IESG Liaison

Purpose

The IESG and the IAB have a close working relationship that requires joint meetings and discussions. There are two members of the IAB that sit on the IESG: the IAB chair and the IESG Liaison. The IAB chair is a de-facto member of the IESG, but does not take part in decisions made by the IESG. The IAB Liaison acts primarily as an observer and occasionally offers IAB relevant perspectives when needed. They may choose to participate in some of the IESG non-standards-activities work activities for the general improvement of the IETF.

Attendance

The IESG Liaison is expected to attend:

• weekly IESG meetings
• IESG meetings at IETF conferences
• the IESG retreat
• the IESG chat channel
• the IESG mailing list

Note that the IESG chat channel currently use Slack, but this could change in the future.

The IESG Liaison will not attend:

• any IESG executive sessions
• any other IESG confidential discussions

Passing of Information

The IESG Liaison is expected to capture information of interest to the IAB at IESG events and pass that back to the IAB via the IAB list(s) or at IAB meetings. Although this is likely to be done by the IAB chair as well, the IESG Liaison serves as a neutral third-party to double check that all relevant information is indeed reported and to accurately summarize the opinions of the IESG.

IESG Liaisons should use their judgement on what to report and how to report it. It is normally not necessary to report every detail of the day-to-day progress of documents unless the document or related discussions were of note to the IAB. Likewise, it is not necessary to report information already reported to the IAB though different channels, such as proposed new working group charters, BoF requests, etc. Examples of relevant information to report include material changes to IETF processes, work likely to impact the IAB's view of the Internet architecture, or information impacting the IETF's relationship with other organizations.

At the time of this writing, the most recent IESG Liaison sent informal summaries to the IAB list prior to most IAB business meetings, as well as occasional "breaking news" emails when things of especial interest to the IAB happened between meetings. Future Liaisons, in consultation with fellow IAB members, might choose different approaches.

Since the introduction of Slack as the IETF chat channel, the IESG has increased the use of the IESG chat channel for substantive discussion. The IESG Liaison is urged to pay more attention to the chats than might have been necessary in the past.