?

It was suggested that, given that spec-editing consultancy requests could get out of hand, we develop a guideline for limits on what percentage of a project could be funded directly by Kantara – say, 10% or 50% or whatever. However, there was general agreement that this type of work, which is of strategic global importance, is an area where Kantara can usefully contribute to progress and success.

It was recommended that the Kantara community list be used for "calls for spec editors" before Kantara funds spec SMEs.

We should highlight in items 12-15 the "internationalization" nature of the items.

New budget request guideline: If you ask for paid labor because you haven't been able to locate volunteer labor, you must document both the global strategic importance of the effort and your attempts to date to find volunteer.

The dollar values proposed have been validated by the eGov chair.

AMENDMENT: For lines 12-15, condition the release of funds on sufficient documentation of failed efforts to find volunteer community participation by 31 Dec 2009. Amendment APPROVED by unanimous consent.

DISCUSSION: Should any other line items call out recommended funding vs. income, the way the Concordia line item (#2) is done? This was broken out because the knowledge was available.

DISCUSSION: Should the P3WG requests (line items 19-20) be accepted given that privacy summits have successfully been held in the past? We think a summit could be held for more like $1-2K, rather than $4K. Right now, we feel comfortable with the fact that both these line items are recommended to get no funding; we could change our minds tomorrow.

DISCUSSION: The UD-VPI requests (line items 16-18) involve three big buckets of work. The recommended contingencies have a "waterfall" effect; each stage requires the previous stage to have been successful and to have gotten matching funds.

DISCUSSION: The ULX request (line 25) involves re-analyzing, from scratch, the user login process. The contingency on this item requires sufficient effort to find a volunteer, and indeed a volunteer stands ready to help. However, having funds available in the right time window may be critical to the effort's success depending on various external factors. The "flowcharts" mentioned are the output of a user experience designer's work.

Motion as amended APPROVED by unanimous consent.

AI: LC to discuss P3WG requests with Robin and Kenji.

AI: Trent to edit the BPC spreadsheet to reflect LC revisions and BoT requests, including renaming the column headings and un-hiding the column for Matching Funds.

IPR Review

Consider a generic version of "Option Liberty"

We recognize that the current name is insufficiently descriptive, and that some people are uncomfortable with having Liberty in the name.

Some options that come to mind: make a copy with a new name; change the name and ripple the editorial change throughout the charters that use the old name; change the name and include a "formerly known as" caveat.

MOTION: To recommend to the BoT to change the name of the IPR policy currently named "Option Liberty" to a name that is more descriptive of the legal definitions within that policy.

DISCUSSION: Several people proposing group charters have expressed concerns about the name of this option as a potential stumbling block.

Motion APPROVED by unanimous consent.

Proposal to remove the IPR requirement for DGs

Some have complained that signing a GPA form is an unfortunate barrier to participation for some kinds of DGs, which don't want to produce reports but rather want only a mailing list.

Are we talking about a whole different entity, not a WG or DG?

Since Kantara's value over and above a random Google Group consists largely in its IPR protections, and since the text of the Creative Commons option (the likeliest one to be chosen for DGs) is now embedded in GPA forms online, until we hear that the current situation (vs. the original one) is a serious barrier, we're not inclined to change things further.

Proposal for an IPR FAQ

It does cost money to fund a lawyer to help construct a FAQ, and lawyers tend to believe that their legal language stands on its own. However, we're well familiar with people's desire to be given summaries, FAQs, matrices, and so on that explain (in a non-normative way) the options. And, for example, a legally vetted summary can then usefully be translated into other languages, which is helpful for global reach.

This is likely not to proceed unless we can find a champion to put together draft auxiliary materials.

Telecon quality problems

As a stopgap for the existing scheduled Kantara telecons, it's possible that we can use the already-purchased high-def line. But this does not scale. Should Kantara pursue this stopgap solution?

In brainstorming the high-def options available (U.S. and international toll-free minutes, Skype availability, etc.), we suggested that toll-free minutes are less valuable than having multiple high-reliability lines available. One line with 800 toll-free minutes at $79 is not as valuable as two lines with 400 toll-free minutes, since all groups have to share whatever number(s) we get. Whatever we choose has to work well with Skype callers, and also can't require callers to have a computer with a broadband Internet connection (e.g., it should be possible to call in using a cell phone from a remote location).

MOTION: In consideration of the Kantara budget and the teleconference preferences and needs of Kantara groups and their members, recommend to the BoT to consider using multiple $40 high-definition teleconference lines rather than a single $79 high-definition line. Motion APPROVED by unanimous consent.

Deferred items

  • Inter-group discussions
  • Recording and streaming WG/DG meetings

Next Meeting

  • Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009
  • Time: 8am PDT | 11am EDT | 15:00 UTC (Time Chart)
  • Teleconference Options:
    • Skype: +9900827043671716
    • US Dial-In: +1-201-793-9022 | Room Code: 3671716

NOTES: