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Subject: Standards development and TC Administration staff services



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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