IETF LLC 2020 End Of Year Survey

The results are available in a results micro-site including the full text of all comments.  Only 29 responses were received, giving a margin of error of +/- 18%.

Satisfaction with the LLC’s performance on the following specific areas was very high:

• Adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic
• Securing a long term funding agreement with the Internet Society
• Investing IETF funds
• Completing our first financial audit

Four respondents each identified an additional area with one person noting that they were dissatisfied with the LLC’s performance on ‘community engagement’ and one person very dissatisfied with ‘appropriate leadership’.

For the four activities for 2021 we asked for feedback on, respondents prioritised them as follows, with no single activity standing out with a particularly high or low priority:

1. Transparency
2. Diversity and Inclusion
3. Community Engagement
4. Technical Platform Improvement

We received many suggestions for actions to work on for each of these activities, including clear statements of support,  others cautioning the LLC to work within its mandate, and useful suggestions on a way forward.  A few are shown below but you should see the results micro-site for all the comments :

• On Transparency:
  • “Always helpful, and especially important here.”
  • “Consider office hours at a time outside of the IETF meeting week.” (We will be doing so during IETF-110.)
• On Diversity and Inclusion:
  • “This is hard, and essential.  Good luck.”
  • “For the most part, this falls to the IESG and the IAB. Provide funding for the activities that they come up with.”
• On Community Engagement
  • “Outreach programs to help new people integrate into [the] community; continuing website improvements to make participation more accessible to new participants.”
  • “Develop processes to allow us to move forward on important changes even if there are a small number of vocal objectors.”
• On Technical Platform Improvement
  • “Stop using bespoke tools whenever possible and move to commodity tools.”
  • “There are too many options. There needs to be preferred tools that are well-kept.”
  • “Personally I'm not sure how much of an active role the LLC should have here at all. Facilitating volunteer work, yes. Build an IT organization, no thanks.”

We also asked if the community had any other recommendations or comments and the responses were overwhelmingly positive and supportive, with one criticism and one caution.  The board takes this as a good sign that the LLC is generally doing things right but improvement is still possible.

Finally, as required under BCP 101, this year will we be undertaking a three-year assessment of the IASA2 structure. We look forward to engaging with the IETF community on this in 2021. 

If you have any questions or further feedback then please contact us at llc-board-ed@ietf.org or llc-board@ietf.org for the board only.