[Fwd: [members] Standards development and TC Administration staffservices]

[Monica J Martin <Monica.Martin@Sun.COM>]

FYI from OASIS today on administration and support.

> clark:
> OASIS Members:
>
> The OASIS Standards Development staff is expanding and reorganizing to 
> meet the increased demand presented by our Consortium's growth.  We 
> have been challenged to maintain support levels as first the number of 
> OASIS TCs and then the volume of approved specifications doubled (and 
> continues to grow), and as the revised OASIS IPR Policy added new 
> requirements to the TC workload.
>
> With the recent hire of Ram Kumar as Manager of Technical Committee 
> Development, we now have the equivalent of three full-time staff 
> allocated to direct support of TCs: Mary McRae and myself in the US, 
> and Ram in Australia.  We receive additional assistance from Pim van 
> der Eijk in Europe and Brett Trusko, also in the US.
>
> Although OASIS TCs are designed to be mostly self-governing, some 
> degree of staff assistance is required to ensure the OASIS TC Process 
> is carried out effectively and TCs are receiving the support they 
> require.  The OASIS TC Process specifically names a "TC Administrator" 
> to conduct specific official functions relating to TC management and 
> specification advancement. Some of these duties are policy-oriented, 
> such as interpreting rules and appeals, but most of this role relates 
> to everyday infrastructure acts, such as starting a ballot for an 
> OASIS Standard vote, creating a subcommittee, etc.
>
> In order to assure efficient turnaround time on these types of 
> requests, we have implemented three changes.
>
> TC ADMINISTRATION REQUESTS.   First, we have reallocated Mary McRae's 
> time so that her top priority will be to serve as first responder for 
> all TC infrastructure requests to "OASIS TC Administration", and keep 
> the service queues up-to-date. To enable this change, it will be 
> necessary to re-assign some of Mary's direct TC relationships (details 
> will be sent in a separate message to the relevant TCs), but we expect 
> this change will result in increased service speed for all TCs across 
> the board.
>
> The principal types of TC-Admin support that TCs will obtain centrally 
> via Mary will be:
> > Conducting a Public Review of a specification
> > Conducting a Committee Specification approval vote
> > Reviewing a submission and conducting a ballot for OASIS Standard status
> > Reviewing and conducting votes on charter changes
> > Converting pre-2005 TCs to an IPR mode under the IPR Transition Policy
> > Running other TC ballots required to be run by staff
> > Creating subcommittees
>
> TC STAFF CONTACTS.    The second step we have taken is to clarify the 
> "TC Staff Contact" role, so that TC chairs and members know who to 
> consult for the support they need. Over the past two years, each TC 
> has been assigned a specific staff member to monitor their activities 
> and provide baseline assistance, designated as the "TC Staff Contact" 
> in the TC's roster. To a great degree, this has worked very well. We 
> have found, however, that some official functions do not lend 
> themselves to decentralization, which is why Mary will serve as point 
> person for the requests described above.
>
> Within reasonable limits, the TC Staff Contact will:
> > Assist if needed with TC roster management issues
> > Serve as an additional resource to make sure the TC's web pages are 
> current
> > Serve as a contact point for questions
> > Identify opportunities for liaison and re-use of the TC's work
> > Keep OASIS aware of the progress and obstacles encountered by the TC
>
> As much as we believe it's important to maintain a designated default 
> contact for each TC, we must remember that OASIS runs on a thin-client 
> model. With over 65 TCs and only a few staff members, a TC Staff 
> Contact will be able to devote only a few hours a month to each TC.  
> It is our hope that this allocation will be sufficient to assist with 
> challenges and opportunities, while still leaving the bulk of the 
> governance and administration of the TCs in the hands of our highly 
> capable volunteer TC leaders.
>
> EXPLICIT SERVICE TIMES.   Finally, our third step is to improve our 
> transparency and predictability by posting and executing a list of 
> explicit turnaround times ("service level agreements") for various 
> tasks. The TC Process establishes deadlines for some aspects of our 
> work; we are implementing additional deadlines to enable even greater 
> control and more efficient planning.
>
> Not only will these turnaround times provide a metric for staff 
> performance, they also will assist in TC planning, enabling chairs and 
> editors to take into account the necessary processing and approval 
> times.  This should reduce the risk of a specification being rushed 
> into approval at the last possible moment -- and thus missing a 
> deadline due to a technical flaw in the submission.
>
> We have internally redesigned our handling and forwarding of service 
> requests to spool to a central location. Going forward, you should 
> direct all requests for the key actions listed below to:
>     tc-admin@oasis-open.org.
> You may copy your TC Staff Contact on these requests, but please send 
> these specific TC-Admin requests directly to the central address 
> above, so that we can log and better track each request.
>
> (We're also considering the feasibility of making our service queue 
> publicly archived, with each request becoming a visible, time-stamped 
> ticket. Your comments on that idea are welcome.)
>
> Here are the turnaround times we will immediately support on items 
> when they are sent to "tc-admin@oasis-open.org":
>
>     Action: Launch announcement of a public review after receiving and
>     evaluating a compliant proposal.  (TC Process Sec. 3.2.)  No
>     response time is specified.  Staff will commit to act within five
>     business days (instead of previous practice of 15 days). 
>     Action:  Launch Committee Specification ballot after receiving and
>     evaluating a compliant proposal.  (TC Process Sec. 3.3.)  No
>     response time is specified.  Staff will commit to act within five
>     business days (instead of previous practice of 15 days). 
>     Action: Launch OASIS Standard ballot after receiving and
>     evaluating a compliant proposal.  (TC Process Sec. 3.4.)  Staff
>     will maintain the turnaround time set by the rule as 15 calendar
>     days. 
>     Action:  Run "Special Majority" Ballots for other reasons, such as
>     removal of TC chair, sec. 2.7.  (TC Process Secs. 1(w), 2.13.)  No
>     response time is specified.  Staff will commit to act within three
>     business days. 
>     Action:  Create subcommittees on proper request.  (TC Process Sec.
>     2.14.)  No response time is specified.  Staff will commit to act
>     within three business days. 
>     Action: Announce and post ballot results once ballot successfully
>     closed.  (Per TC Process Sec. 1(w), 2.13.)  No response time is
>     specified.  Staff will commit to act within three business days. 
>     Action: Review and respond to requests to designate acceptable
>     outside facility resources use, such as systems that support tools
>     not provided by OASIS. (TC Process Sec. 2.8.)  No response time is
>     specified.  Staff will commit to act within five business days. 
>     Action: Review and publish compliant TC standing rules. (TC
>     Process Sec. 2.9.)  No response time is specified.  Staff will
>     commit to act within 5 business days. 
>     Action: Launch charter clarification ballot after receiving and
>     evaluating compliant proposal.  (TC Process Sec. 2.11.)  Staff
>     will maintain the turnaround set by the rule as 15 calendar days. 
>     Action: Launch rechartering ballot after receiving and evaluating
>     compliant proposal.  (TC Process Sec. 2.12.  Staff will maintain
>     the turnaround time set by the rule as 15 calendar days. 
>     Action: Launch Joint Committee after receiving and evaluating a
>     compliant proposal.  (TC Process Sec. 2.16.)  Turnaround is set by
>     the rule as 15 calendar days. Staff will commit to act within 5
>     business days. 
>
> We have omitted actions that relate to prospective or forming TCs (as 
> opposed to already-running TCs), from this plan, because we think a 
> different channel for handling those requests may be optimal.  We will 
> propose some changes and improvements to that process as well within 
> the next few months.
>
> Obviously the times stated above are our targeted maximums; we will 
> perform faster turnaround when feasible.  We may also be able to 
> further reduce some of these times, and sharpen some definitions, 
> after we accrue some experience with them.
>
> We very much appreciate your continued contributions to the 
> development of open standards at OASIS, and your support in helping us 
> better assist you.  We look forward to your feedback on how we can 
> continue to improve TC support.
>
> ~   James Bryce Clark
> ~   Director, Standards Development, OASIS
> ~   jamie.clark@oasis-open.org
>
>
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