OASIS members,
In December, on the chairs@ mailing list, I discussed what
procedures to put in place to implement the OASIS
requirements for handling comments received during public
reviews. I also presented the proposed procedure with the
OASIS Board's Process Committee for their information.
Below is the draft proposal, amended with the feedback I
received. I am sharing it with all of you now to gain
broader member feedback before implementing a final set of
rules. My goal is to publish the procedure in the last
week of January with the goal of making it effective for
all public reviews and charter proposals beginning after
February 1st. (I do not intend to make it retroactive.)
Please set aside some time over the next couple of weeks
to review the proposal and share any thoughts or
suggestions that you have. The final document will become
the 'law of the land' so it is in all our best interests
to ensure that the right balance is set between satisfying
the requirements of the OASIS TC Process and minimizing
the additional workload for TCs.
To make sure that the discussion is public, please use the
oasis-member-discuss@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list for
your feedback (cc'ed on this message). You should not need
to subscribe to the list; you should be able to use it
automatically. If you have a problem posting to it, let me
know.
Also, attached is the comment resolution log for the
feedback I received so far.
Executive summary:
We need to get better consistency in how TCs track and
report comments received during public reviews. Today, TCs
have no clear direction or expectations from OASIS on how
this is to be done. As a result, each TC arrives at their
their own solution and candidly, some do not bother to
track or report comments at all.
With our strong liaison relationships with other Standards
Development Organizatoins and, most recently, with the
review of the OASIS Process as part of our application for
ANSI accreditation, it is clear that we need a documented
and consistent protocol that ensures:
(a) a TC actively acknowledges receipt of comments,
(b) at least the minimum facts needed are captured,
tracked and reported,
(c) the timeframe for a TC to deliver a final comment
resolution log is clear, and
(d) the reports of comments and their resolutions are
persistent, immutable, publicly visible and readily found
in the TC archives.
The steps outlined below seek to meet these requirements
with minimal impact on TCs.
Definitions:
- For the purposes of this procedure, a "comment" is a
statement received (a) in an email to a TC's -comment@
mailing list or (b) in the case of a TC member, in an
email to the TC's primary mailing list during an announced
public review period that refers to the work product under
review.
In the case of a proposed charter call for comments, a
"comment" is a statement received in an email to the
oasis-charter-discuss@ mailing list that refers to the
proposed charter.
While a TC is free to handle any comments received at any
time (and indeed is encouraged to do so), comments
referring to earlier drafts or general comments
unconnected with a public review underway do not fall
under the requirements laid out below.
- For the purposes of this procedure, the "the end of the
review period" mentioned in several places in the TC
Process as the deadline for posting a link to a comment
resolution log shall be deemed to be the point in time at
which the TC next requests an action on a document (e.g.
the next public review, a Special Majority Vote to approve
a Committee Specification).
- The TC Process refers to the record of comments and
their resolutions in several different ways. For the
purposes of this procedure, the document that records
comments and their dispositions will be called a "comment
resolution log."
Draft Procedure:
1) TC Obligations With Respect to Comments
The requirements for handling comments are laid out in
sections 2.2, 2.8, 3.2 and 3.4 of the OASIS TC Process.
Those requirements are:
- That comments be received only through the TC's
<short name>-comment@ mailing list for non-members,
the TC's primary mailing list for members, and the
oasis-charter-discuss@ mailing list for comments on
proposed charters.
- That comments be received by the Chair and optionally by
one or more other members of the TC.
- That comments be acknowledged.
- That comments be tracked and their resolutions
documented:
a) During a proposed TC call for comment period;
b) During a public review of a TC work product;
c) During a public review of a Candidate OASIS Standard.
- And that at the end of the comment / review period, the
TC post to its email list a pointer to an account of each
of the comments raised during the comment period along
with its resolution.
2) Procedure for Meeting These Obligations
To meet the requirements, TCs must take the following
steps:
a) The TC Chair is automatically subscribed to the TC's
<tcname>-comment@lists.oasis-open.org mailing list
and will always receive emails sent to that list. TCs may
want to assign another member (e.g. the Secretary or
editor)to subscribe to the list and track and report
comments and issues back to the TC.
b) Someone from the TC must send an email back to the
commenter acknowledging the comment. A simple "thank you
for your comment; the TC will be consider it" message is
sufficient.
c) The TC must track each comment received and how the
group decides to resolve it. Per the TC Process, a TC is
not required to take any action on the substance of the
comment, but the decision not to must be recorded.
The TC can choose to track comments and resolutions
however they wish: in a word processing document, in a
spread sheet, in JIRA, in the TC wiki. The TC must at a
minimum record:
- The date the comment was received;
- A link to the email in which a comment was received;
- The name of the person or entity providing the comment;
- A brief summary of the comment;
- A statement of the TC’s decision on how to handle the
comment, in as much detail as the TC wishes to provide.
In the event that multiple emails raise the same issue,
the TC can track and resolve them with one entry in the
document, however a link to each of the emails and the
names of each of the commenters must be included in the
record.
Keeping a cumulative list of comments will likely to be
the most convenient approach. The TC Process states that,
before an OASIS membership ballot can be held on a
Candidate OS, the TC must provide "a pointer to an account
of each of the comments/issues raised during the public
review period(s), along with its resolution." Having all
the comments and their resolutions stored in one list will
make satisfying this requirement easy.
d) By the end of the review period at the latest, the TC
must post to its email list a document containing, at a
minimum, the pieces of information listed above. The
document can be either a word processing document, a
spread sheet or a PDF document. A stand-alone document is
required to ensure that the comment resolution log is
persistent and immutable and publicly available on the
OASIS system.
If the TC is using JIRA or a wiki to track comments, a
document must be created by exporting the information from
that source.
If the document is a cumulative list of comments and
resolutions, it should also contain, for each comment,
identification of the draft to which it applied.
The posting email can be created by loading the document
into the TC's document repository and using the
automatically generated email to produce the pointer or by
attaching the document directly to the email. The TC may
also forward a pointer to the document to the TC's
-comment@ mailing list if it wishes to do so.
With that email, the TC obligations will be considered
fully met.
3) What TC Administration Will Do With the Comment
Resolution Document
The key objective is to ensure that comments and their
resolutions can readily be found by others who are
interested in the TCs work. Here is what TC Admin will do
with the documents.
a) When the TC is ready to take another action on its work
product (e.g. request another public review, request a
ballot to approve a Committee Specification), a pointer
back to this document will have to be provided as part of
the support request. TC Administration will not proceed
with a requested action until the comment resolution
document is provided.
b) A link to the comment resolution log will be included
in the announcements of subsequent public reviews,
document approvals, Special Majority ballots and other
communications where it will provide additional, useful
information.
c) A copy of the comment resolution log will be stored in
the OASIS Library along with the public review draft to
which it applies. This will help to ensure transparency
and traceability between comments received during a public
review and their resolution.
--- / ---