Technical Programs
IAB Technical Programs support the IAB in raising awareness and discussion of specific concerns in the community related to the long-term perspective on the Internet informed by technical and architectural considerations.
Technical programs are usually created based on a then-current technical/architectural concern. The main goal of technical programs is to raise awareness and to promote discussion of the specific concerns in the community. This may be done by holding workshops, supporting the IAB in writing documents, or to simply serve as an active discussion group that then may respectively impact what the program members do within the community.
Technical programs are usually created based on an identified problem or gap. As such, a technical program is closed once that problem is solved, the gap is closed, or at least sufficient awareness has been raised in the community to acknowledge the problem or gap. Program reviews are performed regularly and serve as a check to determine if there is still work to do for the IAB and the IAB might decide to close a program otherwise.
The fundamental goal of a technical program should be to raise awareness of an issue or question relating to Internet architecture, or to consider whether there is a question to be answered in a particular area. Programs help the IAB to frame questions. They do not directly work to develop protocols, requirements, or use cases for new protocols, systems, or frameworks. Furthermore, programs should not be scoped around an open research question without a solution, but rather around concrete problems or architectural shortcomings that might have existing solutions but need more awareness in the community.
If a program concludes that there is research to be done to answer those questions, that suggests that an IRTF activity should be considered; if it concludes that engineering or standards are required, that suggests that a BoF should be considered to transition the work to the IETF.
IAB programs cannot publish RFCs. Programs provide input to the IAB discussions on a topic, and the IAB may choose to publish an RFC that takes that input into account, but an IAB program cannot directly publish, or propose to publish, an RFC.
Only IAB members can formally propose new technical programs and the IAB needs to agree to formation. Community members can of course encourage the IAB to consider forming a new program.
When new programs are announced on the architecture-discuss@ietf.org list, interested parties can subscribe to the program mailing list. In addition, IAB members may reach out directly to experts to get the involvement as needed to work successfully on the respective topic or problem.
IAB programs have flexibility in how they work. Programs may organize different kinds of meetings, and possible models include frequent calls, one-time workshops or a workshop series or smaller side meetings co-located with face-to-face IETF meetings.
Generally, it is recommended to open meetings for everybody in the community to join. Open meetings are announced to the program list. For certain tasks or more administrative questions meetings in small groups, design-team-like, might be adequate as well. Minutes for all meetings are provided publicly in the datatracker.